She had an open-door policy the time? It didn’t matter. Two doors down from the apartment I grew in. She was fifty-seven when my front door was wide open and she marched right in taking me and little Billy from our crib as our mama relapsed on the floor in front of our three year old yorkie. He went down with mom that night. His relapse was fatal. How do you explain to a bunch of four-year-olds that your home was their home? I was eight when mama's boyfriend came into my room without my permission and Billy screamed loud enough long enough for me to get to her door and she beat him out of the apartment complex onto the street in front of a car. She said, “officer, he dropped his jacket I was just trying to return it” after she had gone back and got his jacket throwing it spitting at him. Twelve. I was pregnant. With a baby, I couldn’t care for maybe didn’t want. For a man twice my age plus four times two. I cried inside her door. Drinking her special tea. She looked on sipping a different liquid but mouth never speaking. Until suddenly I felt no more baby. And I no longer cried and she no longer gave me tea. Billy was fourteen when he pushed dad down the stairs. He hid inside her doors the first time they were ever shut to everyone but us. Billy met him in the hall. Dad was a little too brave and stabbed him four times in the leg. She nursed him until the infection was too bad and then she drove me to his funeral where we sat in the first pew her squeezing my hand Every time our father was heard sniffling. And when I turned sixteen I took too many pills and thought/wanted death. Until it pulsed through my veins and the room got cloudy and my mind could hardly think my body still exerted all of its energy to get to her door and I lived. But her open-door policy failed only her. When Dawson from three doors down drank too much and had a little too much confidence enough to grab his daddy’s gun march down the hallway to her open door. She talked him down at least tried but you know trying only goes so far until three bullets in the chest and one in the head end it all. She had an open-door policy the time? It didn’t matter.