I start toward the kitchen, and as soon as the door cracks open, the smell hits me. I gag and step back. It smells like vomit and shit and rotting meat. There had been a heatwave happening in Cali for weeks, and the temperature had gone over a hundred degrees every day that week. We didn't have air conditioning or even a fan. I'd learned to just sweat it out. It helped that I was skin and bone. I know now that the heat had accelerated my mother’s decomposition.
