The Woman in My Dress

She said no when he sulked and she said no when he shouted and she said no, once, when he cried, which was the worst one.

She could never fully explain to him why.

The best she ever managed was: “It’s the only thing in my life that nobody can take away from me.” Which he had heard as an insult, and which had been, she understood much later, an entirely accurate description of her childhood.

By the sixth year the subject had gone underground.

He stopped bringing it up.

She thought she had won.