Hush little baby, don’t say a word

Momma’s gonna buy you a mockingbird

It was my niece’s favorite nursery rhyme. Always calmed her down, usually put her to sleep. Even when I sang it, which, I will admit, is no experience for the discriminating. Her tastes have complicated since, but what can you expect out of a three-year-old? I was fourteen myself, singing loudly if inexpertly. I had to be loud to drown out the pounding of my sister, who was at that moment trying to break down the locked door I was behind.

A step back. My sister is a drug addict. Arguably has been my entire life, certainly for as long as I can remember her. She has given up all six of her children to other to raise. This is the one positive thing I can say about her, that she, when lucid and in the few moments she’s been sober, recognizes that she’s no mother. This was not one of her sane moments.

And if that mockingbird don’t sing

Momma’s gonna buy you a diamond ring

We were visiting my aunt at the time. My mother, another of my sisters, myself, and my niece. We knew the dangers, that my sister had shown up from time to time at my aunt’s house, demanding money or help or whatever until she could be sped back off on her way. My aunt lived with her adult son, a grandson near my age (who was quite a bit bigger than I was, if younger), and one of her son’s friends. She never encountered much resistance from my sister before they made her see sense.

But we had my sister’s child. And she was just lucid enough to realize it.

“You stole my baby!” she had screamed at us. “Give me back my baby!” She lunged at us, my niece and me, between the arms of my other sister and my mother.

“My room!” My cousin yelled at me, not even looking at me as he joined the fray. His nephew also stepped between, helping them push her back a room. There were four of them against her, but my sister was motivated and painless, and was not yielding easily. I grabbed my niece up with the seconds they bought me. I did not for a moment resent being sent to safety. I was, besides the toddler, by far the smallest and lightest of everyone in the house. If someone had to stay with her, keep her calm, I was the natural choice. And I would have one other edge.

“Hey,” he yelled at me. I caught his eye for one second as I closed the door with my foot. “Top drawer,” he told me.

I door closed on the sight of my sister, somehow, struggling past them all. I worked the deadbolt while juggling my crying niece, blessing his teenage needs that drove him to install that locked that I only barely started understanding myself at that age. Seconds later, my sister was pounding on the door, yanking hard on the knob, but we were for the moment safe. I used the time to check the top drawer.

It was what I thought: his quite illegal knife, very sharp, as long as my forearm at the time.

You’ll still be the prettiest girl in town.

My niece was as calm as she was likely to get, with all the pounding on the door. They’d wrestled her off twice, but she still kept on. My aunt had called the cops, but it wasn’t like they were in a hurry. In that neighborhood? With a Mexican family? Better to pick up the piece than to become one, they’d say. Have said. To our faces. But as the door, which unfortunately was not as well made as the lock, began to give, I knew I didn’t have their luxury.

I kissed my niece on the forehead. “Close your eyes,” I told her as gently as I could. She hid her head underneath the pillow, and I hoped she would not peek.

I am not strongly built. My sisters took after their football playing fathers, but I took after our cheerleader mother. Quickness and balance were my strengths, not strength. But I trusted my sister’s blind rage, surging past all the obstacles we could throw, to do the hard work for me. It would have to be enough.

I checked once more my nieces’ face was covered, and as calmly as I could picked up my cousin’s knife.