I love a lot of things. Big things, small things, fat things, skinny things, flat things, purple things. I don’t like smelly things, though. I love the 800 page fall edition of Vogue and the smell of cement when it's been raining – that is a smell I can tolerate. The seeping smells of sulfur and fire that creeps down under the door and up into your nostrils consumes me. I attempt to resist it. Taking its arms and wrists, I press them to the floor as I scream no! Stop! Please!

“Kathryn!! Come get your sister. She’s in the way!” I jumped up from where I was sitting, dropped my pen and knocked my books off the bed onto the floor.

I screamed back, “Coming, Marie!” I rushed through the tan, earth toned hall that held all of our moments in still life. Madison on a swing, Taylor laughing on her birthday, a wonderful picture of me with my father in black and white. As I reached the kitchen, the smell hit me. I swung the door open and yanked Madison out by her wrist. I kept my head down and only looked at the small child. I saw my step mom stirring a huge silver pot over the stove in my peripheral vision. For a moment I imagined her with a pointed hat, mole with hair on her chin, over a large molten colander. I pulled Madison in to the hall, saving her from certain death.

Looking up at me with oversized blue eyes, she asked, “Kathryn, why are you so weird?” I quickly snapped back at her, “Shut up Mo, I’m not weird.”

She looked at me again, calmly and stated as if she were stating a simple equation, “Yes, you are. All you do is baby-sit us, watch TV, and do homework.” Well, great the five year old is observant, and I sound like a loser.

“No Madison, I do more than that, and you’re only five, what do you know?”

“Well Kathryn, I know that your friends don’t come over to the house, and you don’t talk on the phone a lot and you sit with daddy outside while he plays his guitar, like, always.” I felt as if I was in a popularity contest and losing sorely.

“Ok Mo, shut it and go watch TV in the front room with Taylor.” I brushed her off toward the front of the house.

“Jerk!” she said to me over her shoulder to me as she ran toward the front of the house. I wasn’t in the mood for a chase, so I stood there wondering where she had heard that from. I laughed because she used it properly and turned around, relieved I only got yelled at by her and not my step mom.

To a four year old, my seventeen year old ways were probably very odd. The hours on end I spent in my room unearthing every sound of the new Radiohead album, cutting out pages from magazines and putting them up on my walls, missing my boyfriend that had just left for college, and avoiding my family at all cost. I would emerge from my cave only to converse briefly with them, eat, get a drink, come or go, or when I was summoned. The only time I really felt at home was when I was alone – which was rare – or when I was babysitting – which was always.

Something was wrong in my family and I didn’t know what. I wouldn’t learn the whole truth until years later, when it was too late for me to come to the rescue. I got good grades, played varsity sports, did what I was told and only drank once a month at parties – that was my rule. My immediate family consisted of my father, who is frightfully similar to me, my step mother, a brilliant but confused woman, myself, an angst ridden teenager, Madison is 5, Taylor is 2 and Jack is 9 months. Most of my days were spent taking care of the kids. My step mom would disappear after arriving home from her CEO of some marketing firm job with a headache. Always with a headache. She would turn to me, in her most dismal voice and announce, “Kay,” that’s what they called me, “I have a terrible headache; watch the kids. Help Madison clean her room please. She has a play date at four that I need you to be here and supervise. Milvia,” the nanny, “said that Jack should be waking up from his nap any minute and Taylor needs her diaper changed.” She would whisk away to her room, locking the double French doors behind her. Before I could tell her it was Friday and I had a dance to go to, she had disappeared. She wouldn’t emerge until my father came home, sometimes not even then.

My father worked long hours; he said he was building job security with his grueling schedule. He worked ten hour days, I now understand for the same reason I played as many sports as I could, was on student council and involved in four clubs. Not because I liked spending all my lunches secretarying an animal rights club or staying on campus until 7 at night for basketball practice, but because I was trying to survive. My father hated his fluorescent lit office and the fat lady that brought him food that smelled like rotting yeast. “In my country...” she would begin and drone on about some disgusting country that God had forgotten about. We were both just trying to survive.

“Madison!” I said, trying to sound chipper so I wouldn’t get in trouble for having a bad attitude. I knew from experience that those French doors might be shut but that doesn’t mean she can't hear us.

“Yeah Kathryn?” Madison replied. She was the only one that consistently called me Kathryn and not Kay.

“Mom says it's time to clean your room. Come on. I’ll help you.”

She literally heaved herself onto the floor and began flailing wildly. She looked like an aborigine somewhere in Australia painted white and tan from ground stone, jumping in and out of a huge bonfire. Waving her arms around wildly she as if she had taken too much LSD and was on a bad trip. I was almost impressed by the level of drama. I laughed as I looked at her with my eyebrows raised. “Madison Josephine, are you being for real right now?! Get up baby, stop it, I’ll help you. It’ll take us no time at all, then we can go afuera.” Our nanny was Guatemalan so we all grew up speaking Spanglish. I spoke to her as condescendingly as possible, not because I wanted to hurt her but because I didn’t know how to tell anyone I was hurting. So I took it out on the five year old. Besides, that’s how my parents talked to me. I lifted her up and blew raspberries on her stomach. Where was her shirt? I wondered. I felt guilty for being mean to her, not understanding my uncontrollable urge to hate everyone sometimes.

