Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo (George Bernard Shaw)

After doing dishes they returned to the kitchen and sat with us. Uncle Tony started to prepare some heroin.

“So how did you two meet?” my mother asked.

“We met at a café,” she laughed. “He was getting a cup of coffee and I kindly informed him that the cup of coffee he was purchasing was instrumental in exploiting child slave labour in South America.”

“Kindly! Kindly might be generous.”

“Okay,” she admitted, “I was protesting with some friends outside the shop.”

“She batted the cup of coffee out of my hands,” Uncle Tony motioned.

I was shocked. “And you asked her out?”

“I demanded that she buy me a new coffee.”

Uncle Tony and Scotch laughed. It was sweet. I liked them together.

Scotch declined the needle Uncle Tony offered her before injecting it himself. Who says chivalry is dead?

“I don’t like that stuff,” Scotch said.

Senior poured an after dinner glass of Scotch for himself and left the several glasses on the table next to the bottle. My father started pouring out glasses for the table, including me when I protested.

“No thanks,” Scotch said and pushed her glass away.

“I’ll take hers,” I offered. “There’s no point in being wasteful.”

“You don’t drink?” Uncle Tony laughed.

Scotch shook her head.

“You’re kidding!”

“My mother was an alcoholic, well, my father too, but it was my mother’s abuse that affected me the most. I’ve been addicted to alcohol all my life. I’ve been clean now for nearly three years.”

“Did you hear that?” my mother asked me.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

“It’s not easy but I’m trying really hard to stay clean.”

“You don’t drink, you don’t do drugs. What do you do?” Uncle Tony asked.

Scotch pulled out a baggie of crushed green herbs. “I like to keep it all natural.”

It's like finding something you haven't been looking for but have always wanted. (Unknown)

The third and final step rarely came, but when it did, it was a big to-do. Uncle Tony would first practice making a meal and it would be an elaborate one. After he was sure he could make it properly, he would make it for the entire family plus one. Uncle Tony would be cooking all day. My mother would help him. My father would laugh. Senior would make an unmoving appearance at the debacle. As for me, I would test her. I would be myself and if I was to be honest, I am a challenge. I would undercut her, turn everything she said against her, repeat her previous statements later when they contradicted her. I found lies where there were none. I not only made Uncle Tony question her as a viable option, I made her question herself. I love my Uncle Tony. I want him to find a nice girl. I want him to be happy. Most of all, I just like messing with people. It’s not as fun now but I’m not the bratty kid now that I was back then.

There was one girl who almost made it past the third step: her name was Scotch. No, this is not a joke about my uncle’s love of scotch, the woman’s name was actually Scotch. She was had a bleach blond bob and she had a funky style. She was a short woman with an unforgettable face and a slender, almost wiry body. She came over with a bright striped scarf and a bag of groceries.

For the first time, the female candidate made the meal. She had brought all organic ingredients, most of which she had grown herself. It was a lot healthier than what we were used to. She was enthusiastic and fun so I pretended to like some of it but for the most part it was terrible. Senior didn’t pretend to like it. My mother actually liked it. Uncle Tony didn’t taste the food; he was too involved with the evaluation taking place. My father didn’t notice it. He just shovelled it into his mouth like any other meal as he digested her fascinating ideas.

In a house of corrupt war veterans it was taboo to talk about war in such a demeaning way. My father thought she had moxy to be so bold about her ideas when everyone else tiptoed around the topic with them. For all she knew, Uncle Ricky had died serving his country. For all she knew my father and Uncle Tony believed in the cause, believed in the war. For all she knew she was compromising our approval with her ideals but she didn’t care. Save Senior, we were all suitably impressed by that.

Things were going fairly well, so well that when the meal ended Uncle Tony didn’t drive her home right away like the others. She offered to wash the dishes and Uncle Tony helped her just like my parents did sometimes. He wanted Scotch to be his Penny.

You make me melt like a popsicle on the 4th of July. (Little Rascals)

High school was humbling. There were already well-established rock stars. I didn’t really like it and I tried to gain friends with drugs but that usually got me in trouble. I was an expert at getting in trouble.

My mother cried each time she met me in the principal’s office. Senior was friends with the principal and by the grace of his carefully worded calls alone I eluded stays at a juvenile detention center. I wasn’t old enough for jail yet but everyone was concerned that was where I was headed, everyone except me. I always had faith that my family would protect me.

“She’ll straighten out,” Uncle Tony assured, “you should have seen what I was like at her age.”

“I did,” said Senior.

“And look at me now!”

My father and Senior looked at him sceptically. My mother cried. I didn’t care really, but I heard it anyway as I lay on my bedroom floor, which sat right above the kitchen.

I was, as per usual, high.

“Penny, don’t cry.” My father put his arm around her. My bad behaviour hurt him more than her because he suffered twice: his daughter was becoming a criminal and his wife was upset. The latter was worse to him. Penny was more than just a wife, she was his world and I think he resented me at times for hurting her. I was living in my mother’s shadow. Everyone was. She was an angel among heathens.

“It’s this city,” my father complained. He rustled the newspaper angrily. “Philadelphia is going to the dogs. This used to be the home of brotherly love now it’s the home of violence, drugs and crime.”

Uncle Tony didn’t like it any more than my father when my mother was upset. It made everyone uncomfortable.

“It’ll be okay, Penny,” Uncle Tony offered and grazed his hand over her arm sympathetically.

