I am looking at a photograph of someone smoking heroin off a piece of tinfoil. They are referred to in the caption as no one in particular. A locution that rubs me the wrong way. At first I don’t know why. I used to believe that there are only two types of history—myth and memory. But this photograph of a woman smoking heroin off a piece of tinfoil baffles me. She is my mother, with beautiful skin and pink nails. She is my mother and I was never born. She is next to me now and we are in a bathroom. The sink is old and made of porcelain. It is the shade of blue a dead body turns in the immaculate cold. In a sense we still operate by the iron laws of adrenaline. We mix vodka into our coffee and listen for the police who go from door to door.