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movement. The plug scraped my backside. And one of my big toes brushed against the hair between her legs.
    She pulled my wrists in opposite directions. “Look at me,” she said again.
    When she managed to part my hands from my face, I clamped my eyelids together. So tightly that I saw colored dots floating around me. I moaned. I tried to get out of the water, but my sister grabbed hold of my knees and pushed me back down. The plug stuck into one of my cheeks again.
    My sister tried to part my eyelids. I managed to resist by squeezing them shut with all my might. They hurt. Then she used both hands to try to wrench open one eye. She used her ten adult fingers to separate a boy’s eyelids.
    “Look at me, look at me, look at me . . .” Her voice grated in her throat.
    A slit of light began to seep in through that eye. Then I could make out some colors and also started to distinguish shapes.
    That was when the bathroom door opened.
    “What—What are you—?” It was my mother shouting.
    My sister’s fingers vanished. The bathroom door slammed closed. Mom approached the bathtub and put her hand over my eyes. I instinctively blinked to relax my eyelids.
    “You’re lucky it wasn’t your father who came into the bathroom,” Mom said, spitting the words through clenched teeth. “Out of the tub. Come on, go.”
    My sister’s legs separated from mine. The water level fell. I felt it go down on my chest. I heard the water dripping from her body as she stood.
    Something touched my chest, at the same height as the water level. When I held out my hand to feel it, a shock of terror sparked at the base of my back. It was my sister’s nose. A floating plastic nose pointing up to the ceiling.
    “And take this with you,” Mom said. There was a dripping noise in the place where the mask was floating. “None of us want to see your face.”
    I heard the strap tighten against my sister’s head. It sounded different on wet hair.
    “Suit yourselves,” she replied before leaving the bathroom.
    Mom stayed with me until I got out of the water. Kneeling on the floor, she wrapped me in the towel. She hugged me with the material, kissing my neck. It tickled.
    “What’s her face like?”
    She dried my eyes with the corners of the towel. They still throbbed from the effort I’d made to keep them shut.
    “Why do you want to know?” she asked.
    I remained silent.
    “You don’t,” my mother said. “You don’t need to know. Your sister has always worn that mask in this house. It’s your father’s decision.”
    “Did she wear it when you lived outside?” I asked.
    “You know she didn’t,” answered Mom. “She wears it because of what happened. The fire.” When she said that, my mother’s ragged gaze clouded over. Her nose whistled. Then she blinked, one eye closing just before the other one did, and returned from wherever it was she’d gone.
    “The fire didn’t affect me,” I said.
    “Of course it didn’t,” she replied while stroking my hair. “Because you were in my tummy. You were a surprise.”
    “What was it like, living outside?” I asked.
    “Why so many questions all of a sudden?” she asked back. “You have everything anyone else has. A home to live in. And a family. The people who live outside don’t have much more than that, you know.”
    I thought about the smell of the breeze that sometimes came in through the window in the hall.
    “Why did Dad lie to me about the door in the kitchen?”
    Mom let go of the towel. She looked at me for a few seconds with her arms crossed.
    “Little boys are always told stories. You don’t think the Cricket Man really exists, do you?”
    “Shh,” I whispered. “He can hear you. I don’t want him to find me.”
    Mom dried my ears.
    “And how is it you remember that night so well? You were no bigger than this,” she said as she drew a small space in the air with two fingers. “That’s how little you were.”
    I shrugged, pushing out my bottom lip. It made