--- R A E   P A R I S

"There are little people. I know they're not real, but I see them. They're about this tall."      Shelley's father pauses and holds up his hands, places one underneath the other. Left hand, palm side up on the bottom because it's the weakest. Right hand, palm side down, on top. His hands cup the air as if he's holding something precious. Even though his right hand is stronger, it shakes along with his left hand. Shelley doesn't want to fixate on the shaking. She stares at the space between his hands and tries to guess how tall the little people are. Guessing makes her nervous; she's always afraid she'll get it wrong. But staring at her father's hands, the weaker one on the bottom, the stronger one on top, she guesses that the little people he knows don't exist but still sees are about a foot tall—give or take an inch due to the shaking hands.      "I see them all the time," he says. "You wouldn't believe it. From the time I wake up ‘till the time I sleep. Those little suckers are there."      His hands drop onto his lap as if something heavy has fallen on them. Her eyes fall to his feet. Even though it's summer, he wears thick socks—diabetes. Pulled up tight, the socks sit just below his calves, his swollen feet hidden inside like two sausages.      Shelley remembers when he used to soak his feet in an orange tub filled with Epsom salts and warm water. Even though he was only a few feet away from the kitchen, he'd call upstairs to her or her younger sister, Tara, never her brothers whose rooms were downstairs, to come and put ice in his glass, so he could pour himself some Gallo. Then, she or Tara would have to help him lift his slimy feet out of the tub and dump the contents in the backyard. The smelly, milky water with the flakes of skin floating at the top inspired a profound anger in her not even the ground could absorb. With nowhere for it to go, Shelley learned to distance herself so that any disgusting task, including the daily act of living with a father she despised, became a shadowy thing outside of her.      Her father raises his hands once more to show her how small the little people are. A foot, she thinks again, maybe two. She wants to know if what he sees is anything like being on acid. Mushrooms, maybe. "Do they scare you, Daddy?" she asks.      His hands collapse into his lap. He laughs hard. Her body tenses up in a familiar way. "Shoot, they don't scare me none." His voice changes. He sounds contemplative, as if he's describing a bottle of wine. "I find them amusing," he says. "There's a Black guy with a huge Afro. He's funny, the Black guy with the Afro. He's funny, man." He shakes his head, as if he can't believe how funny the Black guy with the afro is. "And there's a guy with a scrunched up face. Looks just like Mr. Magoo. The Black guy's the funny one, but this guy looks angry. Like this." He closes his eyes tight and scrunches up his face.      Shelley has been looking at him sideways, the way she would with a crazy lady who sits next to her at a bus stop, as if she wasn't sure what was inside her purse—a knife or some mints, but now, since his eyes are shut, she stares at him head on. The folds in the corners of his eyes sandwich together like thick layers of pale lunchmeat. A shiny, snail-like film threatens to ooze from the corners—the glaucoma. His nose, swollen and lumpy, rises towards his eyebrows. His mouth stretches into a wide, toothy grin. Even as he tries to wind his face up tight, his cheeks sink. If I pull on his cheeks, thinks Shelley, the skin will stretch and tear like gobs of Silly Putty. Left in the sun, he'll melt away.      He opens his eyes. Shelley turns away right before he does. Living with a monster will do that, she thinks, teach you how to anticipate its every move. Her boss tells her how intuitive she is with the high school kids she mentors. Not intuitive, she always says to herself, vigilant. She has read all the books: in order to survive, she developed necessary coping skills. Knowing doesn't help her with not wanting to look into her father's eyes. She's not sure what she's more afraid of: what she might see or what she won't, the recognition of things remembered or the absence of them.      Her father closes his eyes, scrunches up his face again and lets go. Scrunch and release. Scrunch. Release. Grin.Grin.Grin. Shelley's afraid his head will explode. He stops. Laughs. She laughs too. At how silly he looks. At how they're laughing at something that doesn't exist. Because it's better than screaming.      He points across the kitchen table, which is covered with stacks of bills and other papers. "See, I know he's not there, but I still see him. They don't bother me none, but sometimes they wake me up at night, tell me when people are trying to break in. Your mother thinks I'm crazy. I'm not crazy. I know what's real. It's those kids down the street. Goddamn drug dealers." He sighs. "I'm in so much pain." He stares off toward the sliding glass door that opens onto the backyard.      