“Don’t worry, baby. We’ll be all right. I got a place for us to go.” My mother sounded as foreign and frightened as I did. We had no choice but to follow her. Before we left, I looked at the purposeful commuters all around us, smelled the cold, industrial Chicago air. I looked down at my hands, at the fingernails that were always encrusted with dirt. I curled my hands into loose fists so no one would see.

My mother took us to a small, neatly kept house on the South Side. She introduced us to her sister, my aunt Vivian, whom I had never met. I found out later that she did not approve of my mother’s marriage. Because of that, and because of some other long-ago falling out that my mother never saw fit to divulge, we had only minimal contact with her the whole time we lived in Chicago, even though we lived a few miles apart. We spent just a few nights with her, nights I remember vividly—the smell of lavender sachet in every room, the paper flowers and doilies that sprouted from every available surface, Aunt Vivian’s eyes that never squarely met Isaiah’s or mine.

I remember waking one night to the sound of their voices, first Aunt Vivian’s: “I knew you’d end up like this, you married that man. He talked a good game, but now look at you. Up here with two kids and no job. Well, you can stay here another night or two. I’ll help you find someplace to go. But you can’t stay longer than that. You made your bed. Now you best to settle on down in it.”

And my mother’s quiet, defeated reply: “I know you right, Vivian. And I thank you for helping us. Don’t think I don’t appreciate it.”

It was only years later that the deference slipped out of her voice when she spoke of her sister, to be replaced by the anger she felt that night and ever after. “Yeah, Viv helped me when I was up against it,” my mother said to me once I was an adult. “But I wouldn’t trust her for long no fu’ther than I could throw her fat ass. And that’s with God as my witness.”