“Come get your worthless daughter and take her back,” my mother-in-law shouted my father as I lay broken at the bottom of the stairs after my husband shoved me down. “Your family will answer for it if she has even a scratch,” was the sole warning Dad offered her. They had no notion who my father really was, so they made fun of him.

Maya remembered Grandma saying Mommy was silly and fell on her own feet.

How did Grandma know that, she said?I asked carefully.

Maya shrugged her shoulders.

‘She said our stairs are really slick.

I looked at Dad, then at Gabriel, before I asked my next question.

“Did grandma talk to your dad after that?I probed gently.

Maya paused to reflect.

“She told Daddy to go right upstairs and get the papers out of the blue room,” said Maya.