As I look at her, I remember the feeling I had the moment I first saw her after giving birth, her face contorted in distress like it was now. The feeling had something to do with the realization that, from that moment on, I would never quite be a whole person again. That there would now always be some part of myself living outside of my body that I had only nominal control over, if any. I loved her with an intensity that startled even me at times, startled me in its animal insistence, like a genetic imperative beyond my reason.

Ashley wiped her eyes and leaned into me and I put my arm around her. And I held her tight. I held her like she might slip away from me. I felt us all slipping. Slipping into a household of secrets, and silences, and resentments. And me, slipping fastest of all, into darkness. Into days of never leaving the house. Never leaving myself. Never leaving the hum.

7

YOU ARE NOT A CRIMINAL

You are not a pervert

You are not malicious

You are not stupid

You are not selfish

You are not insane

You are not cancelled

You are not a cuntface

You are not a bad wife

You are not a bad mother

You are not your mother

You are not your own tired reflection in the mirror

You are not a human-shaped flesh sack

You are not being cosmically punished

You are not the wreckage of your own sublimated desires

You are not going to show up at Ashley’s game like this

You are not going to cry in front of Paul again

You are not going to touch yourself while crying again

You are not going to throw Paul’s clothes out of the closet again

You are not going to move the bottle of pills from the cabinet

You are not going to call the school

You are not going to call Brenda Francis

You are not going to text Kyle

You are not going to go to that meeting on Sequoia Crescent

You are not going to check Facebook

You are not going to check Facebook

You are not going to check Facebook

8

I WENT TO THE MEETING ON SEQUOIA CRESCENT.

I went to the meeting despite knowing Paul and Ashley would be apoplectic if they found out. I went not knowing, really, whether I wanted to go, or whether it would be productive for my mental health, such as it was. I went not knowing whether Kyle would be there or not; we had stopped all contact. Perhaps I only went because I suspected he would be. I guess that says everything you need to know about where my head was at the time. I was able to go because Ashley had a game that Saturday morning which Paul drove her to and stayed to watch; otherwise I would never have been able to slip away.