When you were born I was terrified. With the two boys I felt I was in a position I could manage—they seemed like foreign objects—but then you came out, a girl. I was afraid to have a girl because what if I couldn’t understand you? I’d never found a way to fit into the world, not really, and what if I didn’t know how to be a mother to you? I was afraid, and that’s the whole thing. I was afraid all the time of losing something or ruining something, and then I did.
