Ok, so I grew up in a strange family. My brother likes to say we put the “fun” in dysfunctional, but instead I just like to think of it as extremely fucked up. By the time I was 6, I was babysitting my infant brother for hours at a time. By the time I was 7, I was babysitting another an infant and my brother now a toddler. I usually cooked dinner to help my mom out since she came home late from work and my step-father would be holed up in his bedroom reading or watching Kung Fu: The Legend continues. My uncle was staying with us around this time, as he had recently kicked crack and was trying desperately to find his own way. I knew nothing of the harshness of adulthood with all its bills, follies and fools. Instead, I only understood the direct cruelties of childhood.
Growing up in a poor family like mine afforded such delicacies as fried chicken, hamburger helper and Mac & Cheese, which were just another extension of sadness to me. I, who enjoyed food, was always slightly disappointed at what was on the table. This disappointment was only amplified by the fact that often it was I who cooked it. That might have increased everyone at the table’s discontent indeed. On this hot summer day, I might have been thinking on this dreadful state of affairs as I filled the heavy pot with hot water and put it on the stove. I watched it begin to bubble and boil, and stood on tiptoe to grab the salt from the cupboard. Only a little bit, I was supposed to put in. Usually, I liked to watch it dissolve and flutter around the edges of the pot. I would imagine myself as one little molecule slowly building until like the water, I was boiling with heat and rage.
It’s strange all the things you can remember from your childhood, and all the things you struggle to forget. I remember that blue-purple can of salt with the little girl standing in a rain of salt. I always thought it strange that salt should have such a detailed and disturbing cover. I took the pasta from its plastic package and slowly tipped it in the pot, until just the tips poked out from the water. Slowly the pasta, which was spaghetti if I can remember correctly, began to bend, sink and swim among the bubbles. After awhile I lifted out a string and tasted, perfect! Strange, I still have a sort of sixth sense when it comes to pasta, I know much like Goldilocks what is “just right”. Unfortunately, I don’t have that same sense when it comes to weights, what I can or cannot carry.
In my daydream state I filled the pot with too much water, but still I tried to struggle it over to the sink. I could have asked for help, but as always that would be connected to the usual berating and public humiliation that my stepfather found a way to sneak in any way he could. I could only imagine him saying, “Oh there you done it again, haven’t you?” “You, stupid cow, its too much water!” “Don’t you know how much we pay for water?” So, instead I carried the pot over to the sink by myself.
Carefully, I held both sides with potholders, but instead of pouring the steaming, raging water in the sink I poured it the other way. Unfortunately, the other way consisted mostly of myself. As the water sizzled the skin, I then dropped the pot. Onto my foot. Still in shock, I looked down in horror to see my stomach soaked and the cloth covering it rising up with small bubbles. Convinced that the water was still bubbling, I lifted my shirt slowly. The water wasn’t bubbling, instead my skin was. It was then that I SCREAMED. The shrill, ringing shriek brought everyone running into the kitchen.
I lay crumpled on the floor, and my mother, coming in the door, was the first to find me. She almost started yelling at me for screaming, before she noticed the complete silence that deafened the room. I had passed out. I awoke in the dark, to hear my parents arguing. “She has to go to the hospital! She has to!” cried my mother. “We don’t have the money, she’ll be fine”, replied my stepfather shortly.

My stepfather had an unnatural fear of hospitals, and was convinced that they could do nothing for me. So instead they took care of my burns with butter, and antiseptic ointment. It took long for them to heal, and I still bear the scars. But that night as I lay in pain, I began to laugh. I laughed at the bizarreness of the situation, I suppose. Most of all I laughed at the little girl with her stupid umbrella. She looked sad with the salt pouring down, like she would never escape. I laughed, because I knew eventually that I could, carrying such lovely parting gifts.
FAITH Abused women don’t leave their husbands. Never seen it happen. MIKE No it happens sometimes. FAITH When have you seen it happen? Even in the non-straight world we have queer girls who hit each other to the str8’s battered love songs, no?. MIKE I think women leave more than you think. FAITH I’m telling you, it sucks because tv and movies show all these women getting out and moving on. Who are these women! They have no money, they have no education being a housewife, they have a kid to support as well. Or kids. It’s unfeasible. MIKE Makes you wanna take a closer look into the murder rate of married men.

