My mother measured her daughter to find out whether she was still sellable.

I measured mine to find out whether she’d grown.

The number goes on the doorframe.

Nobody writes it in a notebook.

Nobody adds it up.

It does not mean my daughter is good, and a different number next year will not mean she is bad.

It means a day happened and she was here for it and somebody made a mark.

There’s a pencil line at thirty-four and a quarter inches in the doorway of a rented duplex in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and it is the least dramatic thing in this entire story, and it is the only part of it I would put in a frame.

End of Part Two.