Lisbeth liked the attention. That wasn’t godly, but I knew that about her. There was no way I was going to remember the songs she picked, not that night. I could barely watch her for watching the men, keeping tabs on them, keeping them away from her. They lined up at the foot of the stage, staring up at her. Their faces blurred, glazed with drinks. There were so many plastic cups. The bass was too loud, the floor sticky. Smoke and weed smoke threaded the air. The lights made Lisbeth’s pale dress translucent; I could see the lines of her sensible bra. Sweat stood out on her forehead like pearls. Any one of the men could have reached out, grabbed her ankle. Reached up, felt her breast. By the end of the song, she was flushed and gasping.

One of the men did reach up then, through the applause, and handed her a cup. She grabbed it and drained it before I could push through the crowd to the stage.

“It was sweet,” she said. “It was sweet, just Coke.”

“It wasn’t just Coke.”

It was sweet, she kept repeating, when she fell into my arms after her next song, when she tripped trying to get off the stage. Her skirt flipped up and some of the men hooted. She was loose-limbed and friendly, running her hand down the prickled face of a stranger who stooped to help me, gazing at him like he was God.

“Don’t touch him, you don’t know him,” I said.

“Does it make a difference?” she said dreamily.

“I like that girl,” the man said.

I kicked open the door to the bar, but the cool night air did nothing. There was a drunk vomiting into the road. I thought of my mama.

I had never told Lisbeth about the night I came home to find her asleep on the kitchen floor. She lay in a heap under the cabinets, like she had crumpled where she stood. Her skin was too white, almost purple. Drool glittered in the corners of her mouth. Her limbs looked odd, uncomfortable.

Lobo came up from the grow room, dirt on his hands.

“What did you give her?” I asked.

“Fuck,” he said. “She must have tried it.”

“Tried what?”

“Somebody brought something. I told her not to. Told her we were going to sell it.”

“Tried what?”

He shook his head, couldn’t keep the twitching smile from his lips even as she lay there, drooling on herself. “Your mama.” He got this look when she drank him under the table; when she danced for him and his friends, bottle in one hand, joint in the other. I had seen her, through the windows, her eyes closed, shaking to music only she heard. Lobo was impressed at her verve. My mama, wound up enough to fly away, a music box dancer. She didn’t belong to me, to anyone. She was barely in this world. “She’s a wild one.”