There is a dark symmetry in that which I have never stopped appreciating.

My family made me quiet.

They spent twenty-two years training me in the discipline of swallowing things — of receiving a cruelty and showing nothing, of taking a blow and keeping my face smooth, of holding an enormous feeling perfectly still behind a mild expression so that no one would know where to aim the next one.

They did it to control me, to make me convenient, to keep me from ever making the fuss that might disturb the family’s careful performance of itself.

And they succeeded completely.

By the time I was grown, I could hold anything behind my face.