With my luck, Mother would lock me out until the morning. Instead, I stepped into a closet near the front door and placed a broom between the handles to hold the closet doors shut.

Mother was slow in getting up from the floor. She hadn’t been asleep in bed all that long. Maybe the liquor was finally getting to her. From my hiding spot, I could hear the irregular pace of her footsteps as she approached the closet. She gave the doors a single tug, but the broom helped hold the doors in place as I also grabbed at the door handles in a game of tug of war.

“If you don’t come out now, you will be grounded for the rest of your fucking life,” she yelled.