Santana was the youngest of eight. Her earliest memories included her older sister, Alejandra, throwing her behind a dumpster and covering Santana with her body as gunshots sounded across the street. Alejandra and José were the two oldest Lopez children. The family lived in Cabrini Green, one of the biggest projects in the Adjacent Hell. They had a small apartment with four rooms. The boys; José, Antonio, Jesus and Aldolfo shared a room and Santana, Alejandra, Xitlali, and Margarita shared the other. The third room was for their parents, though their father, Ramón, was barely ever home. When José, the oldest, was 15, Ramón was barely 30.

Santana could remember Alejandra pushing her against the wall so hard that she fell off the side was stuck between the bed and the wall. Then Alejandra would lay on top of her so the when Ramón came in drunk and raging, he would take Alejandra and wouldn´t hurt Santana, Xitlali or Margarita. Alejandra would hear him through the thin walls of the project and without wasting a second, throw the younger kids in the closet or under the bed. José would do the same with the boys.

Santana´s mother, Lorena, would sit in her bedroom, bottle of vodka in hand, sobbing as she heard Ramón hitting Alejandra or smashing her head against the wall. She buried her head in the pillow and screamed a scream that nobody heard when she heard the woosh and crack of Ramón´s belt on José´s battered body. Lorena was the same age as Ramón and very small.

The next day, Alejandra or José would get up and limp over to the bed and wake up the kids for school. They knew that frequent absences would mean a call home. They had no phone, so they assumed that the school would send a grown up over to their house. They feared this so much that they allowed Alejandra to rustle them awake the day after even the worst fights. Like a mother combing her children´s hair in the morning, Alejandra would sit in front of each child one at a time and cover their bruises with makeup. José would dress them all and make sure they were looking presentable. José washed their few sheets and clothes in the bathroom that their whole hallway shared and hung them in the bedroom to dry. He had made the mistake once of hanging them on a clothesline and almost all of the clothes were stolen. Alejandra, José and Margarita worked several jobs each like convenience shops, car washes, drycleaners and fast food restaurant. The older kids all dropped out of school to work and feed the rest at home. Santana and her twin brother Jesus at age seven, were so proud to get their job of taking out the garbage for the whole project building on Saturday. This took them all day, from the crack of dawn until past 10 at night, dragging their old red wagon down the long halls. They didn´t notice the drug dealers in the elevator or the prostitutes the halls. Some of the prostitutes were nice and gave them candy but all of them told the kids the same thing. ¨Get out of here while you can.¨ Santana and Jesus made several dollars each and always gave all of their money to Alejandra and José to buy them food.

The kids all knew how to lie, they were coached to expain away bruises or limps with the usual ¨I fell out of a tree¨, ¨I tripped over my brother´s toys¨, ¨I was playing with my tio´s cigarrette and burned myself¨. Santana remembered explaining to a teacher that her wrist was broken in a car accident and the teacher stopping her midsentance.

¨Santana, you can tell me if anything is wrong, you know that honey, right?¨ The teacher lifted her hand to stroke Santana´s hair, but Santana flinched at her hand and ran out of the room.

Once, Alejandra had forgotten to lock the closet and Ramón had found the young girls. He started to drag out Santana by the ankle, only stopping to knock Alejandra out with his vodka bottle when she tried to stop him. Lorena heard the small cries of her youngest daughter and jumped out of bed. Running into the girl´s room, she stood in front of Ramón and cried ¨¡dejar de sufrir a nuestros hijos! " (stop hurting our children!). Ramón grabbed her by the hair and dragged her into their bedroom, leaving the children to huddle in a group a cry silently as they heard screams in the next room.

But that was more than ten years ago. Santana was now 16. She had tested out of her neighborhood highschool, Juarez, and was the only girl from the Adjacent Hell, Lima Heights Adjacent and one of the few from Lima Heights who had gotten into McKinley high school. Ramón hadn´t been home in over seven years. Alejandra, Margarita, and Aldolfo had all left home. José had been killed by a spare bullet from a gang shootout in the street. Xitlali had gotten pregnant at 15 and had moved in with her boyfriend. Antonio had overdosed on drugs and died a few years ago. Alejandra and her boyfriend, a good man, visited often. They had two kids and were expecting their third soon. She was 26 and her boyfriend was 30.

Despite her rainsoaked childhood, Santana had to admit that life was much better now. Every meal, aunts uncles and cousins came in and brought food. The Lopez´s had a relatively large apartment and there was never less than twenty relatives friend and neighbors at their house for dinner. Her small bedroom with so many bad memories now had a bunk bed in it. Every night, Santana either shared the bed with her cousins or joined the others on the floor in sleeping bags or mats. She often had to sleep in a sleeping bag because she was the last in at night. The younger cousins and the older relatives went to bed early so the light were usually turned off at 9:00.

Santana stayed in the hallway to do her homework. At nearly midnight every night, she would creep into her apartment and usually dodge a slap from her drunk mother and a whispered demand to come in earlier to help put the kids to sleep. She would tiptoe between the many sleeping bags and mats on the floor to the closet that she had spent her childhood hiding in. Sticking her foot in a hole in the wall, she propped herself up to the shelf that only she could reach. She turned on the small little battery light and looked at her few possesions. No one else on the Cheerios would guess that her uniform was one of her most prized possessions, nor that she washed it in the sink that she shared with her entire floor. She put her school books with her uniform, turned off the lamp and looked for a small space of floor to sleep on between her many cousins.

Lorena told Santana in one of her rare sober moments, that she was the hope of the Lopez family. She asked her not to get pregnant until later and to finish high school. Santana promised that she would and unlike her father, she intended to keep her promises.