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  Rita’s voice quivered through her gritted teeth. “Do you understand what the people in this shithole would have done to trade places with you? Don’t you know you threw away your golden ticket?” Her grip got tighter. “Don’t you?” she exclaimed.

  I didn’t. But I would soon.

  I sat in the cafeteria during my lunch break, turned to stone by Rita’s words. I held a sandwich in my left hand but couldn’t raise it to my mouth. I could only stare straight, paralyzed by the image Rita had forced me to confront, and overwhelmed by a truth I carried inside me but had somehow ignored. There was no one else my age. They were all older, two and three times my senior. I could see their sullen faces in my sleep. Temp workers were overjoyed when the factory switched their employment to permanent jobs. They celebrated the announcements, cheering, “I got on!” in the cafeteria when they won the coveted positions like they were grand prizes. I could not understand it, because it seemed like we were all just stuck in sinking sand.

  My anxiety soared at the thought of getting such an offer, and of being there forever. Rita’s voice echoed in my head: I had thrown away my golden ticket, she said. My golden ticket. It sounded so beautiful, so liberating, yet so far from reach. And here I was, in the factory lunchroom, wondering if I could ever get it back.

  I laid my head down on the table for the last few minutes of my lunch break. Moments later, I was jolted awake by the commotion of people being herded back to work. I did not want to go. Before I could rise from my seat, my eyes caught the movement of the third-shift workers clocking out. I watched them punch their yellow time cards and disappear into the blinding sunlight breaking through the doorway, wishing that I, too, could be cast into that emancipating glow.

  Above the door was a bright red EXIT sign.

  “Come on, son,” said Rita. “Break is over.” Rita touched my shoulder as she passed by, but I did not move. I was captivated by the sign I had seen a million times but never like this. Those four boxy letters spoke to me in a way they never had before. The sign was summoning me to leave, to get out, to seize my one and only chance. So I listened. And I left. I got up and walked straight through the door into the parking lot. I got in my car, I drove away, and I did not look back.

  I felt liberated, but only for a moment. I was at a portentous crossroad, having no idea what to do next. I had walked off the job without notice. There was no way they would keep me or hire me back. I was officially unemployed, with no money, no real home, and no plan. But I was finally free, it seemed. But freedom without hope is like living in a black hole.

  I was tired of going to the cash advance store to get payday loans, parking all the way down the street and creeping in with a hood and sunglasses to hide my identity. I was tired of going to the gas station for daily five-dollar fills, which I probably wasted driving miles in search of a gas station displaying a price that was just a couple of cents cheaper per gallon. I was tired of sorting through the items I owned, conducting a cost-benefit analysis to see which I could do without and which would be most valuable at the local pawn shop. I was tired of cup noodles and beans-and-weenies and stretching one serving of Hamburger Helper to last three days. I was tired of being broke. I was tired of being needy. I was tired of the weight of simply being.

  The full punch of what I had done didn’t hit me until I was parked in the driveway. When I got inside, the first thing I did was dump my blue coveralls in the trash can. I fixed a grilled cheese sandwich and sat in the dark, hypnotized by the shambles that was my life. I wanted to watch TV, but I couldn’t. I wanted to call somebody, but I couldn’t. I sat in the still house and descended into a depressive abyss, accepting that what everyone had said about me over the years was obviously and painfully true.

  I heard the voice of my stepfather as he palmed my head and told me I was ugly, pressing my face against the mirror until I agreed. And his enraged voice when he beat me with any inanimate object within reach. I heard the screams of my sister as he smashed her bloodied face into the table, daring her to try to save me again.

  I heard the voice of my mother, crying and asking where she went wrong as she cupped her hand full of Vaseline and polished the welts on my back.

  I heard the voice of my father call me a thug, a reject, and a disgrace to his family before walking out of my life.

  I heard the voice of my eighth-grade teacher call me a piece of shit as she kicked me out of class and slammed the door.

