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themselves.”
    “Don't worry about your family, India. Your life is on the line. Between me and Aunt Milena, Rosa will be well taken care of. She's downstairs with us all the time as it is anyway. Everybody in my house loves Rosa like she's our own family, so it won't be no problem. And we got your papi covered too. I'll bring him something to eat every day, and I'll get Fiyah to help him take a bath and change his clothes. We can handle thisshit, India. What we can't handle is you sticking around here and then Saint taking you out. Nah, none of us can handle that.”
    “Saint put me in an impossible spot. He told me I had to make them fuckin’ runs and I was scared not to! What the fuck was I supposed to do, Eva? It ain't nobody here for Rosa but me and my father, and he's stuck in that damn wheelchair. If Saint takes me out, my father sits there and dies. If he fucks with my sister or my father, then I'll die. You don't know what this shit is like! I'm on my
own,
Eva. You got Fiyah and your aunt to help you. And your moms is right downtown in Brooklyn if you need her. Saint would straight body me if I crossed him,” she cried. “Who the fuck do I got?”
    Eva stared hard at India but she didn't have any words for her. Eva had been in Harlem for four years but the memory of Brooklyn still haunted her every single day. Nobody knew what she had been through back in Brownsville except her one trusted friend, Reem Raw. Milena and Fiyah knew Rasheena and Jahden had beaten her, yeah. They knew about the drugs too, and it was Aunt Milena who took Eva to a drug treatment center so she could get clean. She was totally beat down back then, but a big part of her head was still real clear. Eva wanted off the drugs and she was willing to go cold turkey to do that shit, but the people at the clinic wouldn't let her. They said she was too sick and too malnourished. Her iron was real low and her blood count wasn't right. They said kicking cold turkey would probably kill her, so they put her on a quick detox course. Fourteen- year- old Eva was sedated and given the powerful drugs that would get her off of heroin, and by the time she woke up her body's neuroreceptors had been so programmed to reject skag that even if she shot up for the next year she wouldn't have felt the high.
    India couldn't even imagine how much of her situation Eva understood. Eva knew how it felt to be alone with nobody to depend on but herself. To be cold on the streets and jonesing for a fix. To have her young body sexually battered by grown men, and to leave the most precious part of herself behind in the midst of all that trauma.
    “You just don't know, Eva,” India moaned.
    But she was wrong.
    “I do so know,” Eva began in a shaky voice. “I know what it's like to feel trapped by a situation,” she said, and then, because Eva really loved India and she wanted her girl to see that it was possible to overcome anything in life if you truly wanted to, she told India about her baby.

I t was hard going back to that last painful night that she'd spent in Brooklyn, but Eva did it. She told India everything, and she didn't leave none of it out. Not even the parts that she was ashamed of and that made her look bad.
    “Me and Fiyah used to steal anything that wasn't nailed down,” Eva admitted miserably. “We didn't have no kinda parental supervision and nobody gave a damn about feeding us neither. Even back then, as young as we was, Fiyah decided he was never gonna have a real job. He was into making music and looking good on the streets, so he was willing to steal in order to finance all that. He swore he was gonna be down with the ballers and the shotcallers who flossed the platinum chains, mixtape CDs, and all the latest gear. But I never cared about that kinda stuff. I went along on all them grimy capers mostly so I could eat, but I got real good at my criminal activities, and by the time Fiyah left Brooklyn and Jahden turned me out, my ass was a