Part One

I had grown up on the other side of Eight Mile Road. A vast distant world of clay faces with upside-down smiles every time they saw this city on the news, my mother one of them. She was a different kind of woman. She grew up on the edge of the city: Warrendale, a neighborhood where people like me didn’t really exist at that time, not yet and when we did, we were ignored. In fact, that’s what my grandmother said to her when she told her about me.

It was a vicious cycle that my mother had started when she found out that she was pregnant by a man that I never met. But my mother thought she was doing me a favor by not telling me about how the other half lives, my other half. She said that I didn’t need to know about them. They didn’t exist. The ones walking through, driving through, passing through were just visitors. Even their homes were just temporary; Grandma said that we couldn’t exist that way. But she was wrong.

Growing up, the voice inside me said: “Why don’t I look like you?”

Momma’s reply, a sad little voice said, “The better to see your pretty eyes, my dear.”

That was my first important memory of my life with Momma. I remember when she read a letter. It was from across Eight Mile Road. The name I could not pronounce. It was long, at least ten letters. She had been approved for “special housing.” It all started because of what happened on this one particular night. She came home that night to a darkened house and panicked when her ride dropped her off in front of Grandma’s home. She thought that the house was

empty until she saw a pair of green eyes looking beneath a white plastic shade

with just enough pity to know that, I was hiding. Momma came upstairs and took me in her arms.

“Where is everyone?” she asked but I had no answer.

One night, Momma came home to find Grandma gone and me alone. When she found me in the dark, and Grandma had left me to fend for myself—Momma blamed herself. I was playing a game with them though. I was hiding in the closet and I refused to say anything, not a word until Grandma came looking for me. But she never came. She called my name once from the stairs, called my name twice and asked where Momma kept her secret stash of money. I said nothing back. I wasn’t going to help Grandma out. She called my name a third time and then I heard the door slam. I knew her legs wouldn’t have made it up the stairs without help. I could have gone to her, maybe I should have but I knew that Grandma was sick. She had been that way since before I was born, before Momma was born. I was fine by myself. I just went into Grandma’s room to play dress-up.