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was wasted.
    â€œHi-, sh-shhweetie,” Mom groggily cooed back.
    The TV room was small and stuffy. There were about five patients already in there watching Donahue, taking up all the seats, so we could only visit one at a time, while the rest stayed near the door or out in the hallway. I went first, while my brother Henry leaned onthe wall just inside the door awaiting his turn. Mom was rocking and wobbling in her chair so I held her hands and stood in front of her. “How are you?”
    â€œShooo-ooo mush better, babe.” She swayed my hands in hers as if in a dance. “Mu-uuush better. H-hooome soon,” she sang.
    I wanted to leave so badly, run out of there. I loved my mom, but it was all so much. I knew she wasn’t as crazy as all this. She didn’t need to be here. She looked like a tiny, fucked-up, baby bunny, huddled in her chair, flanked by genuinely psychotic humans straight out of central casting. The wall-eyed schizo lady chimed in, chuckling in a slurred south Boston accent, “She’s good naow, but you shoulda seent ’er when theyz brung ’er in heeyuh.”
    With that my mom shook to her feet, swung her arm in slow motion to point at the lady. I saw bruises spreading out from under a wide bandage on her forearm.
    â€œDon’tchoo talk to my children!!!” She was shaking and crying as the woman cackled and snorted, all satisfied with herself on the couch. It seemed like everyone started to wake up at that point, and make some kind of crazy noise in response to the weird confrontation unfolding during Donahue .
    â€œDon’tchoo dare!!!” Mom wailed.
    I looked back to the doorway at my brothers. Henry started toward me. I looked at John, I wanted him to come in and intervene, too, but he wasn’t looking at me, or even aware of the medicated mayhem unfolding in the room. He was staring hard at something down the hall. He had both his hands on either side of the door, as if bracing himself. Henry and I do-si-do-ed in front of our weeping mom, so that I could get to the door and he could calm her down. He took her hands.
    â€œMom,” he started.
    â€œShe’s soo mean !” she said.
    â€œSit down, Ma,” he said calmly as he got her to sit back down. Even at thirteen, Henry had a solid presence, normal and unflappable. He quieted Mom into her chair and everyone seemed to settle back into their haze-and-stare mode. Mom finally noticed my brother was holding her hands and lit up a little as he squatted in front of her, “How are you, Mom?”
    â€œSo-ooo mush better . . . home soon . . .”
    John was still blocking the doorway, looking down the hall, his jaw set and his body stiff. I got to the door and tried to get on the other side of him but he wouldn’t budge. Before he put his hand on my shoulder to turn me to face inside the TV room again, I got a good look at what he was watching.
    Helga the whore had come back into the hallway with a slash of red lipstick on and was in a semisquat plié, knees cranked open to my brother, rubbing herself desperately with the bristles of a paddle hairbrush. John pushed me back in the room by my shoulder, and stood firm. I heard a nurse thump up the hallway to get Helga to stop. I heard little of the exchange other than Helga saying, “But he’s so beautiful!” Then she sang like a child, “Gimme ten more minutes! Gimme ten more minutes!”
    When the nurse got Helga handled, John finally let go of the door and came in. He gave Mom a quick, awkward hug and we were done.
    We were silent all the way home.

The Seventies
    I looked just like my mom, everyone said so, but, in no time, I grew taller than her. Way taller, in fact. She was five foot two, and by my ninth birthday, I had at least three inches on her. My height, plus my big, smart-ass mouth, made people think I was much older. They also assumed I was tough. Mouthy and fisty, I had started a bit of a fighting