Chapter 3: The Economy of Flesh

That night, Thursday, June 11th, 1992, the house did not settle into silence. It absorbed sound, like a sponge soaking up blood. The finality of the last taped box, the last strip of fabric sliced and bagged, did not bring peace. It left a vacuum, a hollowed-out atmosphere charged with a raw, humming shame. The air itself felt thin, starved of comfort, thick with the memory of scissors and the scent of tears and flinty determination.

Lying in the dark, I couldn’t breathe. Every time I closed my eyes, the geometry reassembled itself behind my eyelids: the stark angles of the kitchen table, the harsh line of my mother’s arm pointing, the vulnerable curves of my sisters’ exposed backs as they bent to deposit their clothing into cardboard coffins. My own role was a fixed, burning point in that constellation of disgrace, the clothed witness, the kneeling custodian, the archivist of their unraveling.

Sleep was impossible. It wasn’t just the memory; it was the ongoing soundtrack. Through the thin walls of our Cedar Springs house, the night was alive with the aftermath. From Ashley and Megan’s room came a low, constant weeping, a two-part harmony of despair muffled by pillows. But it was from Claire’s room, directly across the hall, that the most terrifying sounds emerged. Not crying, but the violent, physical language of fury and fragmentation: a stifled shout, the thump of a fist against a wall, the sharp crack of something small and breakable, a perfume bottle, perhaps meeting its end. Then, the heavy, rhythmic creak of bedsprings as she paced, a caged animal wearing nothing but her own skin.

I hated them. The thought rose in me, cold and clear as the moonlight slicing through my blinds. I hated my parents. This wasn’t discipline; it was a surgical dismantling. A beautiful, sentimental, stupid car had been wrecked. And in return, they were wrecking my sisters. They had mapped a punishment of such exquisite, relentless cruelty that it felt less like justice and more like a dark experiment. What was the dependent variable? How much shame could a person hold before they shattered? I was a control subject, clothed and condemned to watch.

The glowing red numbers on my nightstand clock bled from 9:00 to 9:47. Each minute was an agony of forced recollection. My mind, a traitor, replayed the day’s horrors in high-definition slow motion, fixating on the most piercing details.

The final act in the kitchen, after the boxes were sealed and hauled away, had been the destruction of the remainder, the laundry. A basket of clean, folded clothes sat innocently by the washing machine, a landmine of normalcy. Dad had pointed to it.

“That,” he said. “That’s the last of it. Claire, you’ll cut it. Sam, you’ll assist. The rest of you will watch. Consider it ... closure.”

Assist. The word was a brand. It meant holding the fabric taut for her. It meant being the stable anchor against which her devastation would be seen.