Chapter 1

The night is always bright in this city, and people just tried to survive the coldness of their society. I was no different, my family consisted of me, my three younger siblings, and our mother. The day we moved to the big city was one of the happiest days of my life, but it went south very quickly.

The city of Memphis was known for its crime rates yet we didn't realize it would be so terrible. My father was the sole provider for the family during that time so I spent many happy years with my mother. It had been a few years and I was 10 when I found out my mother was expecting. I was so happy because the thought of having a younger sibling to be with was quite enchanting.

I stayed with my mother all the time during her first pregnancy, and during the beginning months I didn't notice, but now as I look back that was when everything started to change. Father had started to come home later than usual and even after the baby was born everything stayed the same. We had just believed he was working overtime to earn more now that there was another mouth to feed.

I helped mother with taking care of the child and soon she also started to work. The amount of money that my father made was barely enough to feed the four of us and take care of the bills. I was 12 when my mother was expecting her third child. She stopped working the 4th month into her pregnancy because of how tired she felt. Father was barely around when she gave birth to the twins. It was a scary thing to be in there with her, I had my younger brother Leo in my arms, as I watched her give birth.

The first baby was born successfully, a healthy girl, but the second child wasn't as easy to birth. Mother lost a lot of blood after delivering the healthy little girl that she was barely able to deliver the boy. Nonetheless, she and the kids all survived.

A few months after the twins were born mother went back to work and I stayed home to take care of the kids. Father continued to stay out late sometimes he wouldn't even return till days later. This all started to get suspicious when I was around 14, because he was drinking more and just not returning home till weeks had passed. However there wasn't much I could do, mother was always working, and the free days that she did have would be spent taking care of the kids.

I also knew that she somehow was fully aware of where father would be when he wasn't at home. I was finally fed up with it all when I turned 15, he missed the whole month and didn't even realize it when he was back. I told mother it was time to let him go, but she loved the man, so much so that when he came home drunk the next day she tried to reason with him. It was their last conversation.