A dark red drop on the floor caught my eye; at first I thought it was a button that had come loose from Papa’s coat. But I could see my reflection in it, warped and tiny, a minnow trapped in a dirty gather of rainwater. I felt as if my whole childhood was caught in that drop: my long, matted hair like dust gathering on a bald china doll, my father’s hand around my wrist, my sisters’ beautiful faces, my mother’s shed tail feathers and the seed that her stories had planted in my belly, invisible to everyone but me.
