It's all her fault, and she knows it. Cleo burns with the guilt, always feeling her face and skin and hair must be bursting into flames with this shame. Because Ma' had a baby and it died, but more than a baby, Ma' had an answer and a cure and a new hope, and it all died too, it died with the little baby boy.

And there was blood and shouting and Cleo was in the way, standing in the way not moving or breathing, because it hit her then that she'd made it all happen. She closed her eyes and wished for her mother to only want her and only need her and to never have another child to destroy; if I can't be loved by her, she thought, can I not be the only one destroyed by her? It's a dismal title but at least it means something. Now all that wishing has plucked the baby out of life. He never even got to cry and Cleo would give anything now to hear his midnight screams ringing through the house.

And that house becomes a prison, its hell, its a hole that her mother keeps digging deeper and deeper, scratching into the earth with her bleeding fingers and her endless tears drowning them all. Cleo thinks, I am drowning in you.

The solution is to pick up all the misery and make herself the root cause, the reason, the catalyst - all of it now, is dumped on her head. Her father, the baby, her mother, the sadness and anger and constant confusion. But it's ok, it suits her. Death becomes her.