My earliest memory is of a girl smaller than I was dying in my mother’s arms. Or at least this must’ve been my earliest memory, because my mother’s arms, which held the dying girl — the daughter of her friend — and my mother’s hands, which prepared the little girl for burial, always brought me the comfort and the maternal smell I associated with death.
I remember lying awake at night with a corner of stars visible outside the window, thinking that the universe that rocked us to sleep was not so different from my mother who cradled little dead Mary in her arms.