She’d accidentally knock things into my left hand at dinner so my parents would see me catch them wrong. She told me once when we were alone that she wished I’d never been born because then she wouldn’t have to share a room with someone cursed. That was the word they used. Cursed. Like left-handedness was a disease I’d caught or a punishment from God for something I did in a past life.

My mother said it came from her grandmother who was also left-handed and who died young and alone. It’s a sign, she’d tell me, shaking her head like I was already doomed. It’s a sign that something’s wrong with your soul. So when my father looked at me across that kitchen table on the night I turned 16 and saw me writing with my left hand, saw that all their years of training and punishment and that horrible night by the stove hadn’t fixed me.

Something in his face just shut down. You’re still doing it. He said, “I didn’t say anything. I just sat there, pencil frozen midquas, watching his face go from tight to slack to something I’d never seen before. It was like he was looking at a stranger, like he’d finally given up on the idea that I was ever going to be the daughter he wanted.

“David,” my mother said from the stove, her voice thin and warning. “But my father was already standing up, already folding his newspaper and setting it on the table with this terrifying calm, like he was about to do something he’d been thinking about for a very long time.” “Get a bag,” he said to my mother.

“One bag? She can take her clothes.” I remember the way my pencil fell out of my hand. I remember the way it rolled across my geometry homework and dropped off the edge of the table. I remember thinking this can’t be happening even as my mother walked past me toward the hallway closet. Even as Vanessa’s face split into this huge grin like Christmas had come early.