“Go on, my sweet girl,” I said softly, to her and to myself.

“Make all the noise you want.”

Because that was the whole of it, in the end — that was what the fight had been about, though it took me three years to be able to say it this simply.

It began with a woman ordering me to make a crying baby be quiet or get out.

And underneath that order was the belief that ran through everything Brenda ever did: that some people exist to be small, and quiet, and convenient to the people who hold the deed, and that a woman and a baby who take up space and make noise and have needs are a problem to be managed.

For two years I had lived under that belief until I had very nearly come to share it, until I had made myself smaller and smaller and quieter and quieter trying to earn a peace that was never on offer.