Shelley looks out with him onto the patio where old furniture sits like abandoned, dusty children. A rotten picnic table. A rusted barbeque. Remnants of the only times her father would cook—meat, too charred to eat. The branches of the eucalyptus tree, which sits in the far left corner, reach all the way across the yard to the patio. Shelley can see the branches from where she sits. She and Tara used to call it the money tree. They would use the leaves when they played pretend. One day, our house. One day, not here.      Once, in the midst of an argument, her mother locked herself in the upstairs bathroom. Her father took it upon himself to throw his shoes at every light fixture in the house, as if putting them all in darkness might force her mother out of hiding. Shelley's brothers, as usual, were elsewhere. She and Tara cowered in a corner like skittish ghosts. He had never hit any of them before, but the terror of "what if" made them jumpy. Then, there he was, black loafer in hand, looking down at them. "She won't talk to me," he said, as if it wasn't his fault. Shelley had run to the backyard and swiped leaves from the money tree until her fingers bled. It wasn't the first time she had torn the leaves into hundreds of pieces and prayed for her father to die.      Her father moves his hand down the left side of his body. "All down here," he says. "It hurts bad. All of the time."      A part of her wants to reach up and wipe the corners of his runny eyes, like she would with the high school kids who break down in spite of themselves. Another part wants to shake him until he wets himself, tell him he deserves everything he's getting; tell him that, if she could, she'd stay in the chair she's sitting in for however long it's going to take, so she could cheer each body part on as it stutters, stalls, and dies. Instead, with the detachment of a coroner, she stares at his feet and wonders if any of his toenails are black. She wonders how long it will be before his entire body goes numb.      I won't touch you, she swears. Not your feet. Not your hands. Not your eyes. It's Saturday morning. She only has to stay until tomorrow, which is when her mother returns home and resumes her role of victim, soon to be upgraded to saint. # Her father was diagnosed with dementia five months ago. Not Alzheimer's. Not Parkinson's. Dementia. With Lewy Bodies. When Tara first told Shelley, Shelley laughed because it sounded like a cabaret show: Introducing, Dementia with Lewy Bodies! "Dementia sounds like a Black drag queen," she'd said. Tara hadn't found it funny. She sent Shelley articles about the disease and quizzed her about the information. "We have to talk about this, Shelley. Black families don't talk about things like this."      For the past five months, Shelley has read about clumps of protein, which are doing a mean little stomp on her father's brain. No one knows why the clumps form, but soon, they'll take over. Soon, the part of his brain that makes him hallucinate will be the only thing left and he'll stiffen up like a toy soldier. There's nothing anyone can do, but he's still in the early stages. Shelley's job is to stick around.      "Just in case," Tara told her..      "In case of what? Mom was here and he fell."      "She could've stopped him from falling if she wanted to."      "She was sleeping."      "Her window looks out onto the street," said Tara. "How could she not hear? She's harboring so much aggression. I think it made her sleep through his yelling. Or maybe she heard."      "Did you tell her that?"      "Of course not. What good would that have done?"      Shelley had remained silent. For once, she empathized with her mother.      It was her mother who called her last week and told her she was going away for the weekend to visit Tara, who lives in New York. Tara is married with kids. Shelley's mother didn't say that Shelley should come home. She just told Shelley that she was going to visit her grandbabies and oh, by the way, did she mention, "Your Daddy had a fall." Mrs. Carlson called Mrs. Latham who called the paramedics because they found him outside on the sidewalk, in the middle of the night, bellowing like a tipped cow. He thought people were trying to break in and ran out, brandished his cane at invisible drug dealers, screamed for them to "get the fuck off his property." He slipped down the driveway. "Can you believe he went and did that to himself?" her mother asked. When Shelley said it sounded as if he shouldn't be left alone, her mother sighed and assumed her God-Will-Provide voice. "Well," said her mother, "I don't know if he should be left alone, but (sigh) he's going to be." Shelley kicked herself for having taken the bait.      