I burst out the door and spotted her in the distance ahead. I tried to catch up. “Mama, please,” I cried. “I’m sorry. I won’t. I’m not!” By the time I caught up to her, I could see a tear streaming down her cheek. I could think of nothing more shameful—why was I doing this to her? At the time I thought the same thing: she should’ve had better. She didn’t deserve this at all.

I REMEMBER FALLING DOWN THE STAIRS WHEN I WAS two and looking up to see my parents laughing at the top. They claim to have laughed so that I wouldn’t cry. But I rarely cried. “You were a happy baby,” Teta used to tell me, back when she could still remember my infancy. “You used to wake up singing in your crib. And you had such a healthy appetite.” Once, when I was still in diapers, a friend of my mother’s came over with a falafel sandwich. At the sight of it I crawled off the changing table and scurried over to the friend. I poised myself at her feet like a puppy and waited for scraps to fall.

I also remember when my mother asked me to tell my father she was in labor. I was three years old. He was in the living room of our house in the D.C. suburbs, watching the news; the Iran-Contra scandal was covered on every channel that year. Back then my father wore a black suit to work each day, with a white button-down shirt and a shockingly bright tie. “You need to find a way to distinguish yourself, to stand out,” he’d say to my mother whenever she suggested a more demure color. He would spray a heavy cologne every morning that mixed with the scent of my mother’s perfume, delicious and thick. I would monkey around as they got dressed, collecting pennies off the bureau and trying on my mother’s heels, stabbing the carpeted floor with the spikes. My father wore only tighty-whiteys as he shaved, craning his neck with pursed lips as he dragged the razor through shaving cream like a plow through fresh powdery snow. I would pump Gillette into the open palm of my outstretched hand and watch it poof before patting it onto my cheeks. Having heard from my mother that shaving could cause hair to grow where it hadn’t before, I resisted the temptation to drag the razor across my smooth face. Instead, I would derive satisfaction from dipping an index finger into the shaving cream cloud and holding it to the end of my nose, dotting the tip before smearing it onto my chin and upper lip. I’d watch myself in the mirror, unsmiling.