Chapter 1 - The LadyI sat down on the floor of that office in front of her, because the chair was too far away and because I needed to be lower than she was.
My Daughter Died Two Years Ago — Last Week the School Called to Say She Was in the Principal's Office
"Junie," I said. "My name is Elowen."
"Are you the lady?"
The lady. Not my mom, not Elsie's mom. The lady. Like a title she'd been given by someone else, a role assigned to her the way you're handed a script before you go on stage.
"I don't know what you've been told about me," I said. "But I'm not sad at you. I didn't know you existed until eleven minutes ago, and none of this is anything you did."
"He said you'd be angry."
"I am extremely angry," I told her. "Not at you. Do you understand the difference?"
She said she did. She's eleven. I don't think she understood it that day, not really, but she nodded the way children nod when they need an adult to stop looking so upset.
I asked her one more question before the principal, a kind, visibly rattled man named Mr. Okonkwo, gently suggested we might want to continue somewhere more private.
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"Where have you been sleeping?"
She gave me an address four streets from my house.
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