I did see. I saw myself like someone from my parties might have seen me—a mermaid girl, barely clad. And then I saw the rest. I wasn’t wearing shorts. The puffy letters of my sweatshirt spelled NEPENTHE, and there was a wine stain covering the N. I held the bottle with one hand. My cheeks were flushed and rough, like stucco, puffy skin around my eye hollows. My pupils peered out from their caves. My hair was thick and tangled, like the mouse nest we’d found in our garage when I was young: bits of rags and hair and strips of car upholstery. I’d been in awe of that nest, how it made a home of all our garbage.

Momma kept at me. “Do you see yourself? Do you?”

I grabbed the bottle and swung it against the door frame. I wanted to make her quiet. The glass splintered against the hard edge of wood. I held the ragged neck in my closed fist. I broke off one shard and reached to cut my thigh. In the mirror I watched the blood well from the slit. It came out thick, like the wine glaze was spilling out. The flow was quiet after the sound of splintering. I brought the shard up to my neck. I didn’t know where to cut. I didn’t know if I could.

She grabbed my hand and closed hers around it. The glass sliced my tight-squeezed palm. I felt the blood ooze between our fingers. I let my fist go loose. The shard dropped onto the carpet.

“I knew it,” she said. “I knew you wouldn’t do it.”

That’s when I turned around and slapped her. It sounded like a whip’s crack. Then, very slowly, I laid my palm across the red skin of the hit. I wanted to soothe it. She cupped her hand over mine for a second, letting me, and then she shook her head and walked away. “Lucy!” I said. I yelled it. Then again, and again, until the sounds didn’t make sense: See, Lucy? Lu? I just wanted her to turn around. I wanted to know that something else could happen after the dry crack of my skin on hers. It sounded like the end of everything.

Lucy said I had to move out. So I did. I left my pride in that house, and I missed it: the part of me that felt my mother’s disappointment. It had some dignity, at least.