School had not been, for me, the place of unalloyed joy and fulfillment that it was for her. When the other girls squealed, “Let’s jump in the car and go have hijinks,” I was the one who asked, “How far is the car?” If deferred to in any way, I would go up in a bonfire of self-immolation. Now here we both are. And I am writing to you.

I have to roll up my sleeves to do so.

Did you wonder why my clothes were too big? Why I kept having to push up the sleeve of my sweater to lift my cup of tea? This is a holdover from high school, from when I read in a women’s magazine that to make yourself look small, you should wear your clothes too big. The column went on—it said don’t stop there! It said buy yourself oversized furniture so as to look small and delicate when curled up in a chair.

Are you wondering why a person who is already small would want to make herself look smaller? That should become clear. Not everything I know is something I want to see. Though on highways and, once, on a mountain road, I have strained to see things I didn’t want to see. The worst I ever saw was a body without a head. That was when I realized that I don’t mind seeing everything as long as everything is there for me to see.

The person I strained to see on the mountain road was myself. A paramedic wouldn’t let me. He cut away my jacket and sweater, then he scissored off my shirt. It seemed to me he could have covered me up faster than he did. In the hospital, a doctor laid his hand on my shoulder. Does this hurt? he asked. Moving his hand to my collarbone, What about here? And lower. Does this feel good?

It felt like that joke that I can’t exactly remember, but that has to do with a woman being examined in a doctor’s office. I think the way it goes is that after the naked woman has been thoroughly examined, she asks what is wrong with her. And the man in the white coat says he wouldn’t know, he’s not the doctor.

When someone starts heading for the life they had before, Chatty says, “Steam your face.” She herself will lean over a pot of boiling water with a towel held tented over her head and over the pot. She puts chamomile leaves in the boiling water and says the effect is soothing. But chamomile is the tea you drank that day, and the scent of it here is too much for me.

I lost my watch the day we met. Without a watch, to find the time I pick up the remote and turn on the weather channel. Trying to find the time, I track tornadoes in the plains states. A lost watch is something I will have to look up. I, who above and beyond the normal precautions, make fortune-courting gestures such as placing my shoes at my bedroom door with one shoe pointing in and one shoe pointing out—this to prevent nightmares—although it makes me look as though I don’t know whether I am coming or going. I am superstitious, and never change the bed sheets on a Friday (it gives the devil control of your dreams). When I wanted to measure your intentions when you agreed to meet me for tea, I threw apple pips into a fire and said, “If you love me, pop and fly, if you hate me, lay and die.” A lost watch is something I will have to look up. I am superstitious, and sometimes confused, opening an umbrella before I leave the house, but never, ever, wearing sunglasses inside.