When I was four, I told everyone that my mother was a stuffed rabbit, but only because my father told me this himself. He is a toymaker, and the night after my mother died, he gave it to me and said this was her now. This was where she had gone. I accepted this because adults knew everything. When I grew up, I would be skilled at everything, automatically privy to the universe’s secrets, the most capable carpenter, artist, astronomer, garbage woman. Creating the toy himself was more convincing than bringing one home from the dollar store, tag still hanging hemorrhoidal from it. He chose buttons the same hazel as her eyes, dotted white paint on them. The same gray fur as the rabbits in our backyard that my mother watched out the breakfast window, baby-talking to them, coffee in hand. The ears antennaed straight up, alert, straining ambitiously for…