I woke up in bed. That sounds like nothing. It is not nothing. I have slept in bed my entire life, technically a narrow one in my aunt’s house with a spring that pressed into my hip if I turned wrong and a blanket that was never quite enough in winter.
But I had never woken up in a bed that felt like it had been made with someone’s comfort in mind. A mattress that held me instead of resisting me. Pillows that smelled of clean linen rather than the particular staleness of things that are washed only when necessary.
I lay still for a long moment and let myself feel the absence of dread.
Every morning at my aunt’s house I had woken up knowing what the day would cost me before it started. The particular weight of a life lived in obligation to people who resented the obligation. Here there
