Indoors your brother Lionel had seemed to ignore you practically yawning in your presence to assure you, fuck he didn’t give a shit about you but there Lionel was, suddenly behind you. Close behind you, panting with what must have been (you would surmise afterward) excitement. Shove against your back as if by accident and you are slipping, falling on the icy steps—so fast it happens, you are taken totally by surprise.

“Hey! Watch out!”—Lionel’s warning comes late, mocking. And a mock-groan of scolding solicitude—“Ohhh Vi’let—what’d you do?—hell.”

The force of the blow against your head has knocked you unconscious. Two, three seconds obliterated—concussed. Waking stunned to find yourself on the icy ground. A pounding at your left temple where something, the sharp ice-edge of a step, has cut the skin thin as paper, releasing a stream of blood. Your left leg is twisted beneath you, the knee is bent impossibly beneath you. So much blood so quickly, you are astonished. Too surprised to worry that you might bleed to death.

You will recall Lionel crouching over you hungrily even as Miriam comes on the run, from somewhere inside the house Miriam has heard you scream though you have not heard yourself scream, and in that instant Lionel is gone—(gone where? gone)—and Miriam stoops over you to lift you carefully, trying to comfort you, trying not to panic at the blood, explaining to you that you slipped on the ice, you hit your head and cut your forehead but you will be all right. And when Miriam manages to settle you onto one of the steps, to make some effort to staunch the flow of blood with tissues in the pocket of her jacket, and finally with the jacket itself, there comes your mother in the doorway unsteady on her feet and staring, scolding, “Oh, dear Christ what did Violet do now.”

The Revelation

VIOLET? IS SOMETHING WRONG?”—STOOPING, STARING AT ME with concerned eyes. “Did you hurt yourself?”

For Ms. Micaela could not, dared not ask Did someone hurt you.

She knew the rumor about my brothers. Everyone knew the rumor about my brothers. After the others had filed out of homeroom. After the first-period bell had rung clamorous and jeering and I remained in my seat dazed and weak and (seemingly) not sure where I was.

I’d limped into the room well before the bell. Panting and determined not to make a spectacle of myself I’d positioned myself carefully at the desk assigned to me and half-fell into it for I could not (easily, without pain) bend my swollen left knee.

Dry-mouthed, but not dry-eyed. And a dripping nose.