Inside Faith’s childhood home, trash is pretty much everywhere. Not filthy, stinky trash but old bills, newspapers and basketballs deflated and depressed. Forks littler the area underneath the couch and the TV has a fuzzy white growth (severely limiting daytime watching). The carpet is threadbare and it is cold. A pot belly stove in the living room gives off some warmth, but the house feels empty and dry as winter. Doug works in the office that also functions as a bedroom for his young son. He spends countless hours working on something, something never determined. Papers and charts litter his desk in great heaps threatening to ski off as if atop a wordy mountain.

Daniel tries to sleep while his father works into late nights figuring and calculating and scratching, but it is no wonder that he often has great big bags under his squinty 6 year old eyes.

There is only one bathroom in this house, with a bear claw tub. The tub drains through a hose into the yard watering the willow tree outside. The light switches are round buttons that push in and out; the kitchen has no dishwasher but loads of counter space filled with old dish racks and dishes long dried in them
Doug yells,
“Faith! Faith!”
Faith lies in the top bunk of an old crusty yellowed bunk bed. A half read book lies folded on the bedspread as Faith rolls over to look at the ceiling. The wind passes overhead blowing through the house gently.
”Yah! Ok!”, Faith shouts.
Faith jumps off the bunk bed and walks out of the bedroom trying not to wake her little sister Rebekah who (unbeknownst to anyone) had gone to bed. Faith slips out the door of her bedroom and into the next bedroom where her step-father sits entrenched in work..
Doug turns to Faith, frustratingly.
“I have an exam at 8am tomorrow morning. Wait till you have exams in mornings you’ll be pulling your hair out.”
“I won’t ever have exams at 8am”
“You wait, I’m sure you will.”
“I won’t.” ”Because you know everything, right? Make me some toast I want 4 pieces.”
Faith goes into the kitchen and gets bread from on top of the fridge. She has to reach to grab the bread and knocks over some boxes of cereal. The cereal its the floor and Cheerios go spinning across the tile.
Food was a fairly big thing with my stepdad and I. We bonded over ice cream, toast, anything with carbs. Some people’s nightmare, my families idea of bliss. I remember eating the largest bowls of ice cream, we used to split a ½ gallon between us.
Faith@9 and Doug sit with 2 large bowls of Rocky Road ice cream. Faith looks over at Doug’s ice cream bowl which is piled high much like hers, only higher. ”Stop looking at mine! I gave you almost half of the tub of ice cream” Doug shouts. Doug gets up from the table and carries his ice cream back to his “office” and closes the door firmly behind him. Faith sits with her ice cream melting onto the tablecloth of the dining table. It was indeed a different relationship with food, and with love.
The sound of a book hitting the wall startles Faith as she leans over the Cheerios still.
“What are you doing? Make the toast!”, Doug yells. Faith puts bread in the toaster and pulls out margarine from the fridge, then returns to Doug’s office. Faith stands behind Doug’s chair silently, unsure of how to approach him. Doug whirls around in his office chair. “What do you want? Where is the toast?” “Can I make myself some too? Maybe with some cinnamon and sugar a girl in my class told me…” Doug looks at Faith and laughs.
“You’re big enough. You look like a little cow, your mother is a big cow MOOOOOOOO! Moo!”
The sound of toast popping calls from the kitchen “It’s done, butter it and bring it back here” Faith runs back to the kitchen, drops the hot toast onto a plate and starts buttering. She spreads lavish amounts of butter onto the toast and then scrapes off the butter to taste. She does this repeatedly. Faith brings the plate of toast back to Doug, and the pieces look thin and saturated but still tasty. Doug grabs the plate and folds the toast together.
‘He never noticed how thin the toast was’
Doug wolfs down the toast and wipes his hands on his already filthy pants.
“It became like a game to see how thin I could get the toast.”
Back in the kitchen on another day, Faith holds up a piece of buttered toast and a hole falls out of the middle. Faith eats the ruined piece and sticks another slice of bread into the toaster. “I sometimes got sick to my stomach from all the butter.”
MY PARENTS HAVE BEEN IN THE TOOL SECTION OF THE SHED SO TO SPEAK

