Madwoman

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, child abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, suicidal ideation, mental illness, substance use, and sexual content.

After Clove’s father fell from the balcony, her mother screamed and sprinted down the 33 stories to his body. Instead of following her, Clove bought, with Christina’s help, a red-eye plane ticket to San Francisco as an unaccompanied minor. When she arrived in San Francisco, she went to an address that Christina had told her about, with only the $500 she’d taken from her mother when she fled and Celine’s documents. Christina had told her to take them and live her life under her daughter’s documentation. Clove asked for Velvet when she arrived. Velvet gave her a bed and helped her disguise herself. Other girls lived at the house, and Velvet specialized in helping them all disappear.

Living at Velvet’s, Clove participated in chores and stole food from dumpsters to survive. Velvet kept food in the house, but Clove didn’t want to take it out of fear of someone beating her, as her father would have done. After six months of living at Velvet’s, Clove received a letter from Christina informing her of Celine’s death from her immune disorder and her impending death by suicide.