Lightning strobes behind her eyelids. Behind the locked bathroom door, she sits on the toilet lid and cries silently into her hands. She screws everything up. Her marriage. Relationship with the family. Even her connection with her kids. They play in the bedroom next door; she hears low murmurs of their conversation muffled through the wall. Before hiding in the bathroom, she glanced in on them. They scowled and refused to answer her questions. Were they ready to talk about it? Were they getting hungry for dinner? Irritated silence. Disdain distorting their faces.

Scars, pale and raised, tingle beneath bracelets she wraps around and around her left wrist, crisscrossed strips of leather burying past failings. She ignores the itch, glances up into the mirror. A sludge of eyeliner and mascara hollows her eyes. God, she’s ugly when she cries.

One of the boys cackles laughter from the next room which pours angry rain inside her head.

She shudders. Probably time to start the drugs again. 

Thoughts scatter toward her sisters, beaming snapshots, small palms clasping long, manicured fingers, model mothers huddled low, close to whispered flickers of light and laughter, nuzzled breaths, outstretched arms, sun-sprayed skies outshining the grey. She sinks.

A gentle knock. Her name. She clears her throat, hopes her voice passes for smooth through blocked nasal passages as she utters a “give me a minute” and unwinds a fistful of toilet paper. She mops snot and mascara from her face, flushes the toilet to mask blowing her congested nose. He calls again through the door, so she repeats “a minute!”

He waits, because he’s patient, because he’s considerate and more perceptive than she’s used to, kinder than she deserves. His silence patters steadily against a darkened pane. Handfuls of water splash across her cheeks. Because she wants to buy time and prolong the feeble charade, she lathers quick pumps of facewash against her skin, hoping to veil pink, swollen features. She unlocks the door before skirting back to the sink where she scrubs foam into frantic suds, just a woman shedding the day’s filth from her face. 

A shadow in her periphery, her boyfriend Ray waits at the threshold. Beyond the opened door, her boys’ voices expand, amplify over her sloshing diversion beneath the faucet. They pretend to argue, irate drivers following a catastrophic collision of toy cars by the sound of it.

“I’m okay,” she declares into the basin.

Ray holds a towel for her, asks the boys to head downstairs to wash up for dinner. Under water, she faintly hears footsteps enter the hall and descend steps. Cumulus clouds, tranquil and obedient, sail across calm sky. His rapport with her children stuns her, plunges her deeper into a shame that wells at her core. They prefer him to her, just as they prefer their father to her, beg to stay one more night at his house, to stay just a few more hours before she picks them up, they’re in the middle of something, having so much fun, can’t they stay just a little longer?

Conversation hums around her. Ray portions salad onto the boys’ plates, onto her plate. She sips water and feels the familiar prickle beneath her bracelets. She doesn’t taste the food on her tongue.

During their last exchange, her sisters accused her of being selfish, prioritizing her mental health over the happiness of her kids, oblivious or negligent of the boys’ needs, sacrificing a solid marriage and family for her own self-interest. That had been a year ago. Since then, their icy words revisited often, pelting and stinging like hailstones, pin pricks on exposed skin. 

She is selfish. When thunderclouds gather in her head, she can’t see past the storm. Her vision blurs and flares, and the boys are lost in the downpour. They deserve better than this. She fails them every time her patience wears thin, every time her temper swells and she raises her voice, every time her brain is cloud-capped, and she padlocks herself away. She’s selfish to keep thinking she’ll do better for them, to keep saddling them with her sadness and her deep well of shame. She failed them when she stanched the flow of wrist-warmth with a bath towel, when she stashed the utility knife back under the bathroom sink, when she cried to their father for help, and he didn’t answer because he never answered, so she drove herself to stitches and salvation.

For a moment, she thinks about phoning one of her sisters, recalls the closeness they shared as children, wonders if either of them would even take her call. So many months of silence now stretch between them. Still, she could try. Scratch off or stones, it’s all a lottery. She gives up.

Behind the locked bathroom door, she sits on the toilet lid and stares silently into her hands. She doesn’t remember leaving the table or climbing the stairs. She doesn’t remember if Ray or the boys questioned her, can’t remember if she mumbled an “I’m okay” or if she says it now to the empty bathroom. 

She unwinds crisscrossed strips of leather wrapped around and around her left wrist. The utility knife she keeps stashed under the sink glints beneath vanity lights, lies open and cold on the white quartz countertop. She glances up to the mirror, can’t see herself, draws a breath, a careful line, the scent of petrichor. A gust of scorching air whips up from somewhere deep inside, a tempest of shame, and unsteady rain starts to fall.