The change of clothes under her pillow says she’s ready, ready to go at a moment’s notice. Her favorite dress, her Little Mermaid nightgown, the kind of socks with lace ruffles that turn down at the ankles. She’s not quite four years old, hasn’t even learned to write the number four yet, but she’s been dressing herself for over a year and she’s learned that sometimes chances come, and you never know when they’ll come, and you have to be ready for them or else the chances go away again and then you’re stuck in your bedroom having tea parties with no one and trying not to make any noise.

She has a stool in the bathroom for brushing her teeth, washing her hands, playing with the soap bubbles. She has a stool in the kitchen so she can reach the crackers when she’s hungry, which isn’t very often, because she doesn’t really get hungry, never much has, not since she was too little to reach the crackers even with a stool. She doesn’t understand why they’re always telling her to eat, one more bite, one more bite, like one more bite is the key, the magic key that unlocks her chair, her prison chair, so she can slide from the table and go free. She doesn’t understand why they don’t eat the damn food themselves, since they seem to like it so much, and she doesn’t understand what the word damn means, but her daddy says it all the time, damn and shit and other words, and she likes to whisper them in her head because she knows he can’t hear what’s in her head, and proving he can’t hear what’s in her head makes her feel better sometimes.

Sometimes she sits in the corner of her closet and colors. It’s too dim to see the colors very well, or the lines on the page, but the walls wrap around her like arms, and she doesn’t mind the dim because the colors don’t matter and the lines don’t matter. What matters is filling it in, filling in the page, filling in the time, filling it in with whatever color is at hand and whatever marker hasn’t dried out yet. What matters is not making any noise, not making her daddy get up from his video game, not making him come in there, because he’s always warning her not to make him come in there. Sometimes she wishes he would come in there, come in and have tea with her, but she knows by now that he doesn’t like tea and he doesn’t like being bothered when he’s playing his game and he doesn’t know how to talk to her except to yell.

So she sits in her closet, and she colors, and she has tea parties with no one, and she tries not to make any noise, and she waits, waits for chances to come, and mostly they don’t but every now and then they do. Every now and then her mommy comes home from work and says the words, the magic words, you’re spending the night with Grandma tonight, and as soon as she hears those words she races to her room to put the clothes from her pillow in a backpack, her Princess backpack, because she’s not going to miss a single chance, not one.

And then for a little while, a little magical while, the colors do matter. The colors matter, and the lines matter, and she can make all the noise she wants, and no one tells her not to make them come in there. And they smile when she invites them to come in there, come in for a tea party, a real tea party with real juice in the teapot and a real person at her table, her little table where the chair is not a prison and no one has to take one more bite. And for a little while she doesn’t even say damn in her head, because she doesn’t need to prove Grandma can’t hear what’s in her head, and she even wishes Grandma could hear what’s in her head, hear all the things she can’t think how to say.

And then after a little while, such a too-little while, she’s back in her room again, trying not to make any noise, and she’s putting her clothes back under her pillow, and she’s settling in her closet to wait, wait for another chance, another beautiful, magical chance, which she knows will come, eventually it will come, and she will be ready for it.