When I was 2 or 3 we lived in public housing, you know, the kinds of apartments with two rooms and freezing cold school tile floors. Yeah, and the roaches, and the funny smells, that’s the place, well we lived there. My mom was 19 and she went to college every day, she also worked nightshift as an LPN at Central Baptist, so I didn’t get to see her very often. She used to pack me off to different relatives for several days at a time, most often my Grami’s because that’s the only place where I wouldn’t cry, and on very rare occasions she would be forced into taking me to class or to work with her. But I can only recall bits and pieces of that.

Even though I was small I can remember coming up the steps to our apartment, my mother balancing me on her hip and the snow crunching underneath her feet. No matter how sleepy I was I could tell we were home when the night air disappeared and the strange smell of public housing came over me. Mom hated how it smelled, she tried without end to make the stench go away, but to me it was comforting. It meant I was sleeping in my own bed for once. And I didn’t really have a bed, I can’t remember what happened to my crib, but I know that I slept on it’s mattress on the floor, and it smelled too since it was a hand me down from some distant cousin or something. It was cold and I frequently woke up in the middle of the night shivering, having rolled off my mattress onto the marble and lost my blanket someplace between. The only other things in there were my toys, mostly bought from Goodwill, that my nightlight would make shadows off of. Sharp and monsteresque shapes that terrified and followed me into my dreams until I was twelve.

After one such night of being at home, my mom came and woke me up, minutes later beckoning to me from the other room. I could hear rustling noises and giggles, and I had on my favorite shirt, it buttoned up the front and had purple and blue stars on it. I loved it because it had buttons, I was so frightened of the few seconds of darkness that occurred when my mommy pulled a shirt on over my head. Just as I have always loved anything that provided me an escape from my fears.

I crawled off the mattress and out of the floor, playing hopscotch with the wreck of nightghasts that was my room. I could smell a real breakfast, like I got at my Grandma’s house on Sundays, back when everyone still spent the whole of Sunday there in front of the fire. I padded into the big room and fell into confusion, there was a bed in the middle of the room, a tiny twin bed with orchids and vines carved into the headboard, and brand new sheets and pillows and a bedspread. And my Grandma hugged me and said it was mine and that I didn’t have to sleep on the floor anymore, my mom was smiling, and Popaw was puttering around in our closet sized kitchen. Grandma picked me up and put me in my bed right there in the middle of the living room, and she brought me breakfast and played with me. From then on, I was always warm, and I slept in that twin bed for 7 years, until during one of our many moves during my childhood, it was broken. But I’ll always remember the first sight of those orchids, they have become the design for my first tattoo and will forever remain my first recollection of beauty.