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because I thought, could I have done something to change this?   It also made me wonder how much of the problem was due to addicts’ bad choices and how much was environmental, system- oriented.
    My parents’ house looked as if it had landed on the wrong street, with its new coat of paint and well-tended lawn. The chain-link fence around the front yard kept the neighborhood kids from making a shortcut across their corner lot. Momma and Daddy had put   their everything   into that house and refused to move, even after someone tried to break in a few years earlier. They were getting old, and I feared for them sometimes, but 700   Dembo   was their little piece of America.
    When I stepped inside my parents’ house, I could smell Daddy’s mouthwatering fried chicken from the porch. Lord knows, if that man couldn’t do anything else, he could burn . Everything he made tasted like heaven.
    The screen door gave me a quick swat on my behind as I crossed the threshold, and I followed my usual path to the kitchen. Past the off-limits living room and the hall bathroom was the large central kitchen. I wasn’t much of a cook, but I liked the feel of that room; it seemed to branch off into the other rooms of the house. The kitchen’s aromas roamed into every passageway and every corner. Some of the kitchen’s old tiles were torn, but they had been worn so much that they’d smoothed out with time; as though they were supposed to be that way, ripped edges and all.
    Jonathan and I had tried to convince Momma to resurface her counters, but she’d refused. Aside from the refrigerator, everything in that kitchen was at least fifteen years old. The cabinets were dull olive, and the wallpaper was a sad pattern of flowers and teapots. All of Momma’s pans, some of which were on the stove, were missing their handles. But she said she wouldn’t dare part with them. “That’s when they get good,” she’d said. The ever-present supply of leftover grease in the Crisco can sat between the stove’s eyes, ready to fry up anything at a moment’s notice.
    “Hello!” I called.
    I heard the television blaring and figured Daddy was in the middle of watching some football game. With the chicken finished, he’d already done his part.
    “Hey, baby,” Momma called as she came from the back bathroom. She shuffled into the kitchen toward me, her graying hair pulled back into a soft bun. I could still see the impression that her Sunday hat made on her light bronze forehead. She would not be caught dead at Sunday service without a hat on. She had a dash of her latest discovery, lipstick, on her lips. When I was growing up, Momma had always said that she wouldn’t paint her face. But lately I noticed her branching out, though not so far as to cause the saints to speculate.
    Her bifocals dangled near the edge of her nose for just a moment, then she pushed them up with a forefinger and wrinkled up her nose to hold them there for a second and get a good look at me. Her light brown eyes met mine and checked me, as they always did when I saw her. She could decipher my mood with one glance. She could tell I was fine, and unwrinkled her nose so that her glasses could begin their descent into the soft, pink groove near the center of her bridge.
    Her thick arms embraced me, but only for a moment. There was work to be done. I hung my coat on the coat rack and rejoined her in the kitchen. I put my purse down in a chair, washed my hands, and grabbed an apron from the stove handle.
    Daddy came in and stood over me, scrutinizing my every move. His favorite belt buckle, an oversized silver mold of Texas, pressed into his round stomach. He’d never give it up, even though it was on the last notch. In fact, I think he’d poked another hole in it, just to keep on wearing that belt with his name stamped into the back in big brown capital letters: JONATHAN.  
    His wardrobe was much like the kitchen decor—old-fashioned and so outdated that it was just about