  I heard the voices of administrators discussing my ten-page disciplinary record and devising a plan for my expulsion.

  I heard the voices of coaches say, “He’s too short. He can’t play at the next level.” And I heard the voice of the coach when I’d made it to the next level as a collegiate athlete say, “He’s injured. We don’t need him.”

  I heard my college advisor say it’s not too late to withdraw.

  I heard my mom say I couldn’t come back home.

  I heard Rita say I threw away my golden ticket.

  I heard the EXIT sign say I could just run and be free.

  So I ran.

  And when I made it to the medicine cabinet, I reached for the pills that promised relief. The ones I remembered hearing were meant for numbing pain and sleeping with peace. I needed both. So I took one, then two, but the pain was still there.

  I saw the EXIT sign again. And I just wanted to ride the rays of that emancipating glow right through the doorway. I could feel the drugs coursing through my veins. My heart started pounding against the cage of my chest, telling me I was almost there. And I filled my mouth with another handful, desperate to make it to the other side.

  I closed my eyes and lay back, embracing the peace I had only hoped to find.

  I was ready to let go. I was ready to die. Ready, I was, to just be free.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE DEVIL PREACHES

  When people imagine the devil, they picture him in different ways.

  In Paradise Lost, Milton saw the devil as the most beautiful of the angels, until he wasn’t.

  In his painting The Last Judgment, Fra Angelico saw the Renaissance version with horns, scales, cloven hooves, and an arrowhead tail.

  Generations of cartoonists have drawn him as a puckish red figure perched on a person’s shoulder, with an angel standing on the other.

  This is how some envision the devil.

  But not me.

  When I imagine the devil, I see a man that few people would recognize as Satan, the Prince of Darkness.

  I see Lucas.

  I watched him creep into our home at night—slippery, angry, high. We suspected it was the alcohol or cocaine that stained his eyes as red as blood.

  But on Sundays, he preached. I watched him lead worship at church. Like heaven’s minister of music—Lucifer the archangel—he preached God’s word, played the guitar’s melodic strings, and aroused the parishioners until they quickened and quivered in a Baptist convulsion.

  After church, I watched him disappear into the night. Sometimes alone. Sometimes with my baby brother. And it was Ben’s recollections—confided many years later—that filled in the details about my stepfather’s whereabouts. How he had sex with prostitutes in the back seat of our minivan as his toddler son sat silently in the passenger seat, forever marked by what he watched in the rearview mirror.

  My mother had no idea that she funded these exploits. Or maybe she did. But there was nothing she could do. When duty called, Mom had to answer. Roughly every month, the army sent her on temporary duty assignments that lasted for weeks at a time. This was when we were left in Lucas’s care, or rather at his mercy. He owned us. And we wore his wrath like metal collars clinched around our necks.

  We gathered at the front door to say goodbye. It was our custom. Mom kneeled and wrapped her entire wingspan around her children, hugging our necks and planting kisses on the crown of our heads. Sierra and I cried—partly because we’d miss her, and partly because we knew what would happen when that door closed behind her. Wit
h short breaths and hearts filled with fear, we waited. Counting the seconds until our safety ended. Clinging to those final moments before the dark clouds opened and brimstone rained down. Searching for a reason that would make her stay. Hoping she could see the infrared signal of distress radiating from our eyes.

  She saw it.

  She always saw it.

  But it did not matter.

  Because she still had to go.

  “I left money on the counter,” she said. “This is for food and food only. You hear me?” She gripped my cheeks and lifted my chin to make sure that I paid heed.

  We didn’t have time to go grocery shopping before she left. On the table was enough money for two weeks’ worth of pizza, Chinese, and our standard Sunday dinner at Western Sizzlin.

