11  You know how many kids would kill to go on road trips all the time?It’s not only my mother who’s said that. A lot of friends and uncles have, too. I don’t know what other kids would feel about it, but I know about me.Forget Carris. Forget home. When we’re settled in a town or city for too long, I miss the freedom and chaos we find in the wider world. Following the roads, just my momma and me. Deciding a direction by flipping a coin, by dodging the sun, by watching the moon. By spinning around three times with our hands held out in front of us. Stop, stumble, stand. And whichever stretch of horizon we both see, that’s the way we go. I know we’re making our plans, I know we’re doing what we need to do so we can buy a house one day and never have to ask anyone for money ever again. I know when we reach this place it will be our new forever. But for now, the best part is still how we get there.Dumping our bags out at bus depots to

    13  There’s nothing wrong with keeping some things to yourself. I know. But my mother holds details back like they’re black secrets with teeth, or monsters hovering in hidden places. Vicious things that can only come out when you look them in the eye. She leaves a lot of blanks for me to stare at. It’s not only about Auntie Clem—all those versions I’ve been told about how we got to stay with her, and later why we left. I don’t know the name of the place where I was born. I don’t know where we were when I took my first steps. I don’t know where we lived when I spoke my first word. I’m not even exactly sure how old I am. My mother lies about her age all the time. And if she won’t say hers, then I can’t know mine.I know who I am, but I don’t always know what. I’m a child. I’m a daughter. I’m both. I’m neither.Usually Mom says I’m twelve, maybe thirteen. People sometimes guess my age at sixteen, but only with the makeup and the clothes.

    15  Momma’s told me once or twice—and sometimes I remember—about the doll I had when I was really little. Samelsa. A name I made up myself. Mom says I wouldn’t stand for it when anyone dared mishear me and try to call her ‘Sam’. “Sam is a girl-name for hookers and strippers. Maybe waitresses,” she says. “I think you knew that, too. Even then. If people dared call your doll ‘Sam’ you’d give them the blackest evil eye. That look on your face! It was like a witchy old woman who’d just caught her neighbor’s dog peeing on her front porch.”It makes me giggle, the way she says this. Like I’m a shrunken hag underneath what people see, and they should really be afraid of me.Samelsa had a plastic face with painted freckles and big blue eyes that stayed stuck open. She was always staring. In my lap or under my arm or under the covers with me, she stared at Momma, she stared at the walls, she stared at the ceiling. When I turned her around and

    17  My mother would hate hearing this, but she wasn’t the only one who got hurt back in Carris. She wasn’t the only one who had stuff to cry over. I knew that same fist-round-the-ears feeling, the same helpless fear of a mismatched fight. Powerless. My mother’s unravelings were sporadic, sharp. Her mind a drawstring bag with a snapped cord, contents sliding out the mouth, slipping loose across the floor. A storm of tiny, shattered marbles. Funny how when she was hurting me, she thought she was the one really hurting.Those moments got closer together in the weeks before we left. She would hate hearing this, but they’re the reason I feel the same when she says we had to leave Carris.Not because of Clem, Momma. Because of you.I don’t remember where I was when I first recalled this, but I feel the sun beating down on me, tightening my damp skin. My hair is wet and whatever I’m wearing clings across my breasts, between my legs. My eyes

    19  Take a thick black marker and draw a line. Before Carris, after Carris. Hold the pen in place too long and watch the ink spread into a wide, bleeding dot. The point of hesitation before we launched off the edge.Those final days.I didn’t know my mother and Clem weren’t friends enough for me. This word Clem chose for me: Lonely. When Clem was gone, I didn’t know I wasn’t friend enough for my mother. The word my mother chose for herself: Isolated. When Clem was away, my mom and me spent our evenings and hours of our nights together, curled up with popcorn and salted crackers, watching dumb TV shows. We still do this now when we can, but it was different then because the house in Carris was home. Not ‘we can be anywhere we want to be’ home, but the home where our pillows smelled like our hair, there wasn’t a room that didn’t have signs of us in it, and we all knew the exact right way to jimmy the back door handle so it wouldn’t stic