EXT. CHILDHOOD BACKYARD – DAY
Children ring around a birthday cake singing happy birthday to it’s center, Faith@8. Faith is wearing plastic pink pearls as she scowls at her lopsided homemade chocolate cake that nearly matches her skin, there’s so little real chocolate in it.
INT. CHILDHOOD DINING ROOM – DAY
What can openly be described as crap lines the walls of this filthy old house. Some corners are filled to the brim with old newspapers, half filled rubber basketballs and soil. Bits of soil and the smell of green nuances ever step through this old house. There is a humidity that matches its homeless jungle theme.
DOUG So you admit to stealing the candy? You ate it. FAITH I didn’t steal any candy. I mean. I ate some of the candy she stole. DOUG So you admit that she stole it and you ate it. You knew she was stealing. MOM And you know stealing is wrong. FAITH I just ate it ok? I didn’t take any, she offered me and i wanted some. MOM And you know what you did is wrong. DOUG We’ve decided your punishment. We are assigning you 100,000 standards to be completed within one year. The standard should say “i will honor my mother and father and obey them with all my heart.
CUT TO:
INT. FAITH’S BEDROOM – DAY Faith lies on her bed writing with a worn out pencil and crumpled paper.
FAITH Fath-er. Fat-her. Fuck-er.
BACK TO:
INT. FAITH’S LIVING ROOM
DOUG With your standards we also forbid you from eating candy. We forbid you from eating sugar of any kind. FAITH What do you mean by sugar? DOUG All sugars, no cake, no ice cream, no candy. FAITH What about the sugars in cereal and jam and? DOUG We hadn’t thought about that, but I suppose you’re right that should be included as well. Sugar free cereal, jams, drinks etc.
EXT. FAITH’S CHRISTIAN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL Children mill about, some restlessly chasing each other while pretending to be quiet and responsive to the “hushs” and “sh”s their mothers mutter from clumps of their own peers. One lilttle girl with plaited hair interwoven with ribbon is surrounded by more children than any others. In her hands she holds computer printed birthday party invites. They say “you’re invited” in bright bubble gum pink.
SHEILA My mom said we’re gonna have pizza, ice cream, brownies, and cake. An ice cream cake. KID #1 Ice cream and brownies!! SHEILA I like them both. I told my mom I can’t choose! I begged her to not make me choose.
Faith leans on a tree across from the nest of children. She stares at the group and fingers her gray/blue schoolgirl uniform.
SHEILA So yah, everyone’s coming. My mom’s been telling everyone at service. She just gave me these to give to people we didn’t see at church. KID #1 And it’s a sleepover? SHEILA Yup, here’s how to get to my house.
Sheila passes out invites to all the kids about.
SHEILA Um, hey.
Faith starts from her position against the tree. Anyone could have sworn she had been listening intently to the party talk.
SHEILA So you want to come to my sleepover?
An old battered small clown car without clown paint sidles into the parking lot next to where the girls stand. The car is rusty red brown and has the smallest seatbelts that tightly cover a large white man.
FAITH I’ll ask my dad. DOUG Let’s go, we have to pick your brother up. We’re late, let’s go. FAITH Sheila wants to know if i can go to her birthday party? DOUG Well, birthday parties have birthday cake don’t they? (laughs)
A woman approaches Sheila and begins to drag her away. Sheila pulls on the woman’s coat and the woman leans down to listen to Sheila impatiently.
FAITH I wouldn’t eat the cake.
Sheila’s mom walks over from Sheila and pats Faith on her shoulder.
SHEILA’S MOM We’ll be having brownies and ice cream too! Did you get the directions? DOUG Faith won’t be able to make it, she’s not allowed to eat sugar. And we get very worried that she might sneak a little from someone else’s property. SHEILA’S MOM Oh, well we can make sure she doesn’t get any sugar.
Sheila’s mom turns to faith.
SHEILA’S MOM Are you diabetic dear? I have a cousin who’s diabetic. FAITH No, I’m on punishment. DOUG Only 13 more months to go! (cheerfully)