Uncle Tony was looking for his own Penny. He had a three step screening process. There were girls who stayed over sometimes. That was no surprise. Girls who liked drugs liked Uncle Tony. He didn’t go out to the clubs often, mostly just on business, but he never had trouble meeting them, especially not after Vincent died. With the family dwindling down and his relationship with my father quickly becoming the most significant relationship in his life, Tommy encouraged fostering these relationships.

Step two was breakfast. If Tony snuck them out in a manner he considered discrete or even if he just smuggled something upstairs she had not advanced to step two. The players who successfully landed a spot in the second stage of screening were invited to breakfast with the family. I found it amusing, Senior didn’t play ball, my mother was cordial but uncomfortable, and my father loved it. He would quiz them and kid with them. My father found it all very amusing and he embraced it. Uncle Tony appreciated that but he could get defensive when my father went too far.

Uncle Tony cared about everyone’s opinion and while he drove her home, we would talk over what we would disclose before he returned. Senior hated the process. It was demeaning for the women and threatened the integrity of his house, but when Uncle Tony was gone he would offer something: a “hell no” or an “okay”. We would mould our opinions around his. Senior wouldn’t speak, sometimes he wouldn’t even stay, but Uncle Tony would try to get his opinion every time nonetheless.

Uncle Tony would take away our opinion, couple it with his own opinion, and then said girl would advance to step three, or she wouldn’t.

Romantic love is mental illness. (Fran Lebowitz)

When Liam took the job as security guard all the boys were concerned with how he acquired this position. I proudly told someone, who told everyone. Liam punched me in the face. I had a black eye for a week and a half.

“My name’s Tommy,” my father told Liam when he dropped by the playground the day after I came home in tears with my haggard eye. “I’m Honey’s father.”

Liam gulped and fear slid down his throat with his little hand enclosed in my father’s hand, a hand that has killed a man. I wonder if Liam could feel death in his hand even though he didn’t know what my father had done. Judging by Liam’s face, he could.

“I hear you gave Honey a black eye.”

He shook his head and nodded simultaneously. His mouth hung open. He looked dumb. I wished I had chosen a braver boy.

“Honey is my only daughter and I love her very much. Is there anyone that you love very much? Your mother maybe?”

“I love my mom,” he stuttered.

“How would you feel if someone hurt your mother? I bet you would feel the same way I feel right now. It’s not a very nice feeling, Liam. I don’t think you would like to feel like this so I don’t think you should ever hurt my daughter again.”

Simultaneously, he shook and nodded his head again.

“Honey,” my father called out toward my place at the top of the slide, “can you make sure you let me know if this boy does anything to hurt you again?”

I nodded.

“Anything.”

I nodded.

“If he looks at you the wrong way,” he said to me but was looking at Liam, “I want you to let me know and I’ll make sure he never hurts anyone ever again.”

Liam gulped again.

My father gave me a kiss on the cheek and left. I had street credit in the playground before but after that things changed. Liam’s position as security guard of the slide was up for grabs and all the boys realized that there was a lot of power in the coveted position. The group of kids waiting to be chosen to climb the slide were all calling out for my approval. All the boys wanted to kiss me, a small sacrifice to secure a permanent place of power on the top of the slide. I was an elementary school rock star.

The spotlight shines upon you and how could anybody deny you? (Coldplay)

There were two girls at school who thought I was brilliant. Okay, maybe they didn’t, but they let me believe they did and that was all I needed. They were afraid of me and as far as I was concerned that was a good enough basis for a friendship.

We sat at the top of the slide in the school playground and we permitted some kids to come up and others we did not. Some didn’t mind, some did. Some we forced to slide down, some wanted to slide down, either way once you went down you were at our mercy to regain entry at the top of the slide again.

One boy pushed me down the slide. He cheered: “I’ve defeated the Queen.”

He was the first boy I kissed. His name was William but everyone called him Willie. I called him Liam and that became his name.

He pretended to be too cool for girls, all boys did then. I ambushed him behind the school and dared him to kiss me.

“Ew.”

“Ha! I knew you were too much of a sissy.”

He furrowed his eyebrow and made a fist.

“I’ll let you be the security guard of the slide. You can have the final say in who gets up to the top and who doesn’t.”

He considered this.

I didn’t have time for him to search his soul. I quickly kissed him. It wasn’t magical. There was manipulation and bribery and I didn’t let a moment form first or linger after. I stole a kiss. I had no problem with stealing anything. Now that was over.

We read to know we're not alone. (C.S. Lewis)

Something peculiar my mother did for a long as I can remember was read to my father. When I was a baby, a toddler, a child, it was sweet how I would sit between my parents in their bed and my mother would read and my father would hold me and listen intently.

When I was a little older, ten maybe, I walked by my parent’s bedroom and behind the closed door, under the low glow of her bedside lamp, my mother read to my father. I sat outside their door and listened. Her voice was muffled as it filtered through the sealed bedroom but I could make out the story. There was something beautiful about it, as strange as it seemed. My father was like a child in the way my mother treated him and cared for him. I fell asleep outside their door and slept there on the hardwood floor until my father left the room in the middle of the night after my mother had fallen asleep. He scooped me up and tucked me into their bed beside my mother. He paused in the doorway and returned to the bed. He climbed onto the edge of the bed and watched us, I know because when I stirred in the night between the warm bodies of my nearby parents, my eyes creaked open and there he was: wide awake watching.

“Shh,” he whispered with his index finger to his lips, “go back to sleep, Honey.”

I rolled over and fell back asleep instantly. He was proud that we were his family. It’s a comforting feeling to know your parents are proud of you before you even do anything to earn it. It didn’t slow my drive though. I kept learning, dreaming, reaching.