I got out of the car, pushed open the rusty gate, feeling the neighbors eyes watching me closely. Two women and a young boy sat on the balcony, the little boy playing a game on his Nintendo handheld console.

"Well, look what the cat dragged in," the older one said. "It's been a long time, baby girl."

As I stopped and peered at her, I wished I remembered her name but I didn't. I had completely forgotten almost everything on this street, even it's people. But as the older dark-skinned woman with large white teeth smiled at me, the taste of chechebsa returned to me then, served with a side of fresh yogurt that she usually made the night before. I remembered how she would have me come over for dinner, knowing that too many days would have gone by that I didn't have anything to eat for Anna would have it all on drugs and cigarettes.

Her name, I remembered now as the memory of the Ethiopian pancake she used to make came to me, was Adina. She pulled herself up from her lawn chair and walking down the steps, came towards the wire fence that separated both houses.

"You should be ashamed of yourself, Alyssa Marlin," she said, her Ethiopian accent still intact after all the years living in LA. "She may not be the perfect mama but she still do much for you, you know. And what do you do, girl, but you run away. You give her no way to contact you. You give us no way to contact you, not even when she got sick - with no one to take care of her. Ten years now you been gone."

"When did she get sick? What from?"

"Three months ago. I think it's hep C, the one about the liver," Adina said. "But she's feeling much better now, but there be no guarantees, no. It's not like she's rolling in the dough to afford any of the medicines, but she manage alright. She gettin' herself clean, you know."

Adina's words made me wither. Shame and humiliation washed over me and I fought back the tears as I approached the fence and reached out for her. "I'm so sorry."

"You apologizing to the wrong woman, Alyssa," she said, shaking her head, her hands on her hips. "She told me what happened this morning. Broke her heart, you did, just when she was picking herself up because she said you were going places. She so proud of you, your art, and her grandson. She didn't even know she has one."

"I'm so sorry, Adina," I whispered again. "I didn't mean to hurt anyone."

Just then the door opened, and a tall man with dirty blonde hair and earphone wires hanging from his ears strode out, leaving the door open as he sprinted across the lawn and hurried into the darkness. I could hear the faint sounds of the music he was listening to as he walked by, barely noticing us.

"Who's that?" I asked.

"That be the drug dealer come back to do some business," Adina said. "Did you know Anna was clean for at least two weeks before this morning? You too good for your own mama-?"

Suddenly I was running as fast as I could, up the front steps and through the door. I didn't need to know the reasons why someone could relapse back into addiction. It could be anything - from stress to the pain of withdrawal symptoms despite the alternative drugs that someone like Erik could give them. Even the humiliation of being turned away by one's own daughter could do it.

I expected a house that was filthy, with maybe Anna already lost in her heroin-induced haze on the couch. But what I saw when I stumbled into the living room took me by surprise. Though it was barely decorated except for a simple living room set in one corner and one of those folding card table sets in the dining room, the place was immaculate. It took me a few moments to take in everything I was seeing in front of me, inhale the smells of home that had long ago ceased to be my home. Upstairs, I heard the sound of a bed creaking.

"Anna! It's me, Sam," I called out.

I took the stairs two steps at a time to the second floor, turning around a sharp corner towards the master bedroom. The house had three rooms and one bathroom, all on the second floor with the master bedroom large enough to accommodate a queen-sized bed and bedside tables on either side of it but nothing else. The other two were tiny, only large enough to accommodate a twin sized bed each.

As I burst into the master bedroom, a man and a woman in the midst of an embrace shrieked at me to get out. But I stood by the door, staring at the woman, still expecting to see Anna, someone in a stupor the way I always remembered her with pinpoint pupils and mouth hanging open. But the woman on the bed wasn't Anna. She was much younger, and the man with her was about her age.

"What the hell -" He bellowed as he rolled onto his back, and the woman yanked the covers to her chest.

"Who are you?" I asked. "And where's Anna?"

"The hell do I know," the girl spat. "I pay rent here, so get out!"

"You rent this room?"

"Are you deaf, bitch?" The man shouted. "Get the hell out already!"

I didn't wait. I slammed the door behind me and began opening the other three doors in the hallway. The first one led to the bathroom and the second led to an empty bedroom with an unmade twin-sized bed, a small television set sitting on a chair in the corner.

The remaining door at the end of the hall used to be my room, where Anna's boyfriend used to push open quietly as I lay asleep, waiting till Anna was too out of it so he could get his own fix, though it had nothing to do with drugs. My skin crawled at the thought, but I pushed away the memory, the past needing to remain where it was. I needed my mind to be clear, bracing myself for what I was going to see.

Somewhere inside that room a phone began to ring. It continued ringing till I was finally brave enough to push it open and step inside.

The phone stopped ringing for a few seconds, only to ring again. Anna was lying on the bed with her back facing the door, her cellphone behind her on the bedside table. I tried to ignore the ringing, my eyes scanning the bed linens around her, wondering where she'd hidden the paraphernalia.

It was as if I was sixteen again, standing in the midst of her room littered with clothes and magazines, the smell of vinegar heavy in the air, the table next to her bed covered with baggies and syringes, cotton balls and a blackened spoon or two.

