I’ve done some things I’m not proud of to make sure we had a roof over our heads. My folks weren’t mighty thrilled to find out I got knocked up overseas, and they definitely didn’t offer to help me, let alone house me. In fact, their exact words were, “You’re done here, young lady. Pack a bag and leave, or we’ll do it for you.”

They died months apart when Rory was three, so they didn’t even get to see how great she turned out. How well we both did. How we made it.

The day they told me I was no longer welcome in their house, I vowed to make sure she’d have everything I didn’t.

What did I do to support us? Well, what didn’t I do?

I worked double shifts, scrubbed diner kitchen floors on weekends with Rory in her little sling carrier attached to me, taking cat naps and staring at me periodically with her kind, intelligent silence. I started doing women’s hair in my apartment whenever I didn’t have a shift or a cleaning gig. The rules were they needed to bring the hair dye along with them, so I wasn’t responsible for the shade, and a tip was mandatory, because the blow dryer blew my electricity bill through the roof.

I went on dates with men I didn’t like and got paid by the hour. I took advantage of my killer legs. I didn’t do anything but cling on their arms, but I still threw up every time I came back home and watched my daughter sleeping soundly next to my bed. I didn’t know what I would do if she ever did that to support her kid, to make sure they had formula, clothes, and medical insurance in place.

I remember the day I started smoking. I’d put Rory to sleep—she was two years old then, exactly one year after I ran away from Glen—and slipped into my tiny, dated bathroom. I looked in the mirror, adorned with puke-green seventies tiling, and couldn’t believe the dark shade under my eyes.

I wanted to cry.

I wasn’t beautiful anymore, even though my entire life was still ahead of me. I was a few months shy of twenty-one, for crying out loud. All my friends were dating, studying, going out, or focusing on their exciting, new careers, and I was either working or begging Rory to stop crying.

I wanted to do something for myself—something destructive but indulgent. Alcohol was out of the question. I’d seen what it did to Glen. So I checked on Rory again—still asleep—and slipped out to the local mart down the block. I bought myself a pack of something fancy-looking and a Zippo and came back home. Made myself a cup of coffee, cracked a window, and lit up.

The first cigarette made me nauseous.

The second calmed me down.

I’ve never bothered to kick the habit. It’s my small way of telling the universe to fuck off.