The Smoke Was In My Daughter Before She Knew The Word For Fire

My daughter was born with a pale, shiny patch of skin that runs from the top of her right shoulder down toward her collarbone. The midwife called it a birthmark and told me not to worry, that plenty of little ones come with something. I believed her. It looked like nothing, like a small map of a country that did not exist.

She began calling it her burn before she could really talk. She would touch it in the bath and say the word slow and careful, like it belonged to her the way her name did. I never taught her that. We do not use that word much in our house. I am careful with the stove. I have always been careful.

When she was three she told me she used to have a different mother. She said it the way you would mention the weather. She said her other mother's name was Ruth and that Ruth had thin hands and smelled like bread. I laughed the first time because I did not know what else to do with it. But she kept coming back to Ruth, night after night, adding small pieces.

She said there was smoke in the hallway. She said the door was hot and you were not supposed to touch a hot door but she touched it anyway because she wanted her mother. She said this with her hand pressed flat against the pale patch on her shoulder, as if the two things lived in the same place inside her.

I asked her, as gently as I could, what happened after the smoke. She looked at me with those calm eyes she gets and said, I went to sleep and then I woke up small again and you were here. Then she asked for more juice. That was all. For her it was already finished, a closed drawer.