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said.
    “You blame everything on him.”
    “How’s Grandma?” Lulu always changed the subject the minute Daddy came up.
    “She’s okay.” I banged my feet against the railing on the end of the bed. “Daddy said to say hello.”
    “Did I ask?” Lulu turned on her side, facing me, cradling her head in her hand.
    I sat up and crossed my legs. “Lulu, do you think Daddy will be alive in twenty or thirty years?”
    Lulu frowned. “Why?”
    “Because he said maybe he’d get out then—in twenty or thirty years.” I studied my sister’s face.
    “He’ll probably be alive. Unless somebody kills him in prison.”
    “Don’t say that.” I drew up my knees and put my chin down, tucking in my face. “Don’t you miss having parents, Lu?” I said to a scab on my knee.
    “I just don’t think about it.” Lulu poked me with her foot. “Neither should you. Forget it. It’s over. Come on down to the rec room. We’ll play Clue.”
    “Do you think I might die here?” I asked.
    Lulu grabbed my shoulders and pulled me up. “Why are you asking that?”
    “What if someone here kills me?”
    That wasn’t what I really meant. What I really meant was, What if I killed someone? Then I really would be Prison Girl.
    “I hate it here. I don’t want to grow up here.” I pushed Lulu away and fell back on my bed. “I’d rather be dead than live here.”

7

Lulu
     
     
    Merry drove me nuts as we walked toward Grandma’s house. Every step I took, she insisted that I move faster. I couldn’t rush enough for her, and she refused to copy my snail pace. I lifted my boots through the slush covering Caton Avenue as though I had bricks glued to my soles; that’s how much I wanted to go to Grandma’s house.
    “Come on,” urged Merry. She grabbed my arm. “We have to be there by twelve. For lunch.”
    “Quit it.” I pulled away from her. “We’ll get there when we get there.”
    Merry frowned from under the floppy hat hiding her pitiful haircut. Three weeks’ growth hadn’t helped her raggedy look, but more than her hair, I worried about her dying talk. She needed to leave Duffy. I could handle the place, but Merry wasn’t tough enough.
    “She’s going to be looking out the window!” Merry hopped around me like a baby bird, her need to please Grandma making me insane. “Hurry.”
    Grandma usually glued herself to the window, her chair angled so she could swivel her head between focusing on the television screen andwatching for us coming up the street. Saturdays were tough TV days for Grandma—no game shows, none of her stories—but she watched anyway. She said TV kept her company while she waited to die. Even when she read the oversize, large-print
Reader’s Digest
magazines she borrowed from the library, the television stayed on.
    As we approached the red brick entrance to Grandma’s apartment building, Merry waved wildly toward Grandma’s window. “She can’t even see you,” I said.
    “You don’t know for sure.” Merry yanked open the door, still rushing even though we’d arrived. The worn-out lobby smelled like an old mop. A messy stack of unclaimed mail almost blocked the mailboxes.
    “Grandma can barely see.” I tugged at the hem of my short skirt as Merry pressed the doorbell next to Grandma’s name. I’d reprinted “Mrs. Harold Zachariah” last month when the ink on the old slip faded to unreadable. Grandma insisted I write “Mrs.” because she thought being married seemed more respectable. As I’d slipped the fresh paper rectangle into the brass slot, she’d said, “If they know a man wanted you once, they treat you better.”
    Grandma went on for hours about old people never getting respect anymore.
Just look at these hippies with their hair hanging down to their
pupiks,
they look like ragamuffins. Do they even stop to say, “Hello, Mrs. Zachariah”?
    College kids crammed four, five, and six into the thimble-size one-and two-bedroom apartments in Grandma’s building. She