But I saw none of that, even as I pulled open the drawers, seeing only faded pictures and a stack of Christmas cards I had sent her every year, with no return address to which she could send a card of her own. They were bound together by a rubber band, its corners frayed as if she'd looked at them regularly. It made my chest tighten.

But the phone kept on ringing, even after it would go straight to voicemail. Finally, on the third set of rings, I picked it up and brought it to my ear, expecting to hear the voice of some drug dealer or worse, a john.

"Anna?"

I knew the voice on the phone immediately.

"Sam? Is that you?"

Erik. I hung up and placed the phone back on the table. It rang again and this time, I started pressing buttons to quiet it down, panicking. Anna rolled onto her back, white headphones in her ears and her eyes widened in surprise as she saw me. She blinked and rubbed her eyes, staring at me. In the light of the lamp on the bedside table, I could see no pinprick pupils staring back at me.

I was suddenly filled with shame. My mother was clean.

"Turn it off," I said, my voice almost child-like as I handed her the phone. "I don't want him to know I'm here."

"Why not?"

"He doesn't know about you," I whispered, shame filling every part of me as I spoke the words.

Anna looked at me for a few seconds, as if she were trying to understand what I had just said, before answering the phone. "Yes, Doc, what? No, I'm not using. I swear to God, I'm not. I was listening to some music and I didn't hear the phone ringing." She paused, glancing at me as Erik said something. "Who?"

I heard Erik's voice speak though I could not understand what he was saying. Anna glanced at me again, seeing me shake my head vigorously and bringing my index finger to my lips. I wasn't ready for Erik to find out who or where I was.

"No, that was...that was me you heard who answered the phone earlier. I'm sorry I hung up on you." She listened to him for a few more minutes, my heart pounding inside my chest as I sat on the bed, watching her. I could barely hear her voice as she spoke, saying good night to Erik and telling him that she would be seeing him at the clinic the next day for the counseling session.

As soon as she hung up, Anna pulled me into a tight embrace before letting go. She let me inspect her arms, looking for marks that I expected to be there, and even her neck, because sometimes it just didn't hit her fast enough.

"I'm so sorry for what I said to you this morning," I said as tears began to run down my cheeks. "For what I did. I didn't mean to hurt you."

"Oh, honey, you've sprung a leak," she said, diffusing my shame with humor, the way she always did with most anything that would have proved stressful to me. She pulled a few sheets of tissue from the box next to her bed and handed them to me. Then she sat up as I pulled a chair closer to the bed and sat down facing her.

"Is it true? You really are trying to get clean?" I asked.

I suddenly felt like a child, my usual bravado from the time I used to live in the same house years earlier nowhere to be seen. In the yellowish glow of her bedside lamp, Anna looked haggard, her skin pitted where she'd dug into them so long ago. She'd washed her hair since the morning but I noticed that it was thin in places. She had aged almost twenty years older than she really was. But then that's what long-term drug use can do to someone, I thought. Yet, another pressing concern was what Adina had said to me earlier.

"Adina tells me that you have Hep, and that you got really sick a month or so ago," I said, not really knowing anything about it, except that one could get it through infected needles or unprotected sex.

"Probably got it from the needles, when I was trying to save money and reusing them. That's alright. It's part of the course," she said, rubbing her arm absently. "Ironic, huh? Now I can't even afford treatment, those antiviral drugs they talk about."

"What about the harm reduction?" I asked. "What about that?"

"It helps with the addiction, but it's just the first step for me," she laughed drily. "I did this to myself, Sam. I can't blame no one but myself. But it was nice to see you today. I'm so happy to see that you're doing well. And then there's the doctor-"

"What about the doctor?"

"You're seeing him, aren't you?" She asked, smiling. There was a mischievous glint in her eyes. "I saw him kiss you this morning. Well, actually everyone did and when I returned to my room, it was like the place exploded."

"Mom," I said, covering my face in my hands. "This is so embarrassing. He must be horrified that people are talking about that."

"He didn't look like it," she said. "When I asked him if you were his girl, he actually blushed. So I know he likes you. And that's a good thing. He's a decent, that Erik."

"He is."

"And your boy - he's so beautiful, Sam," she said. "I wish I'd done a better job raising you. But even if I didn't have a hand in doing that, I'm so proud of you. You know that, right?"

She reached out to grab my hand, squeezing it as I nodded, the tears coming down again.

"Don't cry, honey," she said as she handed me more tissues. "Not all stories have sad endings, Sam. Some of them actually end quite happily. Well, for some of us, at least."

"Does Erik know who you are?" I asked. "I mean, who you are to me?"

She bit her lip, a worried expression on her face, before she nodded her head.

"Oh, God," I sighed, remembering my conversation with Erik on the phone just before I got out of the car. "So he already knew."

"So what?" Anna asked. But how could I tell her that I wasn't ready to lose Erik, David's words about Erik leaving me once he knew who I really was coming back to taunt me.