  She rose to her feet, our four tiny bodies entwining her legs and arms and waist. “You’re in charge,” she said to Sierra. She hugged us one last time. It was long and tight and full of remorse. She looked him in the face with tearful eyes. She did not say a word to admonish him or plead, though her fraught expression said it all. She tilted back her head and looked upward, as if petitioning God and fighting back her own tears. She made no sound. She said no words. But her lips trembled as she silently mouthed something that looked like “Please” and turned away as if she could look no more.

  “Shut that noise up!” he yelled after the door closed behind her. We stood still, frozen by his rolling rage. He hated when we cried, especially for her. Affection didn’t live here. He barely even seemed to like my mother. I never saw him hug her or kiss her. Not a word of affirmation. He only used his words to malign her as a mother and to defame her as a wife. He called her stupid and dumb. “She don’t know nothing,” he always said. Everything that went wrong, he attributed to her lack of knowledge and overall unfitness. He shamed her. And we listened, because there was nothing else we could do.

  “If your mother wasn’t so dumb…,” he said when it pained her to punish us. Like the time we were caught accepting candy from a stranger at the grocery store. Going to the grocery store was like a trip to the amusement park for us. Sierra fastened Ben in a cart and pushed him down one aisle, while Barry and I were in another lane cruising on carts like scooters. “Faster, Barry! Faster!” I begged. Barry was at the back, kicking and steering, while I rode on the front of the buggy, smiling from ear to ear and yelling, “Woohoo!” as we darted down the aisle. Customers gaped and snatched their children from our path. But we didn’t care, we were having the time of our lives—until Mom seized us by the ear and dragged us away. The fun was over.

  All four of us followed Mom through the exit, trailing like a line of pups. She always made us boys dress identically from head to toe: same gold cross necklace, same matching outfit and shoes, same haircut.

  An older white man approached us on our way out. He complimented us on our outfits and kneeled to offer us lollipops. Our faces lit with excitement as we reached for the candy. Mom was heading for the car when, suddenly, she glanced behind her and saw that we were missing. In a panic, she rushed back into the store, snatched the candy from our hands, and roared, “Get away from my children!” Then she whisked us away, dragging us on her heels like tin cans on the back of a wedding car. She slammed to a stop when we got outside, like she couldn’t wait another second to explode. She popped us in the head and wagged her finger in our faces. “What I tell y’all about talking to strangers?” These situations were difficult. We never knew when she actually wanted an answer. Sometimes, we’d start responding to her question and she’d yell, “Shut up!” When in doubt, we looked at Sierra to follow her lead. Our sister was muted by fear. “Wait till we get home,” Mom hissed, “I’ma tear y’all behind up.”

  No one spoke during the ride home. Ben wasn’t old enough to get full-fledged whoopings. But the three of us were as silent as prisoners passing death row cells on their way to the chamber. I admired Sierra, because she knew how to maintain a look that said she didn’t care, she was untouchable. I’d try to harden my face to look like hers, but an expression of dread overtook my features when I thought about the last whooping we got. Mom always gathered us in one room. We stood in a line as she spanked us one by one. There are different types of whooping-getters, and we each had our own style. There are stoics—the ones who stare straight and stone-faced like a protester who refuses to budge: that was Sierra. There are runners—the ones who make Mom run laps around the room, chasing and swinging and missing: that was Barry. Then there are thespians—the ones who dramatically cry and fall out before Mom even takes the first swing: that was me. And Mom would leave the room, but not before yelling, “Stop crying before I give you something to cry about,” as if she hadn’t already fulfilled that promise.

  These scenes played through my mind on our ride home. Suddenly, Mom’s tension started to wane as she cruised to her gospel music, crooning ballads that conjured up the Holy Spirit. She occasionally lifted one hand, the other still clutching the wheel, and gently cried, “Thank you, Jesus.” I knew that she was spiritually stirred and her heart was softening when she passed frequent glances in the rearview mirror. She was checking to see if we were okay, showing remorse that she might have overreacted. To Hezekiah Walker and Helen Baylor, I am indebted—for they often saved our asses, quite literally.

