“Why does she do this?” Sophie whispered to me one Saturday morning when our mother was on the rampage again, screaming and cursing and tossing all my little sister’s toys into a Hefty garbage bag just because she’d forgotten to pick them up the night before. “I don’t know,” I said, and pulled Sophie closer, as if that would be enough. As if I could protect her from the world. But then there were days when I didn’t need to protect my little sister. You could blink your eyes, and our mother would be almost normal again, a tight smile on her face, pretending like none of it ever happened, like
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