The Chihuahua lady and Mommy were tight. Every morning, if they weren’t on shift, Mommy would walk over to her house. They would drink black coffee and smoke Virginia Slims and talk. If it was nice they sat on the screen porch. If it was dull or cold, which it usually was, they sat at the dinner table until the air grew so thick with smoke and secrets that you could have sliced it with a knife. I knew all this because sometimes on the weekends they lost track of time and I had to go fetch Mommy to make lunch. Maybe it was only opening jars of baby food, but it was still women’s work, Daddy said. He was drinking a lot by then.

After Mommy was fired the Chihuahua lady was outraged, way more upset than Mommy. Chihuahua lady tried to get her to fight it. “You’re the best,” she said. “You have such a way with the kids. They’re crazy to lose you. It’s a crime.” Her wide brown eyes were pools of belief. The Chihuahua lady always hummed with energy. “You can write to the hospital board,” she said to Mommy. “Come on. You can’t take it lying down. You are an asset.”

Daddy and I both echoed her. “You’re the best, Mommy,” I said. “They don’t know how good they have it with you.”

“It’s just the way of things,” Mommy said in her gentle way. “You accept misfortune with grace.”

My problems at school had already started, but my parents had not yet begun to take them seriously. I guess I was so well behaved at home, they must have thought there was some mistake. I was helpful and polite, or at least I always tried to be. “Teddy seems to have skipped being a teenager,” Mommy would say, stroking my cheek. “We are lucky.”

One morning the Chihuahua lady came to the house before I left for school. I was eating cereal at the kitchen counter. Mommy was wearing her blue gauzy dress that floated behind her when she moved. The Chihuahua lady settled herself on a stool and poured three sachets of sweetener into her coffee. Steam wreathed about her head. She liked her coffee molten hot and sweet enough to kill. She took her dog out of her bag and put him on the counter. He had a little smooth, dark face, intelligent. He sniffed delicately at the coffee cups and blinked in the blue haze of cigarette smoke.

“How can you do it?” Mommy asked. “How can you keep that poor creature in captivity? Can’t you see the suffering in his eyes? It’s monstrous to breed and keep wild animals.”

“You’re soft-hearted,” the Chihuahua lady said. (Of course, I realize now, this was pre-Chihuahua. She was the dachshund lady, then, so I’ll call her that.)