Her door is closed. I reach up and turn the knob and hum our special song. It’s quiet. She’s sleeping. But I want to play! Lolly wants to play, too. The ladies who stay with her tell me not to bother Mama when she’s sleeping, but she tells me to anyway. It’s hard to get into the bed myself, so first I tug on her arm. She doesn’t wake up. I kiss her hand, but she doesn’t wake up. I lift Lolly up and let her kiss Mama’s face. That always works. But this time she stays asleep.

I want Mama! I grip the blanket and use it to scoot myself onto the bed. “Mama, wake up!” I jump on the bed with my knees. I’m not allowed with my feet. But she doesn’t move. I clutch her face and kiss her lips. That’s how Sleeping Beauty in the story wakes up. I sing to her, our special song.

But she stays quiet. Her eyes don’t even open.

I sit back, crisscross-applesauce. I feel the cry build up in my throat. I plug it in with my thumb.

I’m propelled forward, in time and space, to the present. And I feel nothing for a stretch of a shimmering moment.

And then, clawing, itchy rage, and I scream. I scream with all that tightly knotted anger, a hellish siren of a sound, and I can’t stop it. Every crevice is boiling over. Grief, and anger, and love, and sadness, coiled together. But it’s the pure rage that wins every time, which claws its way to the front, spills outs tangibly into the world. The same rage that moved me to smash every dish in my father’s apartment, every mug in my own cupboards, to put a hole in my wall with my hand.

My hands, they’re around Anneliese’s throat, squeezing, her eyes bulging, and I want them to fall out, their veins smeared on the floral cover.

For a moment, she resists. For a moment, I ease my grip. And then, so quietly, her voice a coarse hiss, she whispers, “Your mommy, she wanted me to do it.”

And my hands are clenching again, hard, hard, harder, her eyes rolling back in her head, her skin so red it looks like a sunset. I swear, in the moment before her final breath, she is smiling.

And then, she’s silent. Her body is silent, too.

The silence is a shroud. Blissful.

I take my hands away. Sit back on the bed.

She lies there, a shrunken carcass of a person, her hair an orange halo.

And as I sit there, looking down at her, my breath rapid, my heart hammering, she looks so delicate, such a scrap of a woman. My rage quietly recedes, leaving me woozy with the sudden depletion.