I woke to Rita pounding on the door again. I had stopped responding to these knocks a while ago, but she was more insistent this time, though it was muffled through the tower of furniture I had moved in front of the door.

Then glass was breaking. A crowbar dropped onto the carpet inside. I jumped to my feet, dazed, Krystal’s words from the night before still rebounding in my skull.

The picture window was large, and its panes shattering sounded like water falling. I stood by the couch taking all of this in as Rita’s arm snaked inside to unlock the casement before raising the window. She climbed inside, pushing the curtains away, and stood up. “There you are!” she said when she saw me. “Are you all right?”

She was still dressed in her camouflage clothes. Not my Helen anymore.

She was not a small woman, but I charged at her like a bull. She was so surprised that she did nothing, which allowed me to plow right through her, it seemed, throw her to one side, before I vaulted out the window and landed on the terrace.

The sun was so bright, another beautiful day, but the days would be beautiful no longer, I thought, until these bitches cleared off. “What’s wrong with you?” I heard her disbelieving voice say from inside. “I didn’t know if you were alive or dead! I had to do it!” Then, “I cut myself. Shit. Bonnie!”

I was already racing down the stairs and heading up the street. The physical fact of the buildings, the street, encouraged me. I could still save this. If only everyone would leave.

Slamming through the city door and heading toward the main house at a dead run, I felt more energized than I’d ever felt in my life. I had spoiled love and rage and the shining day’s sun thrumming in me, giving me power. When I reached the main house I could see Krystal inside, in the main kitchen usurping what was rightfully mine, opening my fridge, pouring a glass of fucking tea, whatever. She looked like she was making herself right at home. She was now wearing a faded sweater that had dingy yellow ruffles at the neck. I squinted. Not a sweater. Geannie’s housecoat.

I threw the front door open and it slammed against the wall. She jumped.

I must have looked like I had come there for exactly what I had come there for, because she bolted. Blindly she ran through the house, but she was new here, wasn’t she, and I had been here my whole life. My whole real life. The one that I was meant to live from the beginning. It is only through great sacrifice that great blessings can be bestowed. Pain is weakness leaving the body! No pain, no gain! Old clichés from fitness commercials blazed through my head. Their message was clear: I am here to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and I am all out of bubblegum.