—Buddha A few weeks passed after Evie’s party and things were starting to settle down at home. I spent quite a bit of my free time with Gracie. She was so sweet and so lovable and aside from an occasional mild seizure and her lower birth weight, we didn’t see any serious side effects of my mother’s drug dependency while she was pregnant. We were told to expect some learning disabilities along the way, but so far Gracie seemed to be focused and alert. Our home life was often tense and stressful. My mother was always on edge, trying to please the new man in her life. He had a wife and family who often called our house to harass her and to demand that she send him back home to them. Evie and Alicia still lived with my grandparents on my father’s side, but I saw them every day after school. My father had since married a woman fifteen years his junior that he met while she was a contestant in a small beauty pageant. Speaking of grandparents, my mother’s parents were not communicating with me and had been very upset when they returned from their trip to find me gone.
