I worry there’s a monster sleeping inside me now. The very same one that hides inside my mother, that wakes up and shakes the house down to its studs from time to time. I worry that no matter how quiet I am, I cannot keep the monster from waking now that Mary has brought me to New Orleans.

I worry that the boy in the yellow waistcoat is but one of the monster’s faces.

I breathe the smell of my comforter in deeply, drawing as much of my old life into my lungs as I can. I can make out Moony’s favorite detergent, the chicory and coffee steam that marked every morning in that house for forty years, and my vanilla body spray that I am only just now remembering I left in the bathroom cabinet beneath the sink. But more than any of that, I smell the loss. Life as I know it has been a series of losses. I have lost my mother more times than I can count; I have lost my grandmother, my foundation, and my home. And now I feel as though I am losing myself. It is the smell between the smells, saline and sorrow.

I have no choice but to take another breath, knowing that with every inhale, New Orleans is getting in a little more. I imagine I can feel it crawling beneath me, spinning in circles like a cat chasing its tail.

IV.

SHE’S UP EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, BUT I’VE ALREADY risen. Light pours in with the dawn through the little window over the sink. It bounces off the white plaster walls, filling the whole room with a beautiful, if unwelcome, incandescence. My sleep was light at best anyway, so I decide to get a jump on the bathroom. When she wanders into the kitchen with a yawn, I am eating a plate of scrambled eggs with a side of toast, since eggs and bread were two of the only things she left in the fridge last night. We’ll have to have a talk about the wonders of breakfast cereal.

She grins when she sees me, like a kid on Christmas morning. Something in her smile rubs me all wrong.

“Morning, baby. Got something to eat, I see.”

“I left you some,” I say with a nod toward the stove.

“Aren’t you sweet?” She grabs a plate and starts filling it with eggs. “I always knew it would be great to have you here, but I never considered how helpful you would be.”

She turns to me, her face glowing like the plaster walls.