A childhood fall from the almost top boat of an Indiana state Ferris wheel. Injured memory and a permanent, iron-shaped gash smack in the middle of her forehead. A four-year stint in the “slow” class because her talent of drawing and sewing things wasn’t considered fast. A brother first lost to crack and now simply lost. The quick stroke death of her daddy. The languid, agonizing, demoralizing demise of Grandma, who refused chemo but discovered death would take its time if that’s what it felt like doing. Of course, the still unexplained exit of my father. And the tubes she burned as a result, and because public aid made it free.

She couldn’t affect or console my shaky self-esteem when her own self-worth had been chiseled down to the nub by bad skin, bad luck, bad men, and bad timing. In my eyes, Ma’s life had been a purr and not a howl; she was a hermit whose visitors had dwindled to regret, anger, and self-hate. So it was my auntie Jewel whom I looked to for hope.

The day Jewel graduated high school, she had run away from her family’s overcrowded Robert Taylor Homes apartment and into the arms of a hefty truck driver who promised to show her the Grand Canyon. They only made it to Idaho before she discovered he had a wife, but Jewel couldn’t turn back after seeing that, indeed, the grass was greener. She had been to college, several actually, but she had never stayed long enough to earn any degrees. She had been an actress, inviting our lazy family to plays in dingy Midwest churches and community theaters. No one ever wanted to go. She had danced on cruise ships and worked at Disney World, but Ma would never let me escape to visit. She had been a medical secretary for almost a decade in Denver, earning just enough to pay her bills and leave the country twice each year. Her postcards from places we could barely pronounce were stuffed down deep in my panty drawer. It was during that decade that we only saw her twice: at Grandma’s and Granddaddy’s funerals.