Then, Tara, who had always been good at playing her parents against each other, called Shelley and asked, had she heard, Daddy had fallen. Soon, Tara was crying. He could've broken something. If only Tara lived closer. Like Shelley. It didn't matter that their three brothers all lived in L.A., less than thirty minutes away. Like getting ice for her father's drinks, it was understood that no matter how far away any of them were, the girls were always closer. Shelley agreed to fly down to L.A. from San Francisco, only for a night, mostly to shut Tara up, but also because, as hard as she tries, she can't shake the codependency, which, like some primordial tail, attached itself to her in the womb. # Shelley has to cook him dinner. She finds gumbo from last Christmas in the freezer. Her parents left the South. Left New Orleans. Left segregation. Packed shame, or whatever it meant, away. Tried to forget. Shelley's grandparents: dead before she was born. Aunts, uncles, cousins: as good as dead. The only thing her parents kept alive was the food. From their silence, Shelley learned something about shame.      She reheats the gumbo in the microwave. The smell of filé, sausage and shrimp, chicken and crab, oysters, and the thick brown roux makes her mouth water, but she won't eat with him.       "You want anything to drink, Daddy?"      "Maybe a beer."      She doesn't think twice. Gets him a Coors.      "How's everything up there?" he asks.      Shelley knows he's asking about San Francisco. Always calls it "up there," as if she lives in heaven. New Orleans he calls "down there." And their suburb outside of L.A., not anywhere. Just a limbo place where they live.      "It's fine, Daddy."      "You gettin' married?"      He asks her this every time she comes home. Always tells her good, don't do it. Live your life. She tells him she's not getting married.      "You should get married," he says, "have someone take care of you."      "I can take care of myself." She places his bowl in front of him, spills a little on the table. Pretends not to notice.      "No, you can't." Some invisible pain shoots through him. He winces. He shakes his head. "You think you can, but you can't."      They watch T.V.: footage from the hurricane. When the hurricane first happened, Shelley felt some inner layer that she didn't even know she had rip away from her. Took two days off work and sat in her apartment in the dark, stunned that the loss of a place she'd never been to could knock her down. Months later, says the T.V. What now? What now? People in tent cities. In rooms without roofs. On cruise ships. Food decomposing on shelves. Bodies waiting to be claimed. Bodies missing. Shelley stares at the devastation and wonders if it's possible to feel something emptier than nothing.      Her father shakes his head at the T.V. "A shame," he says, but he says it as if it's two separate words, as if shame is a thing to carry around, not something to feel. He clenches his spoon like a three year old holding a shovel, digs at the gumbo like he'll find something more than shrimp.      She asks about Lena, his sister, Shelley's aunt, who she has only talked to once or twice on the phone. Lena lost her house. Last Shelley heard, Lena was in Boston with her son. "Where's Lena now?" she asks.      He sucks on a crab shell. Spits it out. "Back down there," he says, "with her people."      Shelley doesn't know what that means, but the sound of it makes her ache.      "They shoulda got out," her father says about the people on T.V.      "They couldn't, Daddy. Couldn't afford to."      "Couldn't afford not to. Look at em now. Shoulda got out when we did." He laughs. His shovel hand hits the side of his bowl. Gumbo splatters onto his legs, falls all over the floor. "Goddamnit," he yells.      Shelley flinches, but doesn't move. Listens to him curse out the bowl of gumbo. Grains of rice, pieces of andouille, scattered shellfish: God damn it all to hell.      When he's done cursing out the last of the sausage, he looks at her. "You going to sit there all night or you going to put yourself to use?"      She stands up, silent. Gets a towel from the kitchen. Wets it. Puts on rubber yellow gloves. I won't touch you, she swears again. Squats on the floor in front of him to clean off his legs.. He doesn't say anything to her. She's glad. Makes it easier to pretend none of it's happening.      He wears shorts that go all the way to his knee, beige with lots of pockets on the front and sides; stylish, but too big for his shrunken body. Up and down his legs, scars run. A rose tattoo on the back of his right calve reminds Shelley of everything he hasn't told her. She asked him about the tatoo once. "Got it during Korea," he'd said, "when I was stupid," which Shelley later realized meant drunk. Bulging veins make his pale legs look waterlogged, as if he's just been dredged up from a swamp. She imagines the rest of his skin wrinkled and scarred beneath his clothes and feels sick. A bruise the size of her fist glows purple on the left side of his knee. From the fall he took. She picks off an oyster. She feels guilty and then angry. At him for falling, for getting dementia, for making her feel something other than the uncomplicated, focused, high-school-girl-hate she's used to.      