Henry's Sisters. Cathy Lamb

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      About a year after Dad and his jungle nightmares took off, Momma told us she was a dancer. We thought that was pretty cool. She had been working as a waitress during the day but she kept getting fired because of Henry.

      Henry cried when he had a sitter and if he wasn’t crying he was ill with one of his many health problems—asthma, chronic colds, sleeping problems that produced colds, continual stomachaches, pneumonia, and ear infections—and she had to be home to take care of him.

      So Momma would soon be fired for taking too much time off, we’d rapidly be broke, she’d get that empty no-one’s-home blankness in her eyes, then go to bed for a few days or a few weeks, and the hard-core struggling would begin.

      When Momma told us she had a job as a dancer the first time, we were living in Massachusetts. We envisioned her with one of those Las Vegas showgirl type costumes doing the cancan. Why we thought that, I don’t know.

      All I knew was that Momma started working nights and left us notes on pink paper on what to do and not do when she was gone. Janie, Cecilia, and I watched Henry when she left about two hours after we got home from school. What we liked about that job is that Momma always brought food home after her shift so we’d have it the next night for dinner.

      Plus, we finally had cash in the cookie jar so we could buy milk and eggs. There is nothing like the taste of cow milk when you’re a kid and you’ve been drinking powdered milk or water for weeks. Our water and electricity were no longer turned off and our phone worked on a consistent basis.

      We threw out our old shoes, held together with duct tape, and Momma bought us new tennis shoes. Mine were pink, I remember that.

      We still got free lunch at school, but Momma told us we could go down the street to get ice cream on Friday. We were stunned, beyond delighted.

      It wasn’t too long before we got the truth.

      A girl at school told us her older brother and his friends had seen our momma, “buck naked.”

      “My brother said your mom is sexy. Sexy sexy. He says she’s got small boobs but they stand upright. They go on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursdays now to see her with all their friends. What do you think of your mom being a stripper?”

      I hit that girl so hard she had to go home because her nose wouldn’t stop bleeding. She shut up about our momma, but I got suspended for five days. We knew she was lying.

      When girls in pigtails and Mary Janes came up to me and Cecilia and told us our momma was a whore, we whupped all of them. Five against two. They shut up about our momma.

      When an older boy, his teeth buck and sticking out, told us his daddy thought our momma had an “ass tight enough to hold nuts,” Cecilia and I took care of his tooth problem and he shut up about our momma.

      That took care of the overt teasing at our school, but nothing could take care of the laughter and snickers and pointed fingers behind our backs.

      But Momma wasn’t a stripper. We knew that. She was a dancer—feathers, sequins, and all. We knew it so well we waited around the corner from the strip club in town that we knew she didn’t work at because she wasn’t a stripper.

      We waited and waited and we cringed with disbelief when we heard the wheeze and thunking of our ancient car and Momma drove up and parked around in the back and went in a side entrance wearing an old sweatshirt of my dad’s that said UNITED STATES ARMY, her hair in a ponytail.

      Cecilia and Janie and I leaned back against the wall in shock. Too shocked to cry. Too devastated to move. Too humiliated to breathe. Within fifteen minutes, that parking lot was packed, with loud, boisterous men getting out of cars.

      We trudged home, heads down, avoiding the streets of town, avoiding each other’s eyes, trying to avoid the truth but knowing the truth was beaming and bold and undeniable: Our momma was a stripper.