I am yours. If you feed me garbage, I will sing a song of garbage. This is a hymn. - Margaret Atwood

It must be said at the outset that the field of mental illness has always been debatable ground. Who is sane, who isn't, and who is qualified to judge? Standards have fluctuated wildly, and abuses have been numerous. In the last century, in the United States, a wife could be committed to an asylum on the say-so of her husband and two easily-paid-off doctors alone, and there are cases on record of wives who were "put away" for holding theological opinions that differed from those of the husband, or for refusing to have as much sex as he would like.

Not a hope. I know where I am, and who, and what day it is. These are the tests, and I am sane. Sanity is a valuable possession; I hoard it the way people once hoarded money. I save it, so I will have enough, when the time comes.

This has been her problem all her life: picturing other people's responses. She's too good at it. She can picture the response of anyone — other people's reactions, their emotions, their criticisms, their demands — but somehow they don't reciprocate. Maybe they can't. Maybe they lack the gift, if it is one.