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year-olds who came by. The lady gave me a
sticker with a puppy on it.

When I was an infant, around two months
old, my mom and her friends decided to get
high on magic mushrooms. She set aside milk
for me in the fridge, which my eight-year-old
half-sister accidentally knocked over. I
became hungry, as infants are wont to do, so
my mother breastfed me while on the
hallucinogens. She said my eyes glazed over
and I looked all around the room, smiling
vacantly. She worried she had given me brain
damage. Even though she didn’t, whenever I
tell my friends this anecdote, they say, “That
explains a lot.”

During my summer visits, my mom would
sometimes take me to the Shawnee County
Public Pool—it was the pool of her sister
Kenda and my cousins, since they lived in the
wealthier parts of the suburban area
surrounding Kansas City, Kansas. The pool
had two slides, one with inner tubes and one
without. It had three diving boards of different
heights, a lazy river ride, and a kiddie pool
section. My mother wouldn’t often get in the
water with me, but when she did, I was
overjoyed. The water felt so cool it nearly
canceled out the blazing Kansan sun, and the
joined laughter of me and my mother made
me feel like nothing was ever wrong.

One time, we went to the pool with Aunt
Kenda and my cousins, Lily and Emma. After
swimming and playing with the girls, five and

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