She wipes the last of the roux off his tattoo. Cleans the rest off the floor. She gets up, rinses the towel in the sink, and washes her hands. Doesn't know if she'll ever eat gumbo again. Gets him another bowl. Right when she sits back down, he asks for another beer. She finds her way to the refrigerator with her eyes closed.      Voices from the T.V. call to her: My mama's body's missing. My daddy's gone. My kids still be havin nightmares. The air here is bad. I got sores on my lungs. I find it hard to breathe. We been shittin in buckets for months. This feel familiar. Is this America? Only so much a person can take.      She makes it back to where he sits, her eyes still closed, not hitting a thing. Hands him the beer.      "Thank you, baby," he says.      The people on T.V. stand in debris with the dazed look of zombies, wait for someone to give them a reason to believe they're not dead. # It's night. Her father sleeps in his room downstairs. Shelley stands at the sink in the kitchen and cleans up. She feels like a giant trapped in a 1960's dollhouse. Formica counters. Brass Jell-O Molds on the wall. Avocado green cabinets, sticky with years of grease. Rotary phone on the wall. Her eyes fall on her father's bottle of brandy. She pours herself a glass. It's shit. She gets a Coors out of the fridge, annoyed. At the shitty beer. At herself for agreeing to stay the night. She's not used to being home when it's not the holidays. It's much easier to get drunk then.      She takes her beer and moves through the too-small rooms of her house. She avoids the room where her father sleeps. Shelley can't remember when or why her parents started sleeping in separate rooms. Like everything else they never talked about, it just suddenly was. They communicated through notes left on the kitchen counter. The notes usually had to do with money. Her father's notes: Pay this. Sign this. Her mother's notes: Don't cheat me. Since her father's diagnosis, her parents have started speaking. When Shelley calls now, she'll hear her father yell in the background, "Corinne, thank you for the dinner," or "I'm going to the post office, Corey." Her mother won't admit how happy she is he's sick, how good it must feel to be in charge of his medicine, to have him tell her where he's going, to feel as if she's in control. "Your Daddy's so nice to me now," is all she'll say.      Everywhere Shelley looks, something broken stares back at her. She doesn't remember when things stopped getting fixed, but there must have been a moment when someone asked what difference it would make and was answered with silence. A blank note left on a counter. With every damaged thing, a story hangs, maimed and bruised. The time he threw his shoe at a light fixture. The time he punched the wall. On the stairwell, she passes old photos. Every year, the color in them fades a little more. One day, she thinks, she'll come home, look in the rusty frames and find empty spaces where faces should be. Upstairs, the rooms that used to be hers and Tara's have long stopped feeling like theirs. Her mother's things have overtaken them. A treadmill used as a clothes hanger. Closets filled with clothes that no longer fit her, but might one day.      If Tara was here, thinks Shelley, she would dive into cabinets and emerge with artifacts of a life Shelley doubts ever existed. "See," she'd say, holding up photos like flashcards. "Remember this? Remember?" She'd try to get Shelley to remember when holidays felt normal, when dinners didn't end with someone in tears, but Shelley would shake her head and say, "No. No." Tara accused her once of not wanting to remember. Shelley has moments, quick and visceral, when she thinks she wants to believe those memories are buried deep within her brain, that all she has to do is will them out of hiding, say the magic word, and "Poof!" they'll scurry out like so many white rabbits. It wouldn't make a difference. They wouldn't erase what she does remember.       She starts to feel heavy thinking about all of the junk stuffed in closets, hidden underneath beds, piled on tables. She places her hand on the cabinet that has the photo albums. She thinks, maybe it is all about will. She opens the cabinet. The albums aren't there. Instead, she finds stacks of old Ebony magazines. On the top of one stack stand the Huxstables: Cliff, Claire, Sondra, Denise, Theo, Vanessa, and Rudy, arms around each other, wearing the obnoxious clothes of the eighties. "Jesus Christ," says Shelley. The sight of their one-dimensional, toothy grins sends her running downstairs to grab a six-pack and then outside for air.      