I got vanilla ice cream. That was the only flavor she liked. I can still feel the numbness of my fingertips where they met the cold tub, see the delicate sediment of ice that covered the lid.

I come into the kitchen and see her. In a way, it is all I have seen, ever since. The sight is inside my eyelids. My mother is floating in air, swaying gently. She is a dreadful pendulum. The laundry line creaks as she moves. Her teeth bite her blue lower lip as if caught in a last moment of doubt.

Her favorite possessions are stacked neatly by her drifting feet. Her little vanity case, packed with the gauzy blue dress, her nightgown, perfume. Her soft suede handbag, the color of a doe’s belly. A note lies on the case, in her formal French schoolchild’s copperplate. To be taken to the woods, it says.

I had to wait until night. She had told me that. But I did not want to leave her hanging there. I was afraid someone would knock on the door and insist on coming in. Then they would see her. I was not afraid of getting in trouble. But she looked so exposed up there, with her twisted blue face. I did not want other eyes on her.

So I took her down. It was difficult to touch her. She was still warm. I folded her up small and put her in the cupboard beneath the sink. “Sorry,” I said to her, again and again. I cleaned the floor, which had mess on it beneath where she had hung.

I wanted to send all her clothes with her, but I couldn’t find her big suitcase. I did my best by adding a couple of things to the little overnight vanity—everyday things she might need in the woods. I put in her suture kit. I packed the copy of Aesop’s Fables that lay by her bed. She could never fall asleep without a book and I worried about her, lying wakeful in the cold forest.

Night came like a blanket. I put Mommy and her things on my back, and carried her into the trees. She had grown stiff and clammy. Things seeped out of her. She would have hated that. I knew I needed to get her to the forest. As soon as we were under the trees I felt better.

She seemed to grow heavier as we went through the night forest. I gasped and stumbled. My spine felt as though it were being crushed, my knees trembled. I welcomed those things. It was right that this should be a difficult journey.