I guess it’s only right to start at the beginning.

I’m the youngest in a family of nine. My dad, Norris, was a Black man from the deep South... Mississippi, to be exact.

My mom, Linda, was a white woman from Illinois. They met in Job Corps, both probably carrying more weight in their souls than they could put into words.

Mom already had four kids of her own when they met; Sabrina, the oldest; then the twins, Marcus and Nathaniel; and Freddie. Together, they had three more: AnWaR, then the last two.. me and my twin brother Nicholas. I’m Nicole, but my family didn’t call me that much.

To them, I was Sassey-Boo.

We didn’t have much. Welfare, food stamps, and Section 8 housing were a way of life, not a phase. But what we lacked in money, we made up for in chaos. And love, sometimes the hard kind, the kind that comes through for you when nothing else does. My childhood was drenched in struggle, but it wasn’t empty.

Both of my parents battled drug addiction. For as far back as my memory stretches, there was always something heavy in the air, smoke, yelling, glass breaking, or sirens. Domestic violence wasn’t an event; it was a pattern. I don’t remember a time where that wasn’t part of the background noise.

We moved a lot. Five states before I even turned ten: Washington, Colorado, Wisconsin, Mississippi, and then finally, in 1991, we landed in Portland. The reason for all that moving? My mama was running from my dad. They’d fight, loud, brutal, and bloody. She’d call the cops, he’d get locked up, and we’d pack up and disappear, chasing her promises of a fresh start. We’d end up in a homeless shelter in a new city. She’d tell us things were going to be different this time. Better. And just when we started to believe it, Dad would show up like a ghost she couldn’t shake.

It was the worst kind of cycle; one that never seemed to break. There was no real sense of stability. Just motion. Chaos dressed up as change. We were always packing, always moving, always hoping. But we were kids. We had no say in any of it. No choice. No voice. Just suitcases, shelters, and silence.

Over time, our family name started to carry a certain weight, and not the good kind. Word travels fast through bloodlines and church circles. The shame of my daddy’s actions and the choices my mama made followed us like a shadow. It felt like we weren’t just poor; we were pitied, avoided, and judged. And in each new state, each new beginning, something traumatic would happen that scattered us further apart.

Colorado was one of those places. I remember the station wagon we all crammed into, restless and hungry. My grandma... my mom’s mama... pulled a gun on my dad right there on the freeway. We kids sat on the side of the road, too young to understand but old enough to feel the fear settle in our bones. Days later, we were headed to Mississippi, and just like that, my sister Sabrina was gone. I was seven years old, and I wouldn’t see or hear from her again until I was sixteen.

When we got to Mississippi, the violence picked right back up. Another brutal brawl between my parents, another jail cell for my father. That was the moment my older twin brothers, Marcus and Nathaniel, decided they’d had enough. They stayed behind in the South, living with folks who weren’t even blood, while the rest of us moved on to Washington. I wouldn’t lay eyes on them again until I was twelve.

My dad… he had a wicked way of separating us, not just physically, but emotionally. If you weren’t his child by blood, you weren’t treated like one. He made sure they felt it.

And Freddie.

Freddie got the worst of it. The beatings, the rage, the cold shoulder. He wasn’t just mistreated, he was broken. I don’t think he’s ever truly recovered. The damage done to him dug deep. Deeper than any of us could reach.

The cycle didn’t end.

It never really does, does it?

It just changes addresses.

Mama moved us; me, Freddie, AnWaR, and NiC, into a new place, dragging along our tired hope and broken trust like old luggage. We fled to Washington to stay with Mama’s longtime friend, Loni.
Loni was tough as nails. She had three kids of her own; Johnny, Shawn, and Bobbi-Jo, our god-siblings. Bobbi-Jo was locked up at the time, and Loni? She hated my dad. Not just annoyed or bothered... hated him with her whole chest. The kind of hate that came from watching someone she loved get torn apart too many times.

One day after school, Mama walked us into the apartment building. We were laughing, maybe even a little lighthearted, like kids should be. But halfway down the hallway, she stopped. Her voice dropped to a whisper, barely a breath.

“Your dad found us again.”

Her words floated in the air like smoke, impossible to grasp but choking just the same. She looked so tired; tired of running, tired of pretending, tired of trying to protect us from something she never truly escaped herself.

