When I was eight years old, I was diagnosed with epilepsy. The Dallas school district saw I was brown, so they stuck me in ESL classes with the other brown children.
The actual problem was that I was having over a hundred minor seizures per day . . .
Gumbo and I tossed a Frisbee, waiting for our mamas to call us in for dinner, while Danny, another one of my brothers’ friends, screamed by from one end of the block to the other, passing within a few feet of us on his gigantic chopper . . .
The Dolphin Tavern used to be a topless bar where junkies shook their loose limbs for dollars to feed their sickness. A hideout for regulars to marinate in Yuengling while their wives did loads at the Laundromat next door . . .
Harry was a twenty-two-year-old junkie who made his living pedaling marijuana to sailors on Telegraph Avenue. He would buy lid bags of Mexican for ten dollars apiece and resell them for twenty. Some nights he would sell five . . .
I spill coffee on the bed. The white quilt is stained.
How can I fix this? I tiptoe up the stairs to their kitchen, soak a wad of paper towels in the sink. I go back down the stairs, rub the paper towels into the stain. I scrub and scrub. The sun is rising; the stain is not. I lay back down on the bed. Hopelessness . . .
I didn’t notice I had nodded out on the train and had missed my stop until the conductor clamped down on my bony shoulders in Wellington, saying, “Come on, honey . . .”
This is me at fifteen, splayed out on Carly’s giant trampoline—stargazing, helpless, hopeful, smiling through a mouthful of stolen popcorn . . .
I didn’t know he was hooked on smack when I moved in. That confession came two nights later . . .