My hair is dirty. There are dirty half-moons beneath my fingernails. I notice the faint scent of filth wafting from between my legs. My blood is sand in the veins.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I overslept.”

“Work late,” he says. “Don’t let it happen again.”

A brief hallucination: I smash the windows out, scream until the metal cabinets collapse, until the fluorescent lights rain down on my face in a shatter of glass, blood streaking my face. Then I leave early.

Instead, I put my head down. I work.

At lunch, I eat a hamburger, let the clear pink juice run down my lips like an animal. The leftover liquor in my stomach makes the food expand, my knot thick with bloat.

Later, I sit at my desk, a good worker until the sun sets, until the clock’s hands touch a certain number, until it is time to pack up, walk back to the bar.

SOPHIA CALLS AGAIN WITH BIGGER NEWS.

“I’m pregnant!” she says.

My vision gets small.

“That’s beautiful,” I machine into the line. “When are you due?”

IN A DREAM, MY ABDOMEN SWELLS AND swells. Yet I do not give birth. I rub my hand over my distended belly and listen for the sounds of child. There is nothing.

“We can’t tell what’s wrong,” the dream doctors say. “We just don’t understand this baby.”

This goes on for months until I get fed up. I make an incision in my own belly. It barely hurts. I part the wound to find my child, but there are only bright white worms, eyeless, writhing.

AN ACHE BEGINS IN MY KNOT. THE LANguage of pain means nothing: Do I mean a cramp? Is it a fire? Is an ache a roar?

I look for cures. I rub the knot with Epsom salts. I attempt a self-massage. I drench myself in expensive healing oils.

SPECIAL HEALING OILS

Created under a full moon and with the use of crystals, this series of oils will realign your chakras and remove pain from the body. These claims have not been validated by the FDA.

The hurt persists beneath the oils. I count the rhythm of the pangs on the walk to work.

My mind starts to unravel. The scenery warps. The world flattens around me. The busy street I’m standing on is just a painting, a canvas I could punch my fist through.

THE BREAK ROOM AT WORK IS PAINTED orange. The refrigerator is filthy white from our fingerprints. A low light buzzes above my head. I spoon my soup into my mouth, split pea green between the lips.

“Whatcha got there?” asks Brenda.

The pain still trembles through my knot, a pain Brenda cannot see or comprehend. Brenda has chopped brown bangs, watery brown eyes. Her shirt hangs sloppily over her thin frame. A small barrette holds back her bangs, giving a childlike appearance to her grown body.