The cloud cover must have hung thick and low, because I couldn’t see the stars, and the moon was just a silvery glow in the sky. I squeezed my eyes closed, assessing the pain in my head, the hard place where my hip connected with the earth, the bindings on my wrists and ankles. There was a rhythmic sound that echoed off the trees around me. It was a sound I recognized immediately. And for a second I thought I’d lost my mind or that I was stuck in some kind of nightmare loop in my life. The night I helped to carry my mother’s body out to the place where my father buried her, I kept thinking I was dreaming. Several times I was sure of it. Because such things didn’t really happen, and my daydreams and nightmares were often much more vivid than my waking life. And, certainly, even with all I’d suffered, nothing had prepared me for a reality like this. The truth was that I often knew my visions weren’t real. I knew there wasn’t an old woman in my room that told me my mother didn’t love me anymore.
