I didn’t try to lose weight after my breast cancer diagnosis last year. I don’t know what happened. Some witchy magic. An enzyme kicked in, or a genetic switch turned off, and wine suddenly tasted like apple cider vinegar, and one serving of food seemed like enough.

When I flex my chest, my natural right breast doesn’t move at all, but my left, fake one jerks up and out with accentuated diagonal rippling of the skin and tattooed areola, like a bit of physical comedy. Medicine always has a name for conditions—my jerking pec is an “animation deformity” or a “dynamic distortion.” I have not made a video.

“The way that people measure relationships. The more you share of yourself, the more that’s supposed to mean, right? So if I share my deepest, darkest secret with you, that’s supposed to be a marker of some intense emotional connection that we now share, and it’s like a stepping-stone in our relationship.”

This conversation with Carmen was the first time I openly admitted, under the guise of talking about people, you know, society, that this is how I learned to view human—and especially sexual—relationships: You input certain values, and your output is a greater form of intimacy.

The green plastic slide crackles with static electricity. My hand hovers above it, and the air around the slide pushes against my flesh. The translucent hairs on the back of my hand stand at attention. The plastic, which I’m sure has always been smooth, has been worn to a slick slope from many years of vigorous playground use, and as I push my fingers through the force field to touch it, the slide fights back with a biting electric shock.

I do not want to go down this slide, but I can’t let you see that. It suddenly feels as though teaching you to go down the slide on your own is the most important lesson I will ever impart—more important than teaching you to brush your teeth fortwo minutes, more important than potty training, more important than not letting you eat candy for dinner. Those things are all about getting by. You are three, and I am thirty-three, and at this moment, right now, I’m teaching you how to live.

Last summer, six months and counting, my husband captured a jumping spider from the back porch, where we spent most evenings gazing out at the weeds, and beyond. A gift for our daughter, the animal-lover.

Six years old and not quite feral, yet, from too many days at home. She named her spider Lola. My husband built Lola a Plexiglas terrarium using hot glue and a drill for air holes. Inside, he placed delicate bamboo skewers for Lola to climb, her world suddenly reduced. Simplified.

I’m onstage with my bass guitar, wearing musician’s overalls (a tuxedo), shoehorned between Dean the keyboardist and Jim the drummer.

Our twelve-piece band is crowded onto a riser along one edge of a cavernous tent in Chicago’s Grant Park. The gig is a black-tie fundraiser for who-knows-what charity. The venue is packed with politicos, corporate bigwigs, and their wives (plus a sprinkling of husbands), all decked out in their finest formalwear. The tuxes and dresses are black. The faces, including mine, are mostly white.

Mamacita Ella’s thick shoulders sagged. She wiped a river of sweat from her forehead with the back of a thick hand.

She sighed, heavy and loud, then pushed the kitchen door open with wide, soft hips. Mild breezes from the Macal River floated across the dining room table, dancing the edges of the blue, checkered tablecloth. Stew chicken, rice, beans, and corn tortillas would be ready in an hour for the midday meal.

Dad wants to show me a trick using a crisp sheet of paper that I try not to crease with my hands. His hulking figure crouches beside me.

Today, my father’s palms brush my cheeks when he removes my thick, tortoiseshell eyeglasses. The way he moves is gentle, like the time when he placed Mom’s much-loved dish made of milk glass on a shelf out of my reach. I squint, the large window transforming into a bright, sky-blue blur. The sunlight warms the tip of my nose, which tickles because of Dad’s aftershave.