Hollow Bones

The narrative shifts to Eloise’s perspective. In June 2001, she’s in late pregnancy and lives in Washington Heights with her husband, Adam. She’s an artist working on a large mosaic of a mother and baby phoenix that she titles Hollow Bones. A news report about Andrea Yates, a woman who drowned her five children, deeply unsettles Eloise. After giving birth to her daughter, Molly, Eloise begins to have a mental-health crisis. She experiences extreme paranoia, hallucinations, and sleep deprivation, and she hears a voice who she believes is Satan commanding her to harm her baby. In a dissociative episode at the mosaic table, she cuts her palm with an X-Acto knife. Adam becomes concerned and insists that she seek help. A psychiatrist, Dr. Kumon, whose office is in the World Trade Center, prescribes Zoloft. The prescription triggers a severe adverse reaction, leading Eloise to be briefly hospitalized.

Flashbacks reveal Eloise’s traumatic past in an oppressive Evangelical family. Her abusive father, Reverend Ezekiel Owens, publicly beat her with a belt during a church service as a lesson against sin after he discovered that she had sketched a shirtless boy.