She sits on the curb in front of her house. It's late but warm out. Still light. She looks up and down her street. Not much has changed. She used to sit in front of her house during the summer, waiting for other kids to be set free. They'd run up and down the street, as if they were one body, until it was time to go in. Then, arms, legs, heads would separate and disappear. They got older. The separation got more intense. Most of the families she grew up with are still around. But the kids. Like her, some left and only return sometimes. Some disappeared. Others stayed. By choice or by chance, Shelley doesn't want to know.      She sees Marcus. He used to be part of the pack. When she was five, she was trying to get gum out of his mouth when her father appeared out of nowhere and yelled at Marcus to take his black ass home. Last she heard, Marcus had been in and out of jail. He gives her a nod. Shelley holds up a beer. He sits down next to her.      "How you been?" she asks.      He shrugs. "You know."      "How's your family?"      "Cool. Your pops?"      Shelley shrugs. "You know. Old."      "My moms found him outside."      "I heard. Tell her thanks."      He nods. "Your moms said somebody be trying to bust in your house."      Shelley shakes her head, angry at her mother for doing what she always does, put up a front to save face. "He's sick," she says. "Been hearing things."      "Damn."      Shelley nods, grateful for the acknowledgement that it's as fucked up as it sounds. She hands him another beer. They drink some more.       "Street looks the same," she says.      "Do it?"      They look up and down the street. Lawns mowed tight. Hedges clipped clean as the heads of young boys. Shelley looks behind her at her own house. A split-in-half backboard with no rim tilts from the roof. Paint the color of rust peels off like burned skin. Roots of trees push through the driveway like so many buried arms.      "I could paint y'alls house," says Marcus.      "Needs more than paint," says Shelley, all of a sudden embarrassed.      He shrugs.      She wants to ask him what he remembers about her father. She wants to ask him about his own father who she only remembers going from car to house, no smile, ever. She wants to ask him what he remembers about all of the fathers on their street. She can't remember any of them. The mothers she sees: in doorways, on curbs, in the street. Get inside, they say. She knows the fathers were there. Somewhere. She can feel them, the secure threat of them, but she can't see them anywhere. She wonders where they were. She thinks about her brothers who she only sees once a year. She wants to ask Marcus other things, but she doesn't.      They sit like that, on the curb, drinking, not saying much. When the beer's gone, she leans over and kisses him. She concentrates on the pieces. The rough feel of his skin. The faint taste of pot. Cheap beer. Everything sad. All she can hold. She thinks about pulling him closer but doesn't.      The streetlights come on. She pulls away. In his face, not a question. More of a waiting. "I gotta go check on my Daddy," she says. "Sorry."      He nods, gives her the half-smile of someone who knows: take what you can, let the rest go, and whatever you take, don't take it personal.      She gets up and runs inside, like she always did. # Inside, she pokes her head in her father's room. A sour smell makes her back out quick. She goes upstairs. Lies in her mother's bed to watch T.V. She finds the remote control underneath the bed. Next to it, a bottle of Jim Beam, a pair of pantyhose tied around the neck. The bourbon helps explain some of the late night phone calls with her mother, but Shelley's not willing to give it all the credit.      On cue, the phone rings. Her mother. She wants to know how everything's going. Shelley tells her, fine. Everything's great. Couldn't be better. No hallucinations. No paranoia. They're having a great time. They ate gumbo together.      "Oh," her mother sounds disappointed. "I guess he saves his bad spells for me."      Her I-Am-A-Martyr voice ignites the smoldering place in Shelley. "You don't have to stay," she says. "Someone else can take care of him."      Her mother laughs. "Who? You?"      "No," says Shelley, irritated. "I don't know. Someone. Not you."      "I'm not without compassion," her mother says. "What would people?"      Shelley explodes. "That's what you're worried about? That people will say you're not compassionate? What do you think they're saying about you now?"      