The woodpecker in my chest seems to have made a gaping hole in it, but instead of everything spilling out of me, I feel like I’m falling into myself, into some dark place I can feel but not see. This must be what my mom feels, too. Her face is all scrunched up like a newborn baby’s, still stuck in that silent moment before the howling comes.

“Mom,” I say again.

She turns in her chair and reaches for me. I move closer so she can grab on. She squeezes my body to her, hiding her face in the front of my grimy T-shirt.

I get one arm free and gently pat her head the way she used to pat mine.

Her back rises up as she takes a deep breath, and then she sobs into the hole in my chest, my punctured heart. She sobs and sobs, but the sound is muffled in my shirt. I hold tight to her as she presses her face into me. My T-shirt slowly dampens with her tears. My own tears drip down off my cheeks into her messy hair.

In the distance, SpongeBob laughs and squeals. I blink my tears back, knowing that if Ivy comes in the room right now and sees my mom like this, it will scare her. I rub my mom’s back to try to calm her down. Around us, the papers strewn all over the table — mostly unpaid bills and unread newspapers — seem to have lost their importance. On the far wall behind the table, portraits of Ivy and me standing on the front steps of the house on the first day of school, a bittersweet wreath on the door behind us in nearly every picture, stare back at me. In kindergarten, I’m all by myself. I’m wearing uneven braids, a pink T-shirt, jeans, and red rubber boots. I loved those boots because Paddington Bear wore them and he was my favorite. My mother had made me toast with marmalade for breakfast that morning, just like Paddington ate. I remember crying the night before because I didn’t want to leave the house. I loved playing in the backyard in the sandpile my dad made for me, where all my trucks and cars and my mom’s old Fisher-Price people sat waiting for me to build them a new village and roads in the sand. The house was all I knew, and everything about it seemed magical to me. But my mom, who was nine months pregnant with Ivy and whose giant belly pressed into me when she hugged me, had promised school would be magical, too.