Sarah is lying on her back on the hot pavement, her spine stretched along the double yellow lines of the road in front of her house. We are both silent, listening for the sound of cars. The heat hums. Grasshoppers click from stem to stem. In a few days, a tractor will cut and bale hay in the distance, its engine drowning out any oncoming cars, but today it is silent and private, the two of us alone on the road.

Some days, it’s as if my mother never died at all, I simply haven’t seen or spoken to her in three years.

She points the gun in the air and shoots. “I know you’re out there,” she shouts. Her cigarette is propped hard between folded lips, smoke and gunsmoke puffing up over her head, and she pulls the trigger again.

I look around, bewildered. It’s not her sweat I smelled, but the leaves of a sage plant, their oil evaporated on the stirring wind. I bend down to take a bigger gulp of their salty, bitter scent, to clear my mind of the memory, to keep it safe in the past.

Well before I understood why girls were supposed to be beautiful, I yearned for beauty. I would lie on the couch, chewing my fingernails down to the skin, and hope that someday I would grow up to be pretty.