My Mother Said I Only Care About Myself Until I Canceled Everything I Was Paying

as a given, as something that simply is. When the noise stops, they don’t think, She’s made a decision. They think, There’s been an error. Something has malfunctioned. It takes a while for an absence to register as a choice.

On the seventh day, Donna stopped me in the break room.

“Did you do something different?” she said, studying me the way people continue reading …