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Years ago, when I was about seven years old, I hid in the shadows cast by my mother and grandmother. It was dusk and they were arguing in a dimly lit apartment I had never been in before. Their urgent whispers, like the darkness, felt like a cloak covering me in its shadow. I felt lost and dazed by all the secrecy. Moments earlier, the three of us had climbed up a flight of stairs and tiptoed down the hallway as if we were criminals. When we found the right apartment grandmother knocked on the door so gently that I hardly heard her. But soon someone approached the door, pressing an eye against the peephole. Then a woman opened the door and waved us in. We passed through the partial opening as quietly as hot air rising to the ceiling. The woman was very fidgety and spoke nervously, surprised to see us at this hour. Hearing the fearful pleading in my mother's voice, she agreed that we could stay the night.
“But you must leave before daylight,” she insisted, and looked to mother for agreement.
Mother nodded and hugged her friend saying, “Yes, I understand. Thank you, thank you.”
The friend brought out a blanket, which she spread on the floor. She motioned my grandmother to the couch. Mother and I slept on the floor but I stayed in my clothes because the blanket was itchy and smelled from moth balls.
I couldn't sleep. I tried to figure out exactly what day and what time it was. I had trouble remembering everything that had happened that day.
It probably had been earlier that afternoon while my mother was at work that I had been sitting silently on the floor watching my grandmother