One night, Jesse and Junior snored atop me on their black leather couch, their slob collecting in the crook of each of my arms as they lay on either side of me. I couldn’t feel their dribble because I had traveled into The Cosby Show. I had evaporated from my building, its stench, its tight quarters, its unfriendly and sour neighbors. Instead I now lounged on the grand, floppy sofa that centered the Huxtables’ dollhouse: many pastel rooms half the size of my whole apartment, capacious rooms demanding multiple doors that swung in and out with the ease of double joints. I now had fireplaces in my kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom. A high front porch of many steps all my own, rather than one shared, token square of cement at a front entrance. And best of all, a daddy who worked right downstairs. My hair was a thick bush easily tamed by a hard brush and a pink ponytail holder. Without a care in the world, I thumbed through the Ebony magazines they kept sprawled on their opulent coffee table. My stomach balanced a tea set plate of sugar cookies and crystal glass of milk, set there gently by my new mother Claire. Her perfect black hair flounced as airy as clean sheets flung up before stretching on a bed. Unfamiliar, cataclysmic music—runaway piano keys tailed by screeching horns—drowned out the cars and conversations from the street.

What snapped me back into my life was a telephone operator talking into the Washingtons’ answering machine: Hello. This is Cook County Correctional Facility and … I tossed the kids to the side and snatched up the phone just as Cliff was breaking up a rough and tumble catfight between Vanessa and Denise.

“Hello? Hello?”

“You have a collect call from the Cook County Correctional Facility from Leroy. Will you accept…?”

“Yes!”

A dry voice—unfamiliar and grating—clicked in.

“Baby?”

“Leroy?”

“Renelle?”

“No, it’s me. Shivana.”

A pause.

“Oh. Shivana. Hey, girl!”

“Leroy, I been so worried about you. I can’t believe they got you! I can’t believe they got you …” I was so nervous to hear his voice I couldn’t go on.

“Don’t worry, baby. I got this. I’m gone beat it. Ain’t no reason to sweat this shit.”

“When you get out?”

“I go to trial next week. I need you to let my wife know.”

“I’ll tell her. I’ll be there. You know I gotta represent…”

“Naw naw naw. You can’t come now, Vana. Too much drama plus I don’t want you exposed to this shit.”

Had he forgotten about exposing me to way more than a trial?

“I’m not scared … I want to be there.”