Sally

Sally was a junkie but she quit. While living it, living the life in dilapidated houses with wood planks over the windows, she had children, some born addicted. She prostituted herself for $200 "to feel the blood boil" in her veins. Now the children all live with Daddy. For a reason I've never asked, she is paralyzed from the waist down.

Sally is a light presence in a dreary nursing home, mostly positive but mercurial, angry with her lot and her clunky wheelchair that leaves cuts and bruises on the back of her shins. Five kids, Daddy, a sister on dialysis, one brother who likes to box, another getting out of the penitentiary--"that's all I've got left." But before, all she had was her addiction and a donated tent behind a church. And Daddy's sick, so she doesn't want to burden him with knowledge that she is also sick, with AIDS.

Sally stands up...5-4-3-2..before collapsing into her wheelchair. She has her brown hair in a ponytail. Her smart brown eyes curve up with her crooked smile, feeling has started to return.. She wears what my grandmother used to call 'pants' but her tanned brown arms push the heavy silla de rueda up the uneven path and the sun puts her face in soft relief.