Her mother doesn't answer her. Shelley knows her mother will be angry when she finds out Shelley told Marcus her father is sick. The whole street will know. Shelley refuses to feel bad. She stares at the bourbon. "You're not fooling anyone," she tells he rmother. "No one was ever fooled. You don't have to stay," she says again, and, because even hundreds of miles away Shelley can see the bull's-eye on her mother's heart, she adds, "You never did."      When her mother finally speaks, she talks to Shelley as if Shelley has forgotten how to wipe her own ass. "You know," she says, "your Daddy and I have a history together," as if that explains everything.      Shelley can see it, their history—a natty-haired girl-baby with milky eyes and a runny nose, swaddled in newspaper and do-rags, stuffed in one of the old cardboard suitcases that still sits on the floor of the closet her parents once shared. The bastard child. Her mother's response does what all her comments are meant to do: shut Shelley up. The years between her parents click like magic locks in her ear.      In the background, Shelley hears Tara: "Ask her if he took his medicine. Ask her if he's moving around okay. Ask her…Ask her…Ask her."      "Hold on," her mother says, "your sister wants to talk to you."      Shelley hears Tara's disembodied voice grow louder, sees the cell phone pass through space, the waves radiating, probably giving them all brain tumors. She hangs up. Turns off her cell phone. The phone next to the bed rings and rings, and then stops—her mother's idea of effort. Shelley knows she won't call back.      She sips on the bourbon and watches a special on T.V. about war vets. Jaime from Stockton is happy to be home. He hugs his wife and baby. A few months later, he holds up a liquor store. The police kill him. His family says how much he changed, how he wouldn't leave the house. The army says Jaime was in a gang before enlisting; he was only returning to his roots. Shelley shakes the bottle of Beam at the T.V. The pantyhose waves in the air. "Bullshit," she says. She thinks about the different ways to wage a war.      She falls asleep and dreams about Jaime who looks like Marcus. He helps her navigate landmines in her house. They hide behind the couch in the living room. On the back of the couch is a hole from the time her father took a knife and slashed the furniture. Not enough to destroy, just enough to be mean. Rose tattoos drawn in blood cover the wall, floor, and ceiling like Christmas wrapping. Jaime's about to give her a present—the secret for identifying traps. He puts his hand over her mouth. Two things you need to know. First: Don't make a sound. Shelley nods. She knows how to be silent. He's about to tell her the second, but Shelley can't breathe. He's suffocating her. The tattoos bleed. She wants to know the secret, but she finds it hard to breathe.      She wakes up. Her father's hand presses on her mouth. He stands over her with the empty, wild look of a man who sees without understanding. "Corinne," he whispers loud, "they're trying to get inside."      She freezes, not sure if it's Jaime or Marcus. Not sure who or where she is. She remembers. Slaps his hand away. Rolls out of bed on the side away from him, a pillow in her hands. She holds it in front of her like a shield, as if it can protect her from invisible people and a father who doesn't recognize her. The T.V., fuzzy with lines, makes her father's white t-shirt and boxers glow the blue, cotton-candy color of cartoons.      He looks out the window. His boxers open partway. The tip of his penis pokes out, shriveled and limp, like a sick worm. Shelley looks away.      "They're out there," he says.      Shelley feels nauseous. "Who, Daddy?"      "Those goddamn kids down the street. They know I'm sick. Listen." He looks around the room, listening for something Shelley can't hear. "You hear that, Corey?"      Shelley's afraid to tell him who she is, afraid of what he'll do if he recognizes her, afraid of what he'll do if he doesn't. She says his name each time she speaks, hopes that like an alarm it will startle him back to her reality.      She clutches the pillow, shakes her head. "Daddy, I don't hear anything."      He glares at her. "Don't tell me you don't hear nothing."      "But I don't, Daddy."      He looks around the room, and then outside once more. "Call the police."      Her father has called the police almost every night for two months. The police warned her mother if he calls again they're going to get fined.      "I'm not calling the police, Daddy."      "Call them," he orders.      She holds on tight to the pillow. She shakes, from fear and from the surge of power that rushes through her when she says, "No."      