In the Beginning 

I went to a Christian elementary school that taught me A. God loves me and B. God can send me to hell. 

When I was a teenager, I learned from a Chinese calendar placemat in a restaurant that my birth year made me a rat. I was on a hot date in China Palace with Keith, my then-boyfriend-now-husband, and there it was, plain as day, on the placemat…I even moved the bottle of soy sauce to make sure I was reading it correctly and it was indeed clear: 1984, Rat.

Another woman in the shop, an older woman—bleach-blonde hair, worn face—regards me: “You look great, honey.”

I had longed for this moment—for decades, really. Ever since age thirteen, when I first began throwing away my school lunches and going to soccer practice, doing suicides—up and down the field, up and down the field, touch the goal line once again—on an empty stomach.

Evening drains quickly on the day that Tevin leaves. I arrive home from working at the brewery to a letter from my grandmother in which she has folded a cut out copy of the Lord’s prayer. Though I read the letter only minutes ago and was thus informed, I can no longer remember from where she cut the blessing.