My mind was stranded amid a pile of birds’ bones in a pack rat midden in a tight, dank corner when I looked down to find my nineteen-month-old daughter turning blue. Half the paper label was peeled from a plastic water bottle but was nowhere in sight. Sarah was sitting in the shopping cart seat in the grocery market when it happened. I was standing by the cheeses. Meg came out of an aisle carrying a bag of rice when she saw my panic. She dropped the rice, the bag broke open, and rice slid and rolled and sprayed everywhere. My big clumsy fingers were in my daughter’s mouth, and I was finding nothing.

“What’s happening?” Meg asked.

“She ate paper.”

I patted Sarah’s back, then turned her over, held her upside down. She was not crying, and that was the most alarming part of all of it. Then suddenly she was crying. I breathed again. The wad of paper was out of her and between my fingers. Meg took the baby and glared at me.

“She peeled it off the bottle,” I said.

“Weren’t you watching her?”

That was Meg’s way. She was a blamer; every bad thing had to be someone’s fault. I hadn’t saved our child from choking, but instead had only nearly killed her. I hadn’t removed the paper, but had, in fact, put the foreign matter in her throat. I never considered that the child might tear the paper off the bottle and eat it. We had routinely given her plastic bottles just like this one to play with. I felt hollow, weak, guilty, and sick. That night I stood over her for more than an hour while she slept, watching her little back rise and fall with her breaths, making certain that she was still alive. It was my job, my only job in life, to keep this creature alive, to keep this little bird breathing.

The package was on the dining room table, a large envelope with a post office box return address in New Mexico.

Meg watched as I pulled out the shirt. “What is that?” she asked.

“It’s a shirt,” I said.

“I can see that. Is it used?”

“Pre-owned. Got it on eBay.”

“You needed another shirt?”

“Not really,” I admitted.

She made some kind of noise in her throat. I am sad to say I understood her completely. The shirt was just a shirt, and I was glad she had left the room as I was then alone to search its two flapped breast pockets. I was relieved and, oddly, a bit disappointed, even more strangely, discouraged, to find them empty. So, I had a new used shirt that looked enough like my old used shirts that I would no doubt slip it into the rotation. As I stuffed the garment back into the envelope, I felt a lump in the collar. There was a neatly folded note pinned, hidden, under the flap. I hesitated to unfold it as the hair on my neck stood up. Before I even read it, I knew I would not be telling Meg. I wondered if I would share it with anyone. Unfolded, the note read “Please Help to Us.”