I watched my father throw my clothes, my books, and the last photo of my mother into the fire like my life meant nothing. Then he looked at me and said, “This is what happens when you disobey me.” I said nothing. Six years later, I called him and whispered, “Check your mailbox.”

Nate drove me to Columbus that night with a backpack, forty-three dollars, and the envelope from his trunk. I slept on his cousin’s couch for two weeks before the trade program started. The apartment smelled like old carpet and microwave dinners and the particular kind of silence that comes from being somewhere you are tolerated rather than welcomed, but it was a roof and a floor and a door that locked, and I was grateful for all three.

During the days I worked demolition for a contractor named Morris who had a standing practice of hiring young men that nobody else was interested in. I never asked him why he did it. I suspected it was because desperation made for reliable workers, and he understood the economy of that. The work was physical and simple and required nothing of my mind except attention, which suited me, because my mind in those first months was occupied with more important things.