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Products may vary by regions subject to availability.

On my seventh birthday, my mother made me a race car cake.

She stayed up the previous night until pale sunlight began to filter through the thin white and blue checkered curtains of our small kitchen window.

I know this because I drank one too many cups of apple juice at dinner and my bladder could

only take so much.

I remember how tired she looked when I peered into the kitchen on my way to the bathroom

and how all I cared about at the time was that she'd chosen the wrong color for the frosting.

I thought pink and purple were too girly.

I don't remember much of my birthday party.

Erica Sandra tipped a chair so far back that she toppled right over and her mother took her home early, scolding her about safety as she struggled with our barely functional front door. George McCullough showed us how he could snort milk through his nose.

I threw a tension with the girly colours of my cake. My stepfather demanded that

everyone leave early, red in the face, barely holding composure.

I woke up in the hospital several hours later, confused, ears ringing, dark bruises on my neck, near one eye, and obscuring both sides of my head.

I couldn't hear the doctor's words as he smiled warmly and welcoming back into consciousness. I couldn't hear my mother's cries, couldn't even

hear my own screams. My stepfather moved out several days later.

My story begins 14 years after that birthday party.

It wasn't too common for head trauma to result in deafness, but I had never been all that lucky.

...