His daughter and her husband didn’t like Grandpa to drink but they drank, too. They’d drink and get into fights and their kids would come over and we’d call the police. We’d watch out the bedroom window when the police came and hauled them off in handcuffs. The husband was carted away on a stretcher once for stab wounds.

IT WASN’T HIS FAULT

When I was six we got a big dog, but the dog kept wrapping his legs around me and taking my pants off in the front yard. It wasn’t his fault — he wasn’t fixed and I was the right height.

A week later my mom sent the dog back to the man who gave it to us. I cried like crazy when I came home and the dog was gone.

Then my uncle knew a man getting rid of a Shetland pony, but it was a stallion. Uncle borrowed a trailer anyway and brought the stallion pony to our house. We lived in a cheap rental with a rickety little white picket fence. We tied the pony to a concrete block in the front yard where there was plenty of grass to eat.

One day some girls rode by on their mares and the stallion pony started hollering his mating demand. I grabbed his halter but he kicked me against the side of the house. My mom picked up the concrete block to stop him but instead she went skidding down the road behind him — asphalt skiing. Finally a driver pulled over to help and they dragged the pony home together. My mom was scraped and bumped and black and blue all over.

The pony went away right after that.

MILK BONES

The neighbor girl who was my age, Regina — we lived on dog biscuits, Milk Bones. We ate slices of bread from the bag.

No one was there in the morning when I got ready for school. I’d put on my mom’s red lipstick and her dresses and her high-heeled shoes.

In first grade, eight girls had me up against the lockers, saying, Punch her, punch her! I didn’t want to fight, but when one of them came at me I kicked off my heels and let her have it.

They took us to the principal’s office and later my mom showed up. There were scratches on the girl’s face and she had a black eye. I thought they would put me in prison. My mom said, Are those my shoes?

BICYCLE JENNY

Before her husband died and her house burned down, Bicycle Jenny worked at Crocker’s, the slaughtering plant. What was left of her house was a scorched concrete hole in the ground. That’s where she lived.