not without irony: a few months before, Audrey had said that Shawn
should be supervised around children. Now, after our efforts, the one
who would be supervised was me.
—WHEN I LOST MY SISTER, I lost my family.
I knew my father would pay my brothers the same visit he’d paid
her. Would they believe him? I thought they would. After all, Audrey
would confirm it. My denials would be meaningless, the rantings of a
stranger. I’d wandered too far, changed too much, bore too little
resemblance to the scabby-kneed girl they remembered as their sister.
There was little hope of overpowering the history my father and
sister were creating for me. Their account would claim my brothers
first, then it would spread to my aunts, uncles, cousins, the whole
valley. I had lost an entire kinship, and for what?
It was in this state of mind that I received another letter: I had won a
visiting fellowship to Harvard. I don’t think I have ever received a piece
of news with more indifference. I knew I should be drunk with
gratitude that I, an ignorant girl who’d crawled out of a scrap heap,
should be allowed to study there, but I couldn’t summon the fervor. I
had begun to conceive of what my education might cost me, and I had
begun to resent it.
—AFTER I READ AUDREY’S LETTER, the past shifted. It started with my
memories of her. They transformed. When I recalled any part of our
childhood together, moments of tenderness or humor, of the little girl
who had been me with the little girl who had been her, the memory
was immediately changed, blemished, turned to rot. The past became
as ghastly as the present.
The change was repeated with every member of my family. My
memories of them became ominous, indicting. The female child in
them, who had been me, stopped being a child and became something
else, something threatening and ruthless, something that would
consume them.
This monster child stalked me for a month before I found a logic to
banish her: that I was likely insane. If I was insane, everything could be