These are my own answers, from my own copy, to the questions in the book. One a week. They name people by their part rather than their name, they put a year or an occasion on things, and they are not tidy. That is all the technique there is.
If a question here is heavy for you, there is someone to talk to.
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Lies We Were Fed
What did you believe as a child that turned out not to be true? Content note: suicide.
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Riding the Pity Train
The pattern I repeated in both marriages: a woman on the bed, me on the floor, and the one word two wives used for it.
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Nameless and the Stetson
The drawer, the bottle, the photographs, the thing on the high shelf: what we were not allowed to touch in my grandmother’s house, and the chair that went back to South Padre Island.
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I Wanted All of Them
What did you want to be, before anyone told you what was realistic? Mine was a list of thirty-two.
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The Door with the Holes
The room I went to when I wanted to be left alone, what I could hear from my bed at night, and the part of the house I avoided. Content note: a parent’s violence and threats, neglect.
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The Fear That Never Stopped
What is your earliest memory of feeling afraid, how old were you, and who else was there? Mine is a mother I had invented, and a condo on South Padre Island. Content note: neglect, a parent’s drinking.
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Three Kittens
Did you ever hurt an animal? I did. I was trying to save them. Three newborn kittens on the coast of Cebu, and something white in their fur that I decided could wait until morning. Content note: animal death.
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She Said It About Me
What is the cruelest thing that one of your parents ever said to you? Mine was never said to me. I was nine when my mother came home from France, and I did not recognize her.
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Monsters on the Outside and Inside
What is something you experienced as a child that you have never told anyone?
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Who You Would Call
Who would you call at three in the morning?