Marie

The teenage daughter of my neighbors, Marie, sits on the steps in front of the house, smokes quietly. She must be 17, 18 now. A few years ago, at night, I heard loud voices from the apartment where she lived with her parents, male and female voices yelling with rage at each other. On another day, I came home and found blood all over the walls in the hallway. That was the day her mother threw her father out of the house. A few months later, another man moved in, obviously her stepfather now. He looked like one of those guys I do not wanna meet in times of oppression, in a dictatorship. One day at midnight I found her drunk and apathetic at the front door brought home by her friends. She behaves like a girl with good manners. She looks like a bird to me that wants to be set free.