In a photo from several years later, the last family vacation we would ever take, my mother is standing on the beach in Hawaii. Bikini-clad, burnt red like she’d been dipped in cherry Kool-Aid, bags of white pus forming on her sternum, bones for days. Thin, brittle hair—it had been falling out for a while now. Hollow eyes and cheeks. She is somewhere between rotting and a fossil. Maybe she hoped that the smaller she got, the easier it would be to disappear. After consulting a doctor and nutritionist, and probably not at all on account of my singing or tormenting, my mother finally did admit—to
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Things are taking a turn here.
