“It was my turn to freak out. I heard you tell me that you were sorry and you were going to leave. I almost came out right away to tell you to stop,... but by the time I worked up my courage to open the door you were gone. I realized that I actually liked the fact that you saw me. It freed me from the straitjacket that I’d been wearing. It was liberating. When you didn’t come back, I wasn’t sure what to do. I put my nightgown back on and sat on the bed to think.”“So why were you crying?” I. "Bye Mom, I'll be back in a little while," he called into the kitchen as he walked past the doorway. She called out a farewell as he exited the front door and closed it behind him. He stopped to consider how normal that had been and how much their lives had changed in the past six months. He shook his head to clear the morose thoughts from his mind and they were immediately replaced with the memory of how his mother's body had felt wrapped around as he buried himself into her4 over and over. When I was eleven years old, my mother, sister and I separated from mygrandmother and moved to a new house in another neighborhood. That was asignificant moment in my life, not because of the move but because of theconsequences it had and the things it allowed me to experience.In order to support us my mother had to work all day and that meant that,being in a new school and neighborhood, my sister and I spent most of ourafternoons alone at home. It was really hard for me to make new friends,as. I slid back, grasping her foot and twisting before releasing it. Constance hit the mat hard and rolled to her feet. She slid straight in and did a front kick that was a faint and then spun.Her back fist came at me and I swayed back dropping to the mat to kick her feet out from under her before rolling back to my own feet. Constance came off the ground angrily and I slid in. The fist she punched at me was grabbed twisted and turned to lock her arm. “Stop!”Constance stopped moving and I released.