IN THE MORNINGS, SOPHIA WALKS SLOWLY into the classroom as if covered in sleep. Sophia wears a red dress, then a blue dress, then a green dress. In the afternoons, Sophia laughs in the lunchroom, and light bounces off the white of her teeth. Sophia knows a joy I do not know.

I watch Sophia move and I want to move like she does. Some days, Sophia catches me staring and waves. Sometimes, I lift my limp hand and wave back.

I don’t know if my wave tells the truth, which is: I want to move like you do. I want to slice you open with a knife. I want to hide my body inside of yours.

TODAY, MY MOTHER WANTS TO HELP. SHE closes my bedroom door behind her then sits beside me on the bed. The heat of her breath scorches my face.

Close up, her wrinkles are deep canyons. I imagine myself walking through the chasms of her skin.

“We need to do something about your looks,” she says, running a hand through my hair. “Let’s start with the clothes. The magazines say yellow is the color this season.”

She walks to my closet and pulls out an old yellow dress made of lace. I shake my head.

“Put it on! It’s fun to try new looks.”

“I hate this dress. It’s too hot.”

“Just do it!”

I strip off my old blue dress. I slip the yellow fabric over my head. She yanks up the zipper and the bright lace tents around my knot.

“Now these,” she says, wrapping a single strand of pearls around my neck. The pearls are tight, hot, plastic.

She walks me into her bedroom. We are surrounded by her special creams, the ghost of her perfume, facing her big mirror.

“There now,” she says. “Isn’t this just perfect? Shouldn’t we do this every day? Let’s take a picture!”

IN THE PHOTOGRAPH, I STAND NEXT TO her mirror in the dress and the pearls. My eyes are red as if I have been crying, as if I want to remove the pearls, the dress, my skin.

OUT UNDER THE BURNING SUN, MY brother digs the red meat up out of the earth, filling silver bucket after silver bucket after silver bucket. I imagine it that way. Then he is showered, clean, in fresh clothes at the dinner table.

“Big day in the quarry today,” he says.

We fork bland cubes of meat into our mouths.

“It takes a gut instinct, son,” my father says. “And you have it. Boy, I wish I had it like you.”

The room falls silent after this rare praise. My mother exhales a plume of smoke. The meat takes on the scent.

AFTER DINNER, I CUT THE FLAT- stomached women out of my mother’s magazines.