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I ate my last piece of toast. Billy and Cherie were moving about upstairs. From the living room I heard Kenny say, "Roll the ball back to me Pam.

"Why are you always the last one to finish?" my mother said. "Are you waiting for your sister to finish all the chores before you get off your butt to help." My mother stood at the bottom of the brick stairs, just outside the door to her bedroom. She was in her housecoat still, but her tinted red hair was combed and sprayed into place. My mother held her white ward clerk's uniform. My mother looked over at her ashtray, a couple of stubs already inside. She looked behind me. The ironing board rested in the corner. When the kitchen table was pushed up against the wall as far as it would go with all the chairs pushed in, there was just room beside the back door to fold out the ironing board and stand beside it.

"You know I want to get this house swept and mopped before I go to work. Don't think you're going to get out of any work by taking your sweet time."

"Can't I even eat my breakfast?" I said.

"What did you say?" My mother pulled a chair away from the table. She laid her uniform over the back of the chair.

One time, a few years back, when I was ten I started up the stairs. My mother was on her way down. It was too late to back away. I moved over to the left wall as close as I could to leave her room to pass. My mother stopped on the stair above me. I turned sideways pressed against the wall. She moved down to my step. I crossed my arms in front of my face.

"Put those hands down." Her voice was even and hard but not loud. The wall of the stairway behind her was painted brick, light green.

"Put your hands down."

I pressed my arms into my sides, holding them stiff there.

My mother lifted her right arm with the hand flat, while her teeth pressed tighter together. Her old housecoat was folded up on her arm above her elbow. As she raised her arm the cuff slid higher on her thin arm. The unbuttoned housecoat hung open. Beneath the light pink rayon nightgown her arm muscles tightened. She slapped my left cheek, hit my upper lip against my teeth. I pressed my back against the wall to keep my balance. The brick across the stairwell had a rough surface, globs of green paint, little holes I couldn't see the end of. My mother slapped the other side of my face, slapped my face four or five times more. Then she turned, continued on down the stairs.

"What did you say." My mother moved next to the kitchen table in front of my chair. I put up my arms to protect myself. My mother told me to put them down. I thought, No, I am not going to be treated like an animal any more.

"Put your hands down." My mother slapped towards my face, but hit my arm. She pulled back her arm for another shot at my face, but I moved my arms as well and she slapped hard on the bone of my forearm. "You hit me. You hit your own mother," she said, but I hadn't hit her.

"Put your hands down," my mother shouted but I kept my hands in place, so she turned and shouted towards the stairs, "Billy, come down here. Come help me." When he didn't come she went upstairs.

"Come hold your sister for me, so I can hit her." I couldn't hear Billy so clearly, except that my brother was saying he wouldn't do it.

"She hit her own mother. Doesn't that matter to you?"

"No, mama, I won't," Billy said.

I left the house while they argued. I walked out the back door. I stepped over the low wire fence that surrounded the tiny back yard, into the common space between our house and the next block of row houses in the project. I walked toward the street, to the sidewalk. I held my arms by my side. I walked fast. I felt the blood rush up and down my forearms.

I reached a busier street with no sidewalks. The ground was damp from rain the night before, so my tennis shoes sunk slightly into the dirt. A railroad track ran parallel to the road but no trains came. The neon sign of a diner blinked up ahead.

If I went to the police, if I told them how my mother hit me, what would they do. Would they believe me? Would they take us kids away from my mother. When I ran away from home when I was ten they hadn't done anything, but I never told the police that she hit me.

Pam was only three. If they took us away, what would happen to Pam. My mother didn't hit the other kids. Pam wouldn't understand. Pam would lose her mother and she wouldn't understand.

I slowed down a little, took a deep breath. I passed a tree in front of a house set way back on the lot. An inner tube swing hung from its thickest branch. A kid's plastic truck lay on its side in wet grass.

When I was ten I thought I might find a place like in Little Men, someone like Jo, someone like professor Bhaer, but this wasn't Plumfield. There's no place to go, no place for a kid. I walked. I knew I would have to go back, but I wasn't going to do it yet.

I saw a white car. The last time there was a white car that had picked me up when I ran away from home. The car turned into the driveway of a restaurant across the street. I thought it had come for me. I thought my mother had called the police. There was no sense in putting it off. I crossed the street and walked over to the car. The driver sat there. He was looking at a map spread over the steering wheel. He didn't look up when I came over to his open window. I started to turn away. Then he noticed me, looked right at me.

"Are you a policeman?" I asked.

"No, why, is something the matter? " His hair was thinning and partly gray. His eyes were crinkled at the corners. He opened them wider. "Are you in some kind of trouble?"

"No, I just thought you were a policeman."

"What's the matter? Can't you tell me about it?"

"Nothing, only my mother was going to hit me, and I left. I thought she called the police. I've got to go now." He was leaning on the door, his eyelids closed a little. The collar of his raincoat was flipped up against his neck. He turned it back down. I crossed the street again, headed back in the direction of home. I looked back over my shoulder to see if he followed, to see if anyone followed.

I walked quickly, but I breathed slower. I reached the sidewalk of the dead end street that went into the project. I passed the sideways blocks of brick row houses, with their front yards facing on one side, merging into each other, their back yards facing on the other side, the back yards separated with little fences. I stepped over the back fence into the yard. I walked in the back door. My mother's white uniform lay flat and ironed over the center of the ironing board. A man's leather belt hung over the narrow end. My mother sat at the table with a cup of coffee and another cigarette. She took a puff then laid the cigarette on the ashtray. My mother got up and closed the back door. She picked up the belt, doubled it, then let the end fall free again. Her arms and legs were skinny, but her belly poked out. I was three inches taller than my mother. Once she said that she used to be an inch taller, but she had shrunk.

"If you ever walk out of my house like that again, don't bother to come back." my mother said.

I turned around as she drew back the belt. I looked out the back door window: the back yards with their grass cut short, the little fences, the little yards, the row houses lined up like Monopoly hotels, the streets, the cars, the railroad tracks, the city, the whole wide world, and the kid's plastic truck lying on its side in the wet grass.

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