“Dad is coming back,” she said, like she couldn’t believe it either.

I saw it in my brothers’ eyes, the way the light dimmed. Freddie's lashes were soaked with silent tears. We didn’t say much. Didn’t need to. That tiny mustard seed of hope we had, hope that maybe this time was different, shriveled up and died in that hallway.

“How could you tell him where we are, Mom?” Freddie asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

We all walked into Loni’s apartment like ghosts, confused, defeated, and bracing for what was next. Loni was already sitting at her kitchen table, her face hard with rage. Her lips were tight, her eyes locked on Mama like she was waiting for an explanation she already knew she wouldn’t accept.

I ducked into Shawn’s room, trying to escape the heat of it all. As I closed the door, I heard Loni’s voice cut through the quiet:

“You’re ruining those kids.”

And just like that, I felt it settle in my bones again.

Yeah… it’s never gonna change, I thought as I clicked the door shut behind me.

⸻

He came back by Greyhound.

Mama had us all standing there like this was supposed to be some joyful reunion, like the return of a long-lost hero. We stood there at that bus stop, watching and dreading the arrival like a storm we couldn’t stop.

My heart thudded in my chest, each second dragging heavier than the last.

I looked up at Mama’s face, silently begging her to change her mind. To turn us around and say, “Never mind, let’s go home."

Maybe even laugh and say, “Gotcha!” But this wasn’t a prank. This was real, and cruel.

Bringing back the man who wrecked every chance we ever had at peace felt like betrayal in broad daylight. My own father. The one who’d made every home feel like a war zone.

And then the bus pulled in.

Her face lit up like it was Christmas morning, and that was all I needed to know, he was on that bus. He stepped off like he’d just returned from war. But the only battle he ever fought in was the war on drugs, and even that one, he lost. He grinned like we were all supposed to run to him, like we’d missed him.

She ran to him. Like, she LITERALLY ran.

I clenched my jaw, fighting back the hot tears that wanted to spill out. I didn’t want him there. I didn’t want this. And then, I felt AnWaR’s hand slide into mine. His grip was firm, grounding.

“It’s gonna be okay, Sassey Boo. I won’t let nobody hurt you.”

That was the thing about AnWaR. Even when everything around us was falling apart, he had this way of shielding me, like a big brother and a best friend rolled into one.

Dad walked up slow, with that same sorry look he always wore when he “found” us. Like he wanted credit just for showing up.

“Hey, kids,” he said, voice thin and shaky.

NiC ran straight to him. My twin. NiC had always had this strange attachment to Dad, like nothing he did ever changed how NiC saw him. He looked just like him too, same eyes, same walk, same quiet mystery behind the smile.

Mama hated that. She treated NiC different from the rest of us because of it. Said he reminded her too much of Norris. I guess, for NiC, Dad’s return felt like relief. Like finally, someone saw him.

“Hey, Boo,” Dad said to me, stopping right in front of me. “How you been?”

I said nothing. If I spoke the truth, if I told him I wished he’d never found us, I was afraid of what might happen. Maybe he’d hit me. Maybe Mama would. Maybe even NiC. Silence felt safer.

“She’s okay, Dad. She’s just tired,” AnWaR said quickly, answering for me like he always did when I couldn’t.

Dad nodded, turned to hug AnWaR, then looked toward Freddie.

“Hey, Fred.”

But Freddie didn’t respond. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t even blink. We all knew what Dad’s return meant for him. Freddie was the last one in the house who wasn’t his biological child. And that was a dangerous thing in our world.

Freddie was about to pay the price, for nothing more than being another man’s son. A whole year of hell waited for him, and there wasn’t a thing any of us could do to stop it.

We didn’t have a place to live after that.

Loni was furious about Dad's return. Said she wasn’t about to sit by and watch Mama walk us all back into the storm she had just dragged us out of. So, she made a decision, a hard one but probably the right one, and helped Mama find a shelter that would take us all in.

That shelter became our new “home.”

One room.
Two bunk beds.
A full-size bed jammed in like an afterthought.
Six souls stacked like books on a shelf, trying to rest without peace. We shared a kitchen with other families and played outside with kids whose lives were just as upside down as ours. Some were funny, some were mean, most were broken in ways we understood without having to speak.

We didn’t have nice clothes, didn’t have much food. We were always the new kids. The shelter kids. The ones with secondhand shoes and nothing in our lunch but government cheese and survival.

