The unit isn’t large. Inside, there’s the staff desk. To the right of it a long hallway filled with bedrooms. Rooms simple in decor that say relax. A bed with clean linen. A nightstand and a lamp and a dresser. Thin white curtains. To the left of the staff desk is the living room and kitchen and TV room with maroon chairs and a quiet room where people can paint and draw or sit and read. A whiteboard is screwed to the wall in the living room and in blue marker a quote is written: “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” Like human beings are ships, as if they were crafted things. Things that rock and bang or cruise smooth in an unpredictable ocean of salt and froth and depth. Out there is natural extermination.

The back door creaks open, then bangs shut. My mother’s shoes crunch the grass. The exterminator is gone, gone around the building.

“Here.” Mom hands me the coffee. It’s too hot to sip so I blow and blow on it, but it doesn’t cool.

“Thanks for the cigarettes,” Mom says.

That’s why I’m here: to bring her cigarettes. That’s why I’m always here when she’s here. To bring her cigarettes. I never don’t bring her cigarettes.

I blow on my coffee again. It’s too hot to sip.

Mom asks me if I heard from “your sister,” and after I tell her no she makes a noise with her throat and then asks me what’s new.

Nothing, I tell her.

And then she goes into it, why she’s here again. The twelfth time in the past three months.

“I didn’t want to be alone,” she tells me. “The walls in my bedroom started to look black and grimy.”

I ask her if she’s out of her meds. Clonazepam. Benzos. She says she gets them filled tomorrow. Only sometimes she takes her meds. She runs out because she needs money. Always needs cigarettes.

“But I have Valium,” she says. “It still won’t help me sleep. I can’t sleep.”

She tells me she’s been awake for three days. She doesn’t look it, though. Her short gray hair is spiked. She’s wearing little gold earrings. She’s dressed nice. Casual. A white T-shirt and black yoga pants and white sneakers. She doesn’t do yoga. All the white on her makes her look more Native, more Indian (she hates that word—Indian). But nothing makes her look young. She’s Native, and she has trauma. So do I—I’m the one who saw it—but she thinks she has more. She doesn’t say that, but she thinks it. Maybe she’s right. Maybe older Natives have more trauma than younger ones.