She sits naked on the toilet and groans into her hands. The room is cold. The furnace must have cut out during the night or the wood stove needed stoking. Her dress and stockings are laid out on the bed. She put them there last night, before opening the bottle and dipping into the heat that slid down her throat so easily. She stands, turns, and throws up into the bowl. Not much there.“God,” she says, wiping her mouth with a towel. On all fours now she studies the green growth at the base of the toilet. “Clean it,” she says. She bends her neck and confronts her breasts which hang and swing. She can see her crotch way down there, an intricate forest at the end of a passage. Lying down on the throw rug she pulls a bath towel on top of herself. She squeezes herself tightly. A memory comes to her of when she was young and sick and her mother served her lunch in bed, soup and crackers and ginger ale, but she threw it up. She had been afraid that she would choke on her own vomit. Her mother held her head and washed her face.