That’s about the time NiC started stealing.

He was bold with it too; hit every corner store we passed like it was his personal pantry. And he never kept it to himself. He shared everything he snatched: Now & Laters, soda, little toys, whatever. In his own rebellious way, he was taking care of us.

At school, NiC became that kid, the one everybody noticed. His green eyes sparkled like mischief. His smile was straight from a toothpaste commercial. And he was bad AF. Didn’t care about rules, didn’t care about consequences. Somehow, he made broken look brave.

AnWaR was still my anchor.

He’d find me at any moment, on the playground, in the hall, even waiting in line for dinner, and wrap his arms around me like a shield. “You good, Sassey Boo?” he’d ask. And even if I wasn’t, just hearing his voice made me feel like I could be. He was always right there when the world felt too loud.

Freddie lived in his own world.

He joined us when we played. Laughed when we laughed. But sometimes, I’d catch him mumbling to himself, having full-on conversations with no one. He’d say something, then answer it like it made perfect sense. Some folks might’ve thought it was strange, but to me, it was just Freddie. My brother. My normal.

Dad still couldn’t find a job like Mama needed him to. So, the arguing started again; loud, daily, and familiar. He kept saying he wasn’t using. Claimed he was a minister now, that God was leading him back.

Mama gave him grace.

Or maybe it was habit.

Either way, we ended up joining a church, Portland Miracle Revival. It was connected to folks we knew from the South. That gave us a little comfort, a little structure. Sundays were for shouting hallelujahs. Thursdays were for Bible study. We even learned how to pretend we were okay.

Mama got close with the Scott women, and Dad started hanging with the Scott men. We didn’t have blood family in Portland, but we started calling them all “cousin.” That’s how survival works sometimes, you create a tribe out of strangers and call it family because you need to believe you belong somewhere.

It went pretty well for a while.

Church gave us a rhythm, a little routine we weren’t used to. Dad found a job. Mama found us a house. The rooms were cold but full of promise. It felt like maybe, just maybe, this chapter would turn out different. We laughed more. Slept deeper. Ate together at the table sometimes. There was even music in the background, not the kind that came with yelling, but the kind that gave our bones a little peace.

But there were always signs when Dad started slipping.

First, the smiles stopped showing up.
Then the cussing crept back in, like a warning siren only we kids could hear.
The arguments with Mama got louder, shorter, sharper.
He’d come home late from work, smelling like the kind of liquor that takes love and turns it to rage. We knew the signs. We could read that script backwards.

And once he locked himself in the bathroom for hours, we knew.

One night, it got real bad.

They were fighting, louder than usual. The kind of bad that makes your whole body go numb before the shouting even ends. Then it went quiet. Too quiet. Mama locked herself in the upstairs room. We all froze, unsure if silence meant safety.

Then, BOOM.
The sound of Daddy kicking the door in.

We rushed down the stairs like a stampede of panic.
And there she was... Mama... on the floor, face pale, arms bent like wings that didn’t work anymore.
All I could think was: “Why would she leave us with him?”

That night, our living room turned into a prison.
A holding cell full of fear and confusion.
We didn’t sleep.

We just listened.
For a siren.

A scream. A clue. A sign.

Hours passed like they were dragging chains behind them.

And then, as if dawn had the nerve to show its face, Pastor Scott arrived.

He brought food and concern, but I couldn’t eat. My stomach was twisted with a kind of rage I hadn’t met before. A grown kind. A knowing.
He said he spoke to her. Said she sent him to check on us.

But where was she?
Why didn’t she just call us?

She was rushed off by ambulance hours before.
And Dad? He disappeared like a ghost with bad intentions.
Gone. Like always.

Once again, we were left to pick up the broken pieces of our lives with hands that were too young to hold trauma like that.
Just kids; tired, confused, trying to breathe through the silence.

When Mama finally came back, she wore that same defeated expression, the one we knew all too well. The look she gave every time she chose him over herself. Over us. And something inside me cracked.

It was the kind of crack you don’t notice until your hope starts leaking through.

Even AnWaR’s arms couldn’t make me believe this time.
Even his words, warm as they were, sounded like echoes.
I stopped believing in happy endings.
I stopped believing in prayers.

Because what is faith…
when all we ever did was survive?