It is a story difficult to put into words, this. I never tell it, in fact, or never have before. I told no one at the time, not my friends, not my family: there seemed no way to translate what had happened into grammar and syntax.

I’d rather write about my friendship with Asian women first. My mother would take over, breaching the walls of these essays, until it is only her. I have some scores to settle first—with this country, with how we have been scripted. I will only say that my mother was broken then, though I don’t know how. When illness is unnamed, the blame for it is

She had become one of New York’s disturbed souls, stuck on a single thought, muttering, foul, looking inward, terrible things having happened that made it best for others to stay away. If you’re treated like a cockroach, why would you not become one? If nobody knows you, won’t you become a ghost?