She laughed and began screaming, “No! Kathryn! No mas! I’m going to pee pee on you! Kathryn!!” All the while laughing hysterically.

“You little faker!” I said as I plopped her down firmly but gently on the carpet, “you don’t really have to go pee pee! You just wanted me to stop.”

“So?" She replied, “Kathryn... I really really don’t want to clean my room. Claire doesn’t care if my room is messy; her mommy doesn’t make her clean her room.” Claire was the daughter of Mrs. Pena, my step mom's business partner.

“Well, you’re not Claire, you’re much prettier, and pretty girls have to clean their rooms with their ugly big sisters. Beside that, Mo, mom said so and she’s the boss lady.” Madison looked at me puzzled. Usually I rush her through her sentences because she’s known to stutter, which she grew out of, but drove me crazy. This time I waited for her response, and will always be glad I did.

“How come she’s the boss if she’s never home? You change Jack’s diaper, you give us a bath, you take me to school in the morning and you read me books and help me with my homework. I think you’re the boss, Kathryn. Don’t you want to be the boss?”

When did the five year old become so intuitive, what was going on? I thought about what she said for a moment, looking behind her to judge whether we were in proximity to my step mom’s hawk-like hearing. Determining that we were out of ear shot I told her, “No way, I don’t want to be the boss. Being in charge is too much for me. And anyway, I don’t have a choice, Mom is the Mom, not me.”

She accepted what I said at face value and we began cleaning her room in preparation for her upper middle class suburban play date. As I picked up Skipper and tried to twist her head back onto her neck, I wondered if the five year old was really that smart or if the situation really was that glaringly obvious.

I remember the day it happened. As much as I try to forget, I’ll probably always remember it. My favorite day is always Sunday. I dislike being bored or unproductive and am therefore happy when it's almost Monday. When it’s almost Monday, I have an excuse to lounge around knowing tomorrow I will be productive. It was February and there was a breeze to chill the bones. I sat in the living room reading in the sunlight, protected from the cold. We had twelve foot vaulted ceilings in the living room. It must have cost a fortune to heat that room, but I didn’t think about stuff like that then. I was absorbed and confused, attempting to decipher Faulkner.

As I struggled to finish a chapter of stream of consciousness prose, I heard a strange noise. I stopped where I was, inserting my book mark holding my page. Standing up I rolled my eyes wondering what mess the kids had made I would inevitably have to clean up. Furious as well because I had just put Jack down for a nap, I swore I would maim whoever woke him up. Storming down the hall, I reached the girls’ room and flung the door open. The door handle hit the wall behind it with a thud and they both looked up at me quickly. Madison was watching Land Before Time #17 or a million, and Taylor was looking at a book. “What are you guys doing?!” Knowing full well it wasn’t them making the noise, I figured I would continue with my rant anyway. “I’m reading a book; want to read it with me Kay?” Taylor asked me from behind a pacifier. I looked at Madison. She was completely ignoring me in a television induced coma.

I turned again to the two year old, “What was that sound. Nut?” That’s what we called her – Nut, because her first ultra sound she looked like a peanut and the name stuck.

“No se, Kathryn. We were being quiet. Jack is sleeping right?” damn, she’s good. Even if it was them she was too cute to punish. “Ok, well... good job,” I said, giving up my torrent.

I shut the door quietly behind me and heard the sound again. A noise I’d never heard before. A thud and a scrape, maybe? It wasn’t an animal; they were either outside or sleeping. I heard it again; it was coming from my parents' room. My dad was at work and my step mom was sleeping because she had a headache (surprise).

I stood in front of the door listening through the crack. Air always blew out of the room through the slit between doors, so when I put my ear to it I could feel the breeze. I didn’t hear anything for a long time and I attempted to look through the space between doors, under them and the key hole – nothing. My heart jumped into my throat as I heard it again, this time only louder, closer. I began to think something must be wrong in there, maybe she is hurt, has fallen, thrown out her back again, is drowning or choking. If I were wrong there would be hell to pay, though. Disturbing her when the door is closed, and especially locked were death wishes. She would fly off the handle as if you had disrupted the Pope giving mass at the Vatican on Easter Sunday. I only had two options and would have to choose carefully. I decided, I reached up and got the key from on top of the door frame. I had hidden it there months ago for just such an occasion. Why I didn’t knock I’ll never know, why I didn’t just ask through the door if she were ok, I couldn’t tell you. Still can’t.