My mother looked up.
For one second, I believed something old and buried might wake in her.
Some instinct older than favoritism.
Some memory of me as a toddler with fever-hot skin.
Some part of her that had once checked my breathing when I slept.
Instead, she glanced at the black screen and then looked back at her phone.
Like Tessa had changed the TV channel.
That was when I understood what had really hurt me all those years.
It was never only that Tessa crossed lines.
It was that my mother kept moving the lines behind her and telling me I had imagined where they used to be.
I did not scream.
I could barely breathe.
Tessa folded her arms.
She looked satisfied.
My mother said, “Tessa, don’t start.”
Not because she had unplugged a heart monitor.
Not because I was injured.
Because she did not want an argument.
