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LINDSAY S. ZRULL

Wait. What?
My hands grip the cool white basin of the sink, grounding me
where I stand, while my mind soars backward. Back to the last time
I saw my birth mother.
I was seven. We lived in a small, dingy apartment that smelled
of cat urine from years of tenants before us. We’d only lived there
for a month when my mother started acting strange. New rules
emerged without explanation. (1) No leaving the house. (2) No
turning on the lights. (3) Keep the blinds closed. (4) Never speak
louder than a whisper.
At first, the new rules were a game. Bumping around in the
dark was a challenge I was happy to accept as a seven-year-old. But
as time went on, I saw warning signs I’d witnessed in my mother
many times before. These always led toward horrific events, like

morbid bread crumbs of premonition. My mother began staying up
all night, peering through the window blinds in the darkness. She
paced in the living room for hours on end. She held conversations
with herself, which were difficult to follow. She grew angry when
floorboards creaked beneath my feet. At some point I realized we
were in hiding. From who or what, I never knew.
I was vaguely aware that other kids my age were going to
school. I watched through the blinds as they left the apartment
building in the mornings and played outside in the late afternoons.
The silence—the invisibility—began to eat me up inside. Have
you ever wondered if you are real? I was a ghost, trapped between
four cigarette smoke–painted walls.
One early evening, my mother fell asleep for the first time
in days. I dared to turn on a lamp, keeping one trembling hand

braced on the light switch while I watched my mother where she
slept on the couch.

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