  The car slowed to an unexpected stop. By this time, we had all fallen asleep. “Wake up, y’all,” she said. My heartbeat instantly accelerated because my first thought was that we had reached the end of death row. I just wanted to get it over with. The wait was the most painful. We stretched and yawned and wiped our eyes and realized that we were not home.

  “Reach back there and grab the bread,” Mom directed. I was in the back row of our seven-passenger minivan so I strained and contorted to reach into the storage area. I dug through the heap of grocery bags to unearth a loaf of bread. “Hurry up before I change my mind,” Mom added, as if there was a time limit on her kindness. I retrieved the loaf and she told us to get out of the car.

  At our feet was a picturesque lake with dozens of ducklings nibbling at the shoreline. The air was clear and the sun’s rays were gentle. The water was still. And I’ll never forget the sounds, as if Mother Nature welcomed us with song. The ducks quacked and the birds chirped and the wind whistled gently in the willows, which swayed like they were dancing.

  “Go ahead,” Mom said. “They don’t bite.” But Ben didn’t believe her. We tossed our share of bread crumbs and gave him the rest. Once he overcame his initial fear, he discovered that he had found new friends. “Be careful!” Mom yelled as his confidence grew. He looked so innocent, so free, so safe.

  Ben suddenly became the food bank. A flock of fully grown and baby ducks thronged him at once. Ben laughed and ran away. It was fun at first, until he glanced back and saw a mob of determined waterfowl charging him like villagers with pitchforks. Ben’s chortling ascended into a siren’s scream. He cried for help and ran while we stood by, laughing and teasing him. Finally, Ben dropped the remains of the loaf and jumped into my mother’s arms. We laughed and hugged and grinned, as if our world was so perfect. But it wasn’t. Because the titan of terror was waiting at home for our return.

  Our home was no home while Mom was away. It was a callous crypt where fear and darkness loomed. It was an eerie penitentiary where we barred our rooms like stony cells. We thought we were safe as long as we pretended not to exist. We would have starved rather than tell Lucas we were hungry.

  We enjoyed more freedoms when Mom was home. We enjoyed the most freedom when Lucas wasn’t. When Mom was away on duty, he sometimes disappeared for days at a time. His abandonment pained Mom, but it brought us so much peace. We were safe in Sierra’s hands. She taught herself how to cook so we were fed. And when there were no groceries, she hiked for miles to reach the nearest food pantry. She once stole Mom’s keys and drove, with her head barely peeking over the wheel, so we wouldn’t go hungry.

  Our rooms were in a row along the second-floor
hallway of our house, and the devil’s chamber was across the hall on the opposite end. When Lucas was home, we kept our bedroom doors locked and our televisions low. We tiptoed to the bathroom for emergencies, so as not to awake the angry beast of Babylon. Even when he did not force us, we stayed in our rooms where we were sometimes safe from his capricious explosions.

  It was safest to stay hidden, though it grieved us to be apart. Especially Barry and me. We were best friends. Mom made sure of it. Anytime Barry wanted to go somewhere or do something, he couldn’t make it out the door before Mom yelled, “Don’t forget your little brother!” He never grumbled or griped when I joined him. We took the long way to the corner store and turned those trips into outdoor adventures. We played basketball in the front yard, and he hugged me when I cried out of frustration because he would not let me win. We watched endless cartoons. And when we weren’t doing that, we played with Hot Wheels or G.I. Joes, making sound effects for every weapon, from rifles to grenade launchers. Or we pretended to be WWF wrestlers, performing dropkicks and Stone Cold stunners and Rock bottoms and jumping off the bed doing dangerous elbow drops. Or we yelled, “KAME HAME HAA,” pretending to be Goku and Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z as we stretched our hands to blast each other with our superpowers. We could do none of those things when Lucas was home. But I was determined to outwit Lucas and the drywall partition that kept me from my brother.