My sister is in and of and around me always.

My sister, who had more soul and love and passion than anyone else I know.

My sister, who visits me in quiet moments, floating into the space behind my closed eyes.

I’ve done a lot of writerly things for money: reporting, editing, and teaching. I managed to write and teach until I had kids, but parenting was the kiss of doom for balance in my life. Something had to go, and since my spouse was on board, I quit teaching. What little extra time I had, I spent writing. It didn’t pay, but it satisfied a creative need, and it didn’t require a wardrobe. Or parking.

I sat in Taylor’s chair in the high-ceilinged hair salon on Madison Avenue, watching all the wealthy Upper East Siders, as they rested their five-figure handbags on velvet stools like beloved pets. My newfound sense of mortality had no place in this land of excess. This was the room T.S. Eliot must have been referring to when he spoke about the “women [who] come and go/ Talking of Michelangelo.”

Condensation gathers along the windows, giant teardrops sliding down the panes. The air inside sweats heavily, leaving its imprint on our booth seats and table. I have this habit of tucking my hands underneath my thighs when I’m cold. But the seats are sticky, so I interlace my fingers and hold them between my legs. It’s no wonder people get sick easily.

Writing a memoir is being in the diaristic present. I’m here but writing about then—a then I have not documented, a then that is lost, a then I re-create with each stroke of a word, as if I’m a time traveler denied access to my past.

I.

The neglected yard of a local abandoned house stands meadow high. Overnight, the grass floods with brown casings and red-eyed spawn. This is how it begins.

Silently, cicadas surface to molt, climb, mate. Our shoes crunch exoskeleton evidence of invasion. My daughters—five and three—stare at the creeping bark of trees, mesmerized by miniature zombie movements.

“Pain. Today I learned what that word really means...”

My first period is documented in my childhood journal when on July 3, 1998 I became a woman. I was just a month shy of turning fourteen and about to embark on my freshman year of high school.

I contemplated flinging the ring over the railing into the woods, but then I thought: no, then it will be down there. The diamond will be shining in the dirt like the highlight on an eye in a painting, watching me. It will bother me that it’s still close by.

I grab my keys and check my purse before heading out. It’s not a huge trip, but these days, it seems like a huge trip—a visit to the grocery store. For a little over a year now, this trip has required some extra preparation. The old usuals: cell phone—check...wallet—check...coupons—check. And the new usuals: mask—check...extra mask—check...hand sanitizer and wipes—check... gloves—check.

As soon as I started to pull off my sweater, stretching the thin black vee-neck up and over my head, it suddenly occurred to me. I needed to remove one or both of my masks. I’d dutifully fastened the blue paper surgical mask around my ears, covered by a black cotton one, while sitting in the parking lot.

I want to write a story about the decapitation of glorious women. A story about the mighty falling. A story about heads tumbling in baskets. A story about the mouths that posthumously moved and eyes that blinked even after the head was severed. A story about the wigs that flew. A story about the heads that rolled.

He’s never been there before, but my husband drives through Arizona like he’s a native. Our kids bicker in the backseat as he squints into the Southwestern sunshine.

The highway carves a groove into the hills. Forests of saguaro fade to arid plains. Endless interstate stretches through hours of tanned earth, unfurling at the feet of piney, snow-capped forests. Our rental car pushes higher and higher. We tug layers over jeans and t-shirts.

My first love was a 2003 Subaru Outback. We first met at the car dealership that’s notorious for ripping people off, where I was blinded by newly gained teenage independence. Excited by my accomplishment of saving up three summers worth of paychecks, I was easily seduced by the Subaru's dependable reputation. I was in awe at the fact that my dad wasn’t entirely disapproving.

Jake offers me a beer before challenging, “Think you can keep up?”

“I can drink you under the table,” I answer.

“Drink for drink then.”

We click our bottles and the game begins. I know I will lose. He’s six feet tall, lean and muscular, while I’m closer to five foot two. He easily weighs two hundred pounds which compliments his height and athletic build. My body is somewhere in the one hundred and ten mark. There is no way I’ll win. But that isn’t the point, is it?

Recently, scrolling through my news feed on Facebook, I came across a post by a girl from work. It was a picture of her and her mother side-by-side, same cute smile, same long, blonde hair, same eyes crinkled by their grins. She tagged it "#TWINS.” “Vote for me and my mom!" the caption said, with a link to a local radio station hosting a mother-daughter lookalike contest for Mother's Day.

“You need to eat.” His eyes averted, my husband dropped a bag of potato chips in my lap and returned to his work call, pacing back and forth in the airport waiting area. I stared at the plain chips--I hate plain chips. I could feel them come again: fat, slippery tears sliding down my face. I tasted salt as I tried to bite them back. What was I doing in an airport in Arizona on a Monday afternoon? Crying in public? This wasn’t me.

I am topless in the women’s beach bathroom, laundering the salt stained armpits of my only t-shirt with hand dispenser soap. I have not yet been sized up as a threat or harassed by a mob of concerned mothers. Perhaps my exposed tits are evidence I am in fact, female?

When I was seven years old, I spit out the body of Christ.

It wasn’t an act of rebellion, only the reflex of an unselfconscious girl I must have been once. My Sunday school teacher asked for a volunteer to demonstrate how to take communion, and I volunteered for everything then. She told us it was bread, but as soon as I tasted the wafer, I was sure there’d been a mistake—the sliver sticking to my tongue and then, suddenly, to my outstretched palm, had to be cardboard.

When I was five, I got a pair of Wonder Woman Underoos, stars on blue bottoms, a golden eagle on the camisole, which my dad called a wife-beater. I blasted around the yard, kicking Nazis, saving drippy Steve Trevor. The world had clean edges. I was a goddess, a force. Wham! Pow! Look out bad guys. My mom called me inside; I was just in my underwear, and what would the neighbors think.

The two of them were naked, the man and his wife, yet they felt no shame.

—Genesis 2:25

It’s the word “yet” that breaks my heart. Why would the Bible’s authors add that qualifier, unless body shame was already, in their time, a cultural given, a feeling so immediate and gutting that the lack of mortification at one’s own flesh—its size and shape, its smells and hungers—was worth noting in chapter two of the story of How It All Began.