"Are you ashamed?" Anna asked. "Well, I don't blame you, Sam, and I deserve it. Really, I do. But he didn't seem upset at all when I told him that you were my daughter, and that I didn't blame you for not recognizing me. I mean, look at me-"

"Stop it, mom," I wailed, shaking my head. "You're making me feel worse than I already do. You look fine."

"You're being too kind, Sam," she chuckled. "But please don't cry. Don't feel bad for what happened this morning. I startled you, that's all. And don't think that he doesn't like you no more just because your mom's some junkie."

I dried my face, her face slowly making sense to me, driving David's words out. "You really think so?"

She nodded. "I know so, Sam. I mean, he was obviously shocked when I told him. He had to sit down and think for a while. But then he said that you never talked much about your past, and so you didn't really hide anything from him. I think he was supposed to have a meeting with Doctor Jayne, but he stayed with me for another hour."

"So he knows everything about me? Even what happened with..." My voice faded. I couldn't say his name.

"With Roy, yes," she said. "I'm sorry, but I had to tell Doctor Erik. I wish I hadn't been so messed up then, Sam, to know what that asshole was doing to you. God, it was exactly the same thing that happened to me when I had you, only it was my mother's brother-in-law, you know, and no one believed me. I don't know why I didn't believe you either. I was so stu-"

"Where is he now?" I asked brusquely.

"He's dead, thank God. Imprisoned for armed robbery and died in the slammer. They said it was a heart attack, but I really didn't care one way or the other."

I didn't either but Anna didn't need to know that. She probably saw it on my face. Suddenly I felt tired. For a few minutes it was enough to simply hold her hand, feel the bones of her wrists, the anatomy of her addiction visible to my fingers as I felt each tendon and each muscle.

But as if Anna could tell that I was reading the tales her body told me about her addiction, she pulled her hand away, busying herself as she wound the ear phone wires around an iPod which was a few years old, and placed it on top of her dresser. "I like to listen to music so I don't think about injecting again. Bobby Darin, Frankie, Dean Martin. Doctor Erik gave the player to me — just don't tell anyone. He was going to donate it but when he saw that I still had an old Walkman using cassette tapes, he said this was better. He put in all the cool songs since I don't have a computer. He said they're the songs his mom and dad used to listen to - only they're both dead now."

"Oh, Sam, do you know it's the third time I'm trying to get clean. But I kept relapsing. God, it was so bad in the beginning. I thought I was going to die. But it's gotten better ever since-"

"What about the drug dealer that I saw just leaving the house? Where are the baggies?"

She sighed, looking away. "I thought I needed just a hit to tide me over-"

"Mom," I groaned, looking around in search for the the baggies. "Where are they?"

"-but I didn't buy any," she said, gripping my arm. "I thought of you and that beautiful boy of yours. And I knew if I even tried a little bit, I'd probably die right here, OD'ing on some crap off the street - and that little grandson of mine would never even know anything about me - not that you would probably want him knowing about me."

"You're telling me the truth about not buying?" I asked. I'd reverted back to the teen that I had been when I first lived with her, too eager to believe everything she said, not realizing it was the drug talking.

"I swear, honey. I didn't buy any," she said, crossing her heart. "If I did relapse like I did in the past, I'd have to start Doctor Erik's program all over again, and there's a wait list. I can't another three months before any of them will take me in. I can't fail this time."

I couldn't stop looking at her, as if afraid that I'd discover that this was all a dream, that she was really right in front of me, still alive and not dead from on overdose, all alone. I squeezed her hand, stroking the back of her hand gently, feeling the warmth radiating from within. She was warmer than usual, I thought.

"Mom, Adina told me you were sick. What's going on?"

She shrugged. "Just the usual. Cold. Flu. Weak immunity from doing drugs. Nothing to worry about, Sam."

"Are you sure it's not something bad? I need to know."

"All you need to know, honey, is that right now, I'm the happiest woman in the world because I get to see you. And life is good." She pulled herself up from her bed. "Now I need to send you home. It's getting late. There's always tomorrow."

"I don't want to go home," I said. "I want to spend more time with you."

She smiled. "Same here. But I'm also tired." She glanced at the clock on the bedside table. It was 8:30. "I usually sit with Adina for a bit next door. I think there's a game tonight on the TV."

"Mom, are you sure you want me to go? I can stay-"

"And I want you to go, Sam," she said. "I have to be at the clinic tomorrow for counseling and this time I can tell them some good news for a change. I got to see you."

"I'll bring Michael next time," I said. "Or better yet, maybe you can stay with us for a few days during the week."

"Maybe," she said, frowning. "But I need to be close to the clinic, Sam. I can't be too far away. Maybe you can bring him over for an hour or two. I'll make sure the house is clean."

"It is clean."

"Well, then cleaner," she smiled. "Now go. The doctor wants you home anyway. I imagine you guys have a date."

"I cancelled it."

She shrugged. "Still, he wants you home early."

"Did he say that to you over the phone?"

"He did," she said, smiling. "I told you that man likes you very much. Have you even noticed how he looks at you?"

"And how does he look at me?" I asked, amused.

But Anna's face was serious.

"He looks at you like you're the air he needs to breathe, Sam," Anna said. "That man's in love with you."