Mama takes both of her hands and moves them up, toward my face, places them on both cheeks, then slides down to my jaw. Mama hooks her fingers in my mouth and spreads my jaw open like a door with hinges, until I make an oval with my lips, keeping her hands on my cheeks and telling me to scream. The screech comes out in bursts, spasms of sound morphing their way from an eruption of rage to an infant’s cries, moans and whines and all the in-betweens of woman and child.