He reaches for the phone. She drops the pillow, jumps onto the bed, and grabs his arm. He yanks her. She falls forward. His strength surprises, and then pisses her off. She yanks back. He falls on top of her on the bed, the entire fleshy, bruised mess of him. He lets out a high-pitched, painful wail like nothing she has ever heard before, like the dead coming back to life and dying all over again. She feels something on her thigh, wrinkled and cold. All she can think is "no." No, she doesn't want him on top of her. Doesn't want to feel him against her leg. Doesn't want to hear him howling. She didn't sign up for this. None of it. She never had a choice. Just in case. Not for this. Not ever. No. He thrashes about, crying and screaming, "Call them. Call them."      She stops fighting. She finds herself doing what she has always done with him. "Okay, Daddy," she says, "I'll call the police."      His head falls on the pillow to the side of her own. His screams die down to whimpers, which arrive, muffled, from some far away place to deep inside her ear. Her body lies, stiff as a plank, beneath his sloppy weight. She has never been this close to him. She thinks about her mother, but it's too much to hold onto. She grabs his shoulders, tells him she's going to move him. Uses her knee to roll him to the side. He moans. She stands up quick. Grabs her cell phone. Pretends to dial. "People trying to break in. Uh huh. Okay. Thanks."      He manages to sit up. Looks around. Listens. "They won't get here in time."      Shelley remembers the articles Tara sent her. No use trying to convince someone that what they see isn't real, like trying to tell Jesus-freaks God doesn't exist.      "No one's trying to break in, Daddy," Shelley says. "It's my friend." He looks confused. She keeps talking. "It's Marcus. He's excited about me being here. Let's go downstairs. I'll tell him to go home."      He nods, still looking confused but follows her downstairs. She walks over to the door that opens to the backyard.      "Shelley?" he whispers.      She turns. It takes her a second to place his expression. Somewhere between recognition and terror. Can place it only because she has felt it in her own face. She thinks about all the things she could do to make his terror more real.      "Shelley?" he says again.      What difference would it make?      "It's okay, Daddy," she says, hating him, hating herself for not being strong enough to terrify him the way he has always terrified her. She opens the door and steps into the darkness onto the patio with the abandoned furniture. "Go home," she says. "My Daddy's trying to sleep. I'll see you tomorrow."      She steps back inside. He looks relieved. She takes him to his room. The sour smell makes her cover her nose with her hand. His bed is bare except for an old, fuzzy blanket and the plastic cover the bed must have come in.      "Where are your sheets, Daddy?"      He doesn't answer her. He falls onto the plastic and yanks the blanket over him. Shelley spots his sheets on the floor of the closet bundled up. A dark stain, like a map of some other world, seeps through. The sour smell. She turns to leave.      And then out of nowhere. "I've lived twenty years longer than my own father," he says.       Shelley freezes. The first rule: don't make a sound. She doesn't know what to do next. She's in unfamiliar territory with only a pee stain to guide her. She turns back around. He stares at the ceiling. She doesn't know if he's talking to her, the Black guy with the Afro, or Mr. Magoo.      "He died of diabetes."      "Did he drink too?" she asks.      "Oh, yeah. Just beer, though."      "Bullshit," she says, not caring if he hears her. She wants to throw something at him, wants to take his face and rub it in his dirty sheets, wants to ask him if he understands what's happening to him, if he understands what's happening to any of them, but he has fallen asleep.      On his back. He breathes hard, gurgles, as if something is caught in his throat. The ooze that threatened to drip earlier from his eyes does so—two shiny snail-trails disappear down the side of his face. She turns off his light. The light from the neighbor's front yard and the moon shine together through his window and turn his face a strange yellow. A wayward moth lands on his forehead. Its proboscis digs into his skin. Another one flies into his open mouth. Shelley looks around for a nest, but it's too dark and there are too many piles of junk and it smells too bad to stay and look for one. Two more moths descend, one on his nose, another in his ear. Shelley doesn't wait for the rest, doesn't want to watch them eat him from inside, gnawing away until nothing remains.      She runs upstairs to her mother's room and gets the bourbon. Retreats to her old room. Shuts the door. Puts a chair underneath the knob. Throws her mother's clothes off the bed. Crawls underneath the blankets. Sips on bourbon, afraid to go to sleep, afraid to stay awake.      He wakes up two more times. Pounds on her door. Each time, Shelley leads him back downstairs, past photos fading fast. Steps out underneath the money tree. Calls out to no one that it's time to go home.