There was this girl named, Lisa. Lisa was ten years old. Short black hair with the smoothest caramel complexion. People always said she got her looks from her grandma. Everybody just knew there was no way she got it from her mom or her daddy since they were both addicted to crack cocaine. But what did being addicted to drugs have to do with the complexion of a little girl? I have no idea. All I know is little Lisa was everybody’s favorite.

Every Saturday morning, Lisa would wake up at the crack of dawn to stand in line at Mount Calvary Baptist Church. She stood in line to receive free food from the church’s food pantry. With her mommy and daddy being addicted to drugs and her grandma barely making it by her social security check, little Lisa had to do what she had to do.

“Hey little Lisa,” said Sister Beatrice. Beatrice was in charge of all of the community efforts at the church. She ran the food pantry, Mount Calvary’s infamous “Thanksgiving Feast,” and the annual block party during the summer. She was nobody to mess with. Word on the street is she went to jail for killing someone and then escaped. Beatrice wasn’t from Greenville, South Carolina like us so nobody could vouch for her criminal history.

“Hi Sister Beatrice, how are you,” said Lisa, straightening out her wrinkled floral dress with her hands. The dress had pink, yellow and orange flowers on it. Her grandmother bought it from a local boutique on her ninth birthday. It was the first gift Lisa had in years.

“Oh, I’m hanging in there. How’s your grandma? She doing okay?”

“Yeah, she fine. She hanging in there too.”

“That’s good. I better see you at bible study tonight or else…,” said Sister Beatrice while holding up a closed fist.

They both laughed. Lisa never missed any of her bible study classes. She really was scared of what Sister Beatrice might do to her if she did.

Grabbing the bag of groceries on top of the table, Lisa flashed Sister Beatrice a smile and headed back home. “I’ll see you later,” she said.

“If I ruled the world…,” Lisa sang to herself as she walked down the street.

“Imagine that.”

This was Lisa’s favorite song. She thought about all of the things she would do if she really did rule the world. Free her Uncle Marcus, who’s in the state penitentiary serving two life sentences, would be the first thing. She needed him at home with her and grandma. She needed him to fix the leak in the roof and replace the hinges on the door. She needed him to comfort her when she woke up screaming from her nightmares. She needed him to make her laugh with his Bernie Mac impressions until she was about to pee on herself. Little Lisa needed a lot of things.

Get her mom and dad into a good treatment facility far away from here, would be the second thing. Lisa remembers the days when her parents were drug free and sober. It wasn’t until after she turned five that everything started to go downhill. Her daddy lost his job at the local meat factory, something about outsourcing and work being cheaper overseas.

Soon Lisa’s dad began to stay out late. He became a regular at Joe’s Bar & Grill, where he got mixed up with the wrong crowd. This is what she keeps telling herself because she knew deep down inside her daddy wasn’t a bad man. He just needed a little help and nobody was there to help him.

Then Lisa’s mom went out looking for work. She couldn’t find a job anywhere because she didn’t have a high school diploma. It was beginning to get hard for the Watson family. Before you knew it, Lisa was living with her grandma in her one bedroom apartment. Her parents dropped her off one Sunday afternoon like she was a gift and never came back.

Lisa looked up into the sky, as the clouds moved closer and closer together. A rain drop fell on her nose. Then two and three. She got a good grip on her grocery bags and began to sprint home. It was okay if she got wet, but not the food. The apples, oranges, brownie and pancake mix, green beans, sweet corn, lettuce and tomato that was in those bags, her and her grandma needed that.

“Grandma! Grandma,” Lisa shouted as she ran up the stairs to the fourth floor of their brick apartment building. Lisa knew her grandma would hear her because she always leaves the bedroom window open.

At five foot three, with long silky gray hair and a caramel complexion just like Lisa’s, grandma opened the apartment door. “Look at you all wet,” she said.

Lisa handed the bags to her grandma and turned around to close the door behind her.