Angry. I’m angry that I’m thinking about my mom again. It’s the last thing I want to be thinking about. But here I am.

My mom left us when my brother, Paul, was three, almost four, or maybe he was four. Actually, he must have been four because the week after she left, he started preschool. Whenever I think about that week, I wonder what must have been going on in her head as she packed my lunch, knowing she wasn’t coming back. Did she think about us? Were we the reason she left? Was I not helpful enough, not smart enough, not clean enough? Did I need too much? Did I annoy her? Why was she so unhappy? Was it us? Did she not want to be a mother? Or was it something else or someone else? A scandalous love affair with some shop patron? If so, had I seen this man before? Because the thing is, I never heard my parents fight.

They weren’t in love or anything stupid like that. I didn’t grow up believing in fairy tales or princes or equality. My family is old-school—as in America in like the fifties, except it’s 1999. My father is the head of the household. He controls every aspect of our lives, from the finances to our daily schedules, and no one—not even my mother—ever argues with him. So, we might be American, but we’re certainly not Americanized.

Surprised. I was surprised she left. I am surprised. Not that she wanted to go or thought about it, but that she actually did it, and if I didn’t have a stomach full of resentment, I might have even admired her for it. But I was fourteen, and all I really felt was abandoned. Left to fend for myself and Paul at a time when my classmates were gushing about who might ask them to homecoming. The bitterness, even three years later, is strong. As for Paul, he was too young to really understand anything, so he probably assumes she died.

That day, the day she left, I knew something was wrong when my dad picked me up. My dad never picks me up from school. That he even knew where it was is perplexing. Since kindergarten, not once had he ever attended an academic function. Education was my mom’s domain. She never cared to check my homework or report cards; no, my enrollment was about being free of me for seven hours a day, five days a week.

My suspicions grew when he told me to walk to and from school for the next week. We didn’t live far, and to be honest, that was the greatest thing I’d ever heard. A full two miles to walk untethered to my parents? My preteen self did celebratory cartwheels all the way home. But this guttural, sinking feeling—intuition, I guess—was there also. I knew something wasn’t right.

To this day, I have no idea where Paul stayed during that first week. I just know that eventually, he came home. My dad must have closed up shop to come get me, but I couldn’t be entirely sure because he dropped me off at home alone and went back to work. I hate to say it, but my biggest concern at the time had been that I had no idea how long it would take to walk to school. It didn’t seem far, but having always been a passenger in the car, I couldn’t gauge the distance on foot.

What I did know was that I couldn’t be late.