“You don’t let your feelings run around and jump into someone else’s hand.” Mercury made a fist. “You grab on to your own life and push it around where you want it to go.”

Mercury believed she had her life firmly in place beneath her tongue, and she didn’t spit it out here and there, in bits and pieces diffusing its power. She had even taken a new name, changing it from Anna to Mercury after er granddaughter brought home a copy of the periodic table in the eighth grade and explained it to her: “An element is a substance that can’t be broken down into simpler substances.”

“That’s my story,” Mercury told Charlene. running her thick forefinger across the chart. “I’m all of a piece.”

Charlene opened her mouth to object, to explain that her grandmother could never be one of the chemical elements, assigned an atomic number and measured for atomic weight, but Mercury presided over the kitchen like a force of nature. Charlene’s words were snatched from her mind before they ever made it to her vocal chords. She imagined they were pulled into the woman’s energy field, the electric air surrounding Mercury’s body like her own personal atmosphere.”