The karaoke nights, though, those were bad. The strobe lights were so bright they left lightning streaks on the back of my eyelids when I blinked. And the kids were mostly older than me, already eleven or twelve, and they danced and sang, and it was all hip-hop or rap. I actually like rap, the kind that sounds like poetry and doesn’t need instruments in the background to make you feel it in your bones. But Mom would pick Dolly Parton or a show tune from Grease, and I’d just stand there with my eyes closed and pull at the skin on my elbows while I sang. The only good thing about it was that no one really paid attention to what was happening onstage. Mom thought those karaoke nights would be our big break. She thought there’d be talent scouts. It took a whole year before she realized no one was looking for “the next big thing” in a karaoke club in Mississippi.

But after every show, when we were back in our room at the Starlight, I would take a bath and curl up in my towel on the bed. Mom would comb my hair out with her fingers just like she’s doing now, and we’d watch something goofy on the television… old episodes of Andy Griffith or Charlie’s Angels.

“Did you know I’m named after a Charlie’s Angel, baby girl?” she said one night.

I sat up and twisted around in my towel so I could tell if she was joking or not, but she was looking at the screen.

“That one.” She pointed to a woman with big blond hair and bell-bottom jeans. “Farrah Fawcett.”

“Your name’s Jill.”

“Jill’s her name on the show.” Mom stopped playing with my hair and curled her skinny arms around her knees.

“Your grandma wanted a beauty queen for a daughter.”

Mom could have been a beauty queen if she’d wanted. She’s the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen—even more than the casino girls in their feathers and sequins. But she never talked about my grandparents. All I knew was they’d kicked her out when she got pregnant with me at seventeen. “Hard to kick someone out of a double-wide I never wanted to be in in the first place,” she’d say any time I brought them up. I learned not to ask. But I still tried to picture them, Ronald and Leslie Montgomery of middle-of-nowhere Arkansas. They’re just blurred faces, though, all distorted like in a funhouse mirror. I guess that’s pretty much what Mom sees too.

I feel Mom’s hand still on my head and I sit up. I miss Biloxi. Not the casinos with their jangling noises and bright lights and carpet that smelled like beer and cigarette ash, but I miss the school with its steady meals and the Starlight with a clean bed and a bath.