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. 

My eyes peeked out into their bedroom through a little hole I made in the wall. Some days I would eat ketchup sandwiches and hid in her closet. Grandma had food but she didn’t always share it. When there was not ketchup and bread to eat, I dug my fingernails into the wall and carved out the word ‘die.’ On the outside of the house, it looked like we were doing all right but we barely belonged in that neighborhood. On days when we couldn’t even afford ketchup, I just ate

paper. I did so because I was hungry, I was always hungry, and I wanted to peek at Grandma doing nasty things with that man from Hamtramck.

I hid behind that door, any door that hid me from public view. Only went near the window at nighttime when no one could see me. Momma left me alone a lot then. Another time, I saw a dirty glove around that man’s hand and he was shaking it violently against himself with his fist attached to his leg. A black-and-white picture in his hand was of a woman and a man naked, the picture was facing me and I could see their body parts. A part of me felt like crying and the other part of me felt like giggling. I remember throwing up a little spit into his beat-up leather shoes.