My mother’s body was indistinguishable from mine—to me, at least. I owned it. I poked at the constellation of freckles on her arm while sitting bored in a church pew; I dragged on her hand, swinging, when she walked down the grocery aisles, my brother the counterweight on her other hand. “Stop hanging on me,” she would say, fretfully, despairingly. We would gape, shocked that she didn’t consider us all a single being, like a grove of aspens is said to be. Then we would resume our tugging.
