Chapter 8As soon as I stepped inside the apartment, I knew something was wrong. The lights were on in every room, but I couldn’t find Mom anywhere. On the edge of panic, I started next door to see if she was at Ms. Chisholm’s, but I didn’t have to go that far. I found her passed out in the dirt at the corner of the house.
I carried her inside and put her on the bed. She roused some and insisted she wasn’t drunk. She claimed she’d fainted from a bad headache. I pretended to believe her even though the empty Jim Crow bottle was right there on the kitchen table. She’d been drinking—alone again—probably for most of the weekend. I had no idea where she’d gotten the whiskey, but that didn’t matter now. She needed help.
I ran up the street to a pay telephone and called a taxi. It wasn’t easy ge
