More and more, he left me alone with Mommy. When she angled the light just so, Teddy went down to the weekend place and stroked his kitty.

I came to hate that smug cat. Ted knew it. Sometimes when I tried to come down he kept me suspended between the two places, in the black, vinegar-smelling freezer, because the cat was downstairs. Then when she went away it was my turn. If I did something he didn’t like, he found he could keep me in the dark freezer all the time.

I can’t come forward fully when we’re outside the house, unless Ted lets me. I can do little things—scribble a note, maybe, on the inside of some leggings, or make him lose concentration for a couple seconds. And of course it has to be stuff that doesn’t require the use of working legs. I don’t know why Ted’s broken mind made me like this but it did. He has to carry me through the world, maimed and powerless. I think that’s why he sometimes forgets that it was my strength that kept us alive.

Ted couldn’t say boo to a goose, or so I thought. I soon found out how wrong I was.

One day we were looking for mints in Mommy’s drawers. She didn’t like candy but she liked her breath to be fresh, so she would put one in her mouth for a few moments then spit it into a handkerchief. She moved the hiding place but sometimes we found it. We knew to eat just one, no matter how hungry we were. Mommy counted, but one mint was a plausible margin of error.

Mommy kept interesting things in her drawers. An old song book with bears on the front, a single white child’s flip-flop. Teddy was careless today. He pawed through her hose with damp hands.

“She’ll notice, Teddy,” I said. “Sheesh. You’ll tear them!” He looked up and I caught our reflection in the mirror on the vanity. I saw it then, in his face. He didn’t care anymore. Mommy would punish us and make the body cry. She would put us in the big box with vinegar. But Teddy could just go downstairs. It was me who would feel it.

“Ted,” I said. “You wouldn’t…”

He shrugged and took the box of mints from where it was neatly folded inside a camisole. Slowly, dreamily, he opened the tin and put it to his lips. He tipped it so that the mints flowed into his mouth. Some spilled from his lips and fell bouncing to the floor.

“Ted,” I whispered. “Stop! You can’t be serious, she will hurt the body for that.”