My name is Zoe, if you pop out your fingers five times, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, and spread them out and count the digits twice, and add one, that’s how old I am. I’ve learned since four digits ago that I’m not supposed to talk to strangers, I’m not supposed to go outside, I’m not supposed to answer the door. This is what Mama says.
But Mama’s out today. I heard the trunk of the Saturn slam shut this morning, heard the muffler sputtering away, getting quieter and quieter down the road. I saw her look up in my window before she left.
I lay around my room and feel ‘like s***’. Once a few days ago Mama left the door unlocked, just once, and I paused outside her bedroom and watched her breath in her body rise and fall. She looked like a hill under the blanket. I took her Big Black Purse down from the coat rack and found the dollar store lipstick, dark and purple, uncapped it and smeared it on my hands. I touched my face, the swells of the red, raw skin rolling like valleys. I went outside and saw the starless sky.
The Saturn was in the driveway, a real junker but it’s good for going to the grocery store is what Mama says. Mama doesn’t care about looks. I tasted the lipstick first and it was bitter on my tongue, and tacky between my teeth. Then I raised my eyes to the black and saw the moon looking so big and full I thought it was going to hatch. The houses around me were sleeping.
With my purple pen I scribbled a frame around the Saturn, I drew suns and grass and Mama with her heavy body and steel wool hair. I drew stars for the sky, and milkshakes for me to drink, each with a pile of cherries in the center. I drew a school. I practiced my name all over the concrete: ZOE ZOE ZOE ZOE ZOE ZOE ZOE
But the next day Mama came back from work and told me real slow that the mailman stopped and asked her if she offered a babysitting service, because he and his wife were looking to start going on date nights again. She asked what gave him that idea, he said he saw the driveway and just assumed that since she didn’t have any kids of her own...

There’s a book in my room that talks about the planets. It says Earth is special because all of the other planets are the same, but Earth is unique. It can sustain life. One of the things that helps Earth out is Jupiter; the reason why we don’t get hit by a meteor or something is because Jupiter is a “gravity sink”, it sucks up all the space trash before it can get to us.

Mama took my hands and saw the streaky purple slashed down my palms. She turned on the stove burner, and I’ll admit I didn’t have my big girl panties on when I cried and whined and begged her not to, and she held my hands down on the hot red coil, and I threw up all over the floor, and when I lolled back up she held my face down too. “F***ing Idiot!!”

But I think my Mama is okay now. I did a bad thing but I’m okay too. She trusts me, which is why she left me alone in the house, I think. I see a man coming up the walk with a bucket and plaster mix. Before he lets himself in (Mama must’ve told him she was going to be out for a little while) he almost sees me in the window, but I’m too fast. I duck out just in time, and stay statue still when I hear him coming up my stairs. I’m safe, the door is locked and he can’t get in; I hear him working outside my room. I ‘s***’ in the corner and the light starts to die and I wait for my Mama; oh Mama, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.