SHE SMELLS. I smell. We smell—rotten. I ain’t bathed myself or her in over a week. Bending low, I sniff her scalp and frown. I smell my underarms, get a whiff of my stank breath, shake my head.

“It’s time for her bottle. Feed her.” That’s what I do now, remind myself to do things. Sometimes it works—sometimes not.

“One bottle,” I tell myself. “That’s all she need.” I’d move if I could. I can’t.

“Cricket.”

They coming again—the tears.

“I’m—” I apologize to her every day, all day it seem. “I’m trying.”

Since I came home, my sister put a microwave and small fridge in my room to make things easier. She having second thoughts now ’cause I’m melting in front of her eyes, she say. Too scared to go downstairs or outside, I stay in my room locked up.

JuJu can’t stay home and babysit me. She got to go to work. Make that money. But when she home, she’s knocking on my door. Leaving supper and lunch. Begging me. She’s caught in between a rock and a hard place, she say. If she call the authorities, they may commit me. Keep me for good. Charge me for some of the things I done, even though she don’t know all the things I done. But she been on the streets, so she knows what’s up.

My hands shake when I lift Cricket—so does she. If we was standing on ice in the middle of winter, dressed for summer, we couldn’t be shaking more. My sister’s voice pops in my head. “Charlese Jones. We have to go to the police and tell them.”

“If you do, he’ll kill me.”

I just need time, I keep telling her, to forget about everything. Only, I can’t forget, and I can’t tell. So it stay in my head like a bad dream.

I lay Cricket in the middle of my bed. Stare at the dresser I keep in front the door whenever my sister is at work. Sitting on the floor with my back against the bed, I cry. She cries. We cry all the time now.