I didn’t understand it myself, why I couldn’t do simple things the way I always had. A couple of weeks into it, the consensus was that I was freaking everyone out. When I saw a job opening in the warehouse, I went for it. The deli boss had a word with the warehouse boss, happy to be rid of me, and I was allowed to transfer, even though most of the workers back there were large men who could throw around large flats of cans in one go.

The warehouse was darker and less cheerful than out front, but I didn’t mind. I was the only woman back there but I liked it that way; everyone left me alone. My favorite task was refilling the dairy section from the back room, pushing the gallons of milk onto their refrigerated shelves from a hidden, private perch. Every now and then a little kid would be standing on the other side when I did this, and I liked to imagine the world through their eyes, watching the cartons appear like magic, glimpsing disembodied hands ushering them through a distant window. Most children froze in wonder when they realized what was happening. Sometimes they screamed. I also counted cans and took inventory and wheeled giant pallets off the delivery trucks. My arms and legs grew strong; after half a year even the most skeptical of the warehouse guys started nodding hello, and the more senior workers slowly began offering me more choice on what shifts I could work, which I figured meant they had decided to respect me.

Around this time was when one of them, Patrick, tried to ask me out. I had been there for a year by the time he worked up the nerve. At first I was flattered, but when I politely declined, the prospect of involving myself with another human too frightening and exhausting to comprehend, he asked me what I did all night after I left work. He said it was probably best if I wasn’t alone, a woman in this town. I could get into trouble. After all—and here his voice lowered slightly, just us chums, I guess—he had heard about what happened to me.

It was the first time someone had said something like that to me. Not even the horrid deli boss had ever said anything, too embarrassed to acknowledge a stranger’s troubles. And Krystal, during the whole week I’d stayed with her, had not referred to the robbery once. In her mercy and decency she had let me crawl out of the memory.

Patrick meant well, I think. His face was concerned. He was a large guy with sandy hair, a slight beer gut, and too-big hands, farmboy handsome. If I looked stunned, he did a great job of not noticing. “C’mon, I worry about you. Just one beer,” he’d said good-naturedly, and my shock switched over to a different frequency, and the rage was so vivid that pink, keloidal slashes zigzagged across my vision. I might have swayed in its wake. I stared at him, trying to focus.