This is our nightly ritual. I wish we had a fucking shower; it takes the bath so long to fill with the water barely dribbling out and the pipes thunk, thunk, thunking away, and poor Millie standing in her piss-soaked PJs, looking like she’s about to cry some more. She rubs at her eyes, tired and sore from fitting, and all I want to do is pick her up and walk out of this shithole. Take her somewhere clean and fucking nice. Have enough money to get her on the books with a proper fucking doctor, who will look at her as an individual and not just another kid living below the poverty line who can’t be helped.
I jam the plug into the plughole and collapse onto the cracked tiles, and then I pull my sister’s tiny form into me, not caring about the pee. I hold onto her until there’s enough water in the tub for her to wash without her freezing her ass off.
Winter was bad. Going through this on a nightly basis with the place so frigid we could see our breath hanging in the air was seriously something I never want to go through again. I’ve promised myself, fucking promised, that next winter me and little Millie will be in a place that at least has fucking heating.
I don’t care if I have to sell the car; I’ll carry her three miles to school every morning if I have to. I don’t care that I have to wear shitty clothes, covered in grease and dirt from work, and I don’t care if we don’t have a TV. I don’t give a shit about drinking with my friends, or going to the fucking movies. All I want is for Millie to be safe and clean and happy. There has to be a fucking way to make that happen. I refuse to let her down the same way our mother did.
I’m not perfect at this, but I’m trying so fucking hard. The last thing I ever expected as a twenty-three-year-old was to be taking care of my little sister. She’s quiet as I bathe her. She’s always quiet, like she’s afraid to fucking speak or move or do something wrong. She’s all skinny arms and skinny legs; she’s gonna be tall like me eventually, but right now she’s just a skinny, underfed kid who needs proper parents, and all she’s got is me.
I carry her back to her room and put her in fresh PJs, and I sit with her until she falls asleep again. The seizures are exhausting for her. She never has problems going back to sleep. Seems that’s all she does. The meds they have her on rob her of all her energy, turning a six-year-old little girl into a zombie, sleepwalking through a life that’s meant to filled with toy ponies and hair braiding, and I don’t fucking know what else. But not this. Not meds and pain and midnight baths and crying. It fucking kills me.
I sit with my head in my hands while I run myself a much colder bath so we don’t have to fork out for the hot water, and then I lay in the tepid water until it’s freezing cold and I’m shivering, my side aching from where that guy at the gym pummelled me.
The alarm clock on my bedside table reads three-forty when I climb back into bed. Three hours. I’m gonna get three hours sleep before I have to get up and drive Millie to school.
That’s more than I usually get.
******
“You’re late, asshole.”
Mac’s bent over a Firebird that must have been brought in last night when I arrive to work. I’m eight minutes late. I don’t even bother trying to explain how difficult it is to get a small child up and ready for school, or what a nightmare it is to drive across town in rush hour. Mac doesn’t give a shit. All he cares about is that I’m here for work on time, and if I’m not—frequently the case—then he reams me out about it.
“Sorry, Mac.”
“Sorry, Mac?” He looks up from the engine block, wrench in hand, face full of grease, and frowns at me. “Sorry, Mac ain’t gonna cut it much longer, kid. Sooner or later, I’ll be finding someone else to take your place, you hear me?” He points the wrench at me, and I feel like ripping it out of his fucking hand and smashing it into his face.
“I know. I’m sorry. I’ll work something out.” I’ve been saying the same thing for a while now.
“I don’t get it,” Mac says, returning to his work. “You should just hire a child minder or some shit to take your kid sister to school. That’s what I did with my kids.”
“I can’t afford a child minder.” He knows this well enough. He’s the one who pays my meager weekly pay-check. This is just how Mac likes to start the conversation with me. The conversation. The one where he tries to get me running cars for him.
“Well, you know there’s always extra work here for you if you need it, Mase. Just say the word.”
If it were just me and I wanted to make some extra money, I wouldn’t have a problem saying yes to his repeated offer.
But Millie…
If I got busted by the cops, there would be no one to take care of her. Even if I didn’t get sent down, Child Protection Services would deem me an unfit guardian and take her away. She’d grow up in the care system, passed from pillar to post. Probably get caught up in drugs just like my mother did. I can’t do that to her.
“Yeah, man. I’ll let you know,” I tell Mac, but he and I both know I won’t. Mac doesn’t like the fact that I work here and I know about all the shit that goes down after dark, and yet I’m not involved. Makes him nervous.