At last we're out in the open. I went for the New Director. Threw everything at him. Plates, glasses, pork chops, everything. No more colors. No more altered foods. No more esprit de l'escalier.

The worker bees instantly hauled me away but now at least the New Director knows I know and there will be no more of this simmering treachery.

Please respond to everything I sent you in August. I still have not heard back. Now that you have the whole story I deserve some comment.

You will make your mother think you don't love her anymore.

Devoted beyond death, Mom December 6,1986

My dearest son,

Too much at once. First news of your fight and subsequent expulsion (The New Director feigned concern. I had no idea your teachers had failed you so badly), next news of your intentions to leave Ohio (where will I write you?) and lastly your insistence that you have yet to receive any lengthy letters regarding my situation here. I am flabbergasted and upset.

Perhaps the New Director is too agile for your mother. Perhaps she is just too weak to outwit him.

I understand you will be out of touch but do not be away too long lest they do me in while you're gone. I must be brave but I would be too much the liar were I to say I don't fear to the bone your absence.

Busca me, cuida me, requerda me.

Love, love, undying,

April 25,1987

Dearest gifted Johnny,

I did not think your silence would ever end and yet somehow it did and now I am in blissful possession of a new address and news of your placement in another boarding school.

Perhaps you will have time soon to return to your mother whom by abandoning you have left unprotected from the deviltry committed too many times by too many miscreants too faceless to remember.

There is no escape for me now. I know the New Director knows I know this. In turn he knows I know he knows. These pages are my only flight. At least they escape.

My years steepen, my secrets crack and crumble. Not even my only family, my only boy, comes to see me.

When they murder me how will you feel? P.

April 27,1987

Dear, dear Johnny,

Pay attention: the next letter I will encode as follows: use the first letter of each word to build subsequent words and phrases: your exquisite intuition will help you sort out the spaces: I've sent this via a night nurse: our secret will be safe

Tenderly,