text: When I was young, family members would share things with me that a child doesn't need to hear. Decode some nuanced gesture at a gathering. Divulge secret half-siblings. Confess that they didn't fall down, they were pushed. Maybe because I was quiet, listening intently like a small adult. Never interrupting or asking questions. Providing the proper, sympathetic, reassuring "oh's" and "mhm's." But that kind of real-world shit fucks a kid up, especially the quiet ones. We were poor, usually on one income with 3-5 kids, depending. My mother "got sick" when I was five and died. Not literally died, but the mother I'd known to that point disappeared and in her place was Chaos. So, dead to me. Took me years to understand. She didn't work from then on and left my dad when I was eleven or so, took my sisters and I to live with her mother, a religious zealot, and her grandmother, also a religious zealot but of an older, harder breed. Nanny and Mamaw had a noticeable impact on my early pre-teens, while I only saw Daddy on rotating weekends for several years. Four generations of women (and me) sharing one small house at the end of a side street for a couple of years. I miss the maple in the front yard, building an imaginary life from its twigs and branches. During that time, I had all the legal obligations to but none of the maternal protections from Chaos. After flourishing a short while in government-assisted housing, we moved to a slum known as "the Mill Hill," an homage to the old mill for whose employees the area had been established. Our four-room mill house (with addition!) sat in a shaded curve on Reedes Street, sharing the back fence with the Community Center, a feature that did not increase the surrounding property values. The two indoor/outdoor cats and the Dachshund with halitosis ensured constant flea infestations, though the sinks and tubs were regularly sanitized. The neighbor to our left was a self-employed snake-milker and his wife was a child-molester. I never saw the other neighbor but they were constantly hosting guests. Thankfully, by the time Chaos started having to the clear the yard of unconcious prostitutes before taking us to school on Monday mornings, we were living every other week with each parent. My older sister, Kay, and I had matching suitcases, cleaned weekly to rid them of the nicotine-and-tomcat-spray smell that lingered from the Mill Hill. Shortly after Chaos dismissed my claims in defense of her friend the snake-milker's wife (with whose mid-20s son Chaos was sleeping, as I'd surmised after multiple late-night visits and sleepovers), Kay and I decided fuck the court orders and her swollen flea bites and moved in permanently with Daddy while our younger sister, Pinky, continued week-to-week-ish or as-desired until she eventually moved out for the first few times and then for good (pending). We were pawns, which was most evident at holidays. Biological weapons in the hands of emotionally immature WASPs of the southern-fried, bless-your-heart-I'll-pray-for-you variety, itchy fingers for the local police dispatch hotline coupled with a desperate need to stay out of the mouths of their respective congregations. Those memories blur into a chorus of "You'll understand when you're older" and "None of this is YOUR fault" against a backdrop of pulsing red and blue lights. At twelve years old, Chaos dropped my sisters off at school but had me stay behind. She drove me to the city and took me to a psychologist because she'd found a journal entry where I'd referenced jumping out of a window. My musing wasn't intended to suggest suicide, but I was nevertheless deemed manic-depressive and immediately prescribed Lexapro, which I took back to Daddy and refused to take. I never told my sisters why I'd missed school that day, I gave them the half-truth that I was sick. I couldn't face the terminal diagnosis: I was infected with Chaos.