What a revelation, what a relief it had been to realize, at the age of about twelve perhaps, that her mother’s tempers were not actually something you could prevent. That no matter how quietly you walked or how carefully you cleaned up after yourself, or how studiously you tried to avoid attracting her attention, she would always be able to find something to lose her temper about. That did not make it any more pleasant to be in the eye of the storm of course, but what it did mean was that you stopped internalizing any of it.
