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downtown were lined with empty mill buildings, their windows boarded up, some of the plywood rotted and hanging by one corner so you could walk in and step over loose papers, dusty machine parts, dog and bird shit, maybe human too. The only businesses still open were three barrooms, a diner, and a newsstand. In Market Square, two or three battered cars were left on the curb, their tires gone, a windshield caved in.
    We lived three streets east of downtown on Fair in a half-house we were renting. On the other side lived another single mother. Her kids were small and dirty and she would leave her windows open and you could hear her TV all day and night, even when she was sitting on the stoop drinking a can of beer and smoking. Across the street was an empty lot with weeds, dry and yellow and high as our chests. Jeb and I thought we’d build something deep in there where no one could see you, but some drunks had gotten there first, their camp a steel barrel they sat around on broken lawn chairs and a naked mattress covered with stains so brown I was convinced they had to be blood.
    Kids roamed the neighborhood like dogs. The first week I was sitting in the sun on our steps, I made the mistake of watching them go by as they walked up the middle of the street, three or four boys with no shirts, a couple of girls in shorts and halter tops. The tallest one, his short hair so blond it looked white, said, “What’re you lookin’ at, fuck face?”
    “Nothing.”
    Then he was on our bottom step. He pushed me hard in the chest and kicked my shin. “You want your face rearranged, faggot?”
    “No.”
    Maybe he walked off after that, maybe he punched me in the head, I’m not sure, but of all the places we’d lived so far it was clear this was going to be the meanest.
    From our open windows, the inside of the house hot as a box, there was the day-and-night swearing and shouting of men and women fighting; we could hear the lowriders revving their engines out front of the Hog Penny Head Shop down the block; there was the constant rumble of motorcycles two streets over. On the hottest days you could smell the wood from the lumberyard on the other side of Water Street, the piss and shit of the drunks in the weeds, the engine exhaust, the sweet lead of the paint flaking off our clapboards.
    Food was scarce now. Even with our father’s child support payments, only a few hundred a month, my mother just didn’t make enough to keep the fridge and cabinets stocked. It was hard enough keeping the rent paid on time, the electricity on, the phone. It was hard enough just to keep all four of us growing kids in at least one pair of pants, shirts, and underwear, and a pair of shoes that might last a year. It was hard enough to keep her succession of used cars gassed up and running, though I don’t believe she ever filled a tank; so many times she’d pull up to the pumps, dig through her purse for change, smile at the attendant, and say something like, “A dollar and fourteen cents’ worth, please.”
    What money she did have budgeted for food went to meals she could cook quickly after she got home from work: canned soup or stew, macaroni and cheese, or the one we had most often, Frito Pie. Standing there in her earrings and work clothes—ironed pants and a blouse, maybe a bracelet around her wrist—she’d open a bag of Fritos, spread some out on the bottom of a casserole dish, then dump in two cans of Hormel chili, cover it with a layer of raw onions, more Fritos, and grated cheese. She’d bake this for thirty or forty minutes, the smell filling the downstairs like home cooking used to, and then we’d all grab a bowlful and eat on the floor in front of The Waltons or All in the Family . Many nights she’d come home with grease-stained bags from McDonald’s or Burger King, convenient meals she couldn’t afford.
    Once a week, usually a Sunday, Pop would pick us up in his old Lancer and take the four of us to an air-conditioned movie.