But because it was the obscene confirmation of something I had been sensing for years without daring to name it completely: that woman not only hated me, she fantasized about erasing me.
I staggered, dazed, and before I could regain my balance I felt other hands on my arms.
For a second I thought someone was helping me.
No.
Era Trevor.
My husband didn’t grab his mother.
He didn’t move her away.
He did not protect me from our children’s coffin.
He grabbed me, his face contorted, and shouted in my ear to get out of there, that I was making a scene, that I couldn’t keep making everything more unbearable.
More unbearable.
As if I had been the aggressor.
As if my head hadn’t just hit the wood where one of my babies lay.
As if the real excess in that room had been my scream, not his mother’s hand smashing me against the mourning clothes.
I will never forget that betrayal.
It wasn’t a simple mistake.
He was not a man paralyzed by shock.
