Ruth’s thirty-five, eleven years younger than I am. There was a brother in between but he died shortly after he was born. He had a hole in his heart. Ruth says she’s lived her life in his shadow. My father couldn’t get over his disappointment that she was a girl. Ruth says she should have been born first because I’m so immature and make such bad choices she has to act like a big sister. Ruth has never stopped telling our mother this. It makes her cry but Ruth doesn’t care. In fact, it’s her goal.

It’s like Ruth is a horrible self-help book I’ve absorbed, and while I’m waiting captive here in this hospital room, mean things Ruth has said or done appear in my mind the way spring ducks come flying in and land on a pond. I’m so cold and my body hurts so much being suspended like this, and I can’t get Ruth out of my mind.

There is a metallic taste in my mouth. Blood — I’ve bitten my lip, still tense even with the drugs. Maybe the sedative is wearing off. A few tears well up and I blink them away. The artist in me takes over and I see the entire horizon of my life shaded with the tone of her words.

It’s mostly our father’s fault, according to Ruth. It’s the patriarchy. Two girls. He wanted boys. I have a child, out of wedlock, as Ruth calls it — but our father is thrilled Saul has our last name. Ruth married a successful lawyer and Dad’s happy she took his last name. She always says our father views my patched-together work as entrepreneurial. She has to be the girl in the family for both of us, be overlooked for two, invisibility times two.

It’s hard to argue with her. After our father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease he took his big orange cat and seat-belted it in the passenger seat beside him. He went off for a drive and came back a bit later, saying Ruthie was hungry.

“Dad,” I said. “That’s the cat, not Ruth.”

My son giggled behind his hands, his dark brown eyes peering over his little fingertips.

“What in god’s name is the cat doing in the car?” My father unbuckled the cat.

Remarkably, the cat seemed to enjoy the outing.

It enraged Ruth. “You’re all ending up with problems, and I have to take care of you.”

Ruth’s husband is the only one who has patience with her. She had a late-term miscarriage. A stillbirth is what it was. Her husband called me that night and I drove to the city. Ruth couldn’t even look at me, she was crying so hard. “Why do you get to have a child?” That’s all she said.

“Ruth doesn’t mean it, Daisy,” her husband said as he wept. But we both know she did.

A faraway voice says my name. It’s not Ruth or her husband, but Nurse Clara telling me to hang on; she knows how disorienting it is, how upsetting. There seems to be some trouble with the equipment. She rubs my shoulder but I keep my eyes closed. I remember again that I’m drugged, which is why it’s so hard to be present.