Yet another excerpt...

...from Irene Vilar's "Impossible Motherhood: Testimony of an Abortion Addict" (p. 18):

Blanquita [my father's live-in lover] said it was dangerous for me to be exposed to [my brother] Miguel[, who was into drugs and ran away, but would periodically show up at the house, unexpectedly]. Every day after school I would go into my brother's room and look at his things. I missed him. I would sit on the bathroom floor smelling the half-smoked joints and tiny roaches piled up in a Coca Cola ashtray by the tub. I would sing the Christmas carols I'd memorized from a booklet he gave me. Between songs, I would stuff my mouth with toilet paper, a habit that would last until I left home for boarding school a few months short of my tenth birthday.

. . .