Swallow the Ocean by Laura Flynn

along at an even pace. Weekends with my father, vacations to the beach. Hot days in September, cooler days of fall. Third grade: Mrs. Pirelli; fourth grade: Mr. Stover; fifth grade: Mrs. Collins. Field trips to the Mint, ferry rides to Angel Island. Cursive, fractions, kickball, dodgeball, being chased by the boys at recess. Lisa Adelson and Laurie Mori, and Fiona, whose last name I cannot recall, whom we called fleabag and kept at the margin of our circle because she was a Jehovah’s Witness and couldn’t say the Pledge of Allegiance or go to birthday parties. Seagulls pick at our lunch leavings on the pavement of the schoolyard. And on rainy days we cram three to a seat, wet plastic slicker against wet plastic slicker, into the school bus. I watch the lightning through rain-battered windows, then splash through puddles arm-in-arm with Lisa, my best friend, whose house in the long afternoons after school will become a refuge.
    But inside our house, time refused to flow in a normal way, as if the density of my mother’s illness pulled at its very fabric.
    What grew, the progression I hold onto even now, was my own awareness of her illness. That first summer after my father left, it was just presentiment, an unformed sense of dread. I still saw the world through the glass of her perception. The distortions in the lens troubled me, but I had no language for what was wrong.
    Stuck inside the house with my mother, who was intent on unwriting our lives, erasing the past, and cutting all our ties, my sisters and I grasped for a narrative that would hold. We spent our days playing dolls, telling each other stories of loss, abandonment, and escape over and over again. Every game began like this: “We’re orphans,” I’d say, or Sara would say. Then we’d dispense with parents by way of illness, train wreck, or civil war.
    Only Amy didn’t want to be an orphan. But then she was lucky to be playing with us at all. Up until then, Sara and I had only let her watch while we primped our dolls for fancy dress balls, then swirled them with imaginary partners on the parquet floor in the dining room. Now that we had let her in, the game had changed.
    The three of us were gathered in the room Amy and I shared, all still in our nightgowns—there were more than a few days that summer when we did not get dressed. We rarely left the house. My mother did not leave at all. Our Little Women dolls—sent to us by my grandma Sadie for Christmas—were spread on the floor in front of us, their long dresses fanning over their legs. These dolls, with their Victorian-era clothing, petticoats, aprons, stockings, and long hair that could be brushed and styled, had displaced all the rag dolls and stuffed animals that made up our menagerie before. I’d abandoned Big Baby for good, and an era in which all our games took place in “olden days” had begun.
    Meg was Sara’s doll, Amy was Amy’s, and Jo was mine.
    Beth—who was technically my mother’s—was a hot potato. Doomed, in her pale pink dress.
    “You can be Beth if you want,” I said to Amy.
    “I don’t wanna be Beth,” Amy answered. “You guys are gonna make her die.”
    “No,” I said, glancing at Sara. “We won’t.” She could go blind, I thought. She could be crippled.
    Amy looked to Sara.
    “We promise,” Sara said.
    The six years between them gave Sara room to mother Amy. She was right on my heels; I didn’t cut her any slack.
    Amy and I were wearing pink and white nylon shifts, faded from much washing. Matching, because my mother always bought two of something she liked, which was fine in the beginning when the clothes were new and I wore the small dress and Sara the bigger one. By the time the larger dress was tight on me, and my mother still insisted that Amy and I wear them, the whole matching business lost its charm.
    Sara’s nightgown barely covered her knees when she stood up. The three of us had always been evenly spaced in height: Sara was just able to rest her