My Mother Screamed That I Had an Iceberg Where My Soul Should Be and Slammed the Door Hard Enough to Rattle the Photos — I Stood There Waiting for the Guilt That Always Came, and for the First Time in Thirty-Two Years, It Never Did

She was gone, grown into a woman who had spent decades paying rent on her own captivity.

But I could stand up for the child in my arms.

And it turned out that I could do for Iris, without a second’s hesitation, the thing I had never once been able to do for myself.

Chapter 5 — A Drop in Temperature

What happened in me then was not the explosion you might expect.

It was the opposite of an explosion.

It was a sudden, total drop in temperature.