My mother punched me in the stomach because I got pregnant first.

My mother told a whole county I fell against a table.

My mother stood up in a courtroom and put *I love you* on the table as a bargaining term.”

My voice was doing something strange.

“And she’s been quietly paying four thousand dollars a month for thirty-one years to keep the woman who locked her out of the pantry in a private room in Kentucky?”

“Yes.”