I wanted to flap this unflappable woman somehow, this young, chic thing that wore no wedding ring, whose desk held no evidence of children. She led us through the double doors of the administration building, as I watched myself put one foot in front of the other on the way to back to the unit. My father was occupied by the role of his life, "frazzled but loving father", in a work produced by everyone but Nicole B. directed by my mother, entitled Making the Unbearable Bearable Using Dark Humor and Forced Geniality.
Although I wanted to seize, fall on the floor, and foam at the mouth while pulling at her, her tidy clothes and her tidy hair and scream, "I'm just like you! You're only three short steps away from being on my side of this! You don't know what it's like!", The most I could muster was a series of whimpers and sniffles as I carefully held myself upright and carried myself further and further away from my babies with each passing moment.
There was a large blue button on the wall that opened the doors to the courtyard, with its small and unfamiliar maze of covered pathways. Any of the three of us could have opened the doors ourselves, but two of us were utterly incapable. And the third had seen this incapacitation myriad times before. I was simply one in thousands she had seen that year, one of a crowd, no different than any other admission she carefully and gently helped through that first round of interrogation. So she pushed the button, the doors opened and I hated her.


Chapter 1
She is born the youngest of four children, the oldest an heir to the family name and businesses and then the three girls. They call her Amy, “beloved”. Her father is a brilliant man, the oldest male of six siblings. He and his brothers establish banks, serve on the city council, elect senators and other statesmen and marry and procreate in the same small town. There is no mention of his two sisters, the bookends. Eventually, they marry and move away. In 1953, my mother’s birth completes his family as his legal practice thrives and his wife silently falls apart. It’s an ordinary story, made less ordinary because it is my story.