The day my mother went to the mental institution, we tried to make it as festive a sendoff as possible. We hoped the piñata, pots of carnations, cake, party-blowers, and balloons would help her stop feeling sad about the mess she’d made.

My heart was in shambles. I loved and hated the woman. One thing I knew—none of us could bear to look into her face after what had happened to us. She was playing in the bouncy-house we’d set up for her, hidden behind the plastic screening. Clowns giddily danced around her. When the party ended, the clowns stripped off their colorful getup, revealing the white coats of disguised psych attendants. As they hauled my mother out of the bouncy house and took her to the waiting black van, she leered over her shoulder in farewell and said in a sinister whisper, “May it happen to you.”