She did not throw it away.

She had meant to — had pictured, more than once, the satisfaction of dropping it in the trash or burning it in the yard.

But when it came back to her, she found she wanted something more deliberate than disposal.

She placed it, instead, in a keepsake box, the kind a mother keeps for the things a daughter will want to understand someday — the hospital bracelet, the first lock of hair.

And beside the collar she set a note, in her own hand, folded once, addressed to a girl who could not yet read.

Alma — this was put beside you when you were five weeks old, by people who wanted you to learn, early, that you were beneath them.