After our parents’ violent and unexpected deaths, my brother, Monty, and I were taken in by our mother’s sister and her family. As if to accentuate our already profound sense of displacement, we were delegated to a makeshift bedroom in the basement of our aunt’s suburban home, separate from those in the levels above.

As we mourned the sudden and unexpected loss of our parents, the basement seemed an appropriate environment. For us, the basement was not a hardship, though. We shared a dim room in the damp space beneath the house. We grew to love it. We had privacy to experiment with stolen cigarettes and stay up till all hours watching black-and-white crime movies. We were separate from the rest of the family, the strangers above us who shared our blood, and we were rulers, or so it seemed to us, of our own domain.

The basement, being belowground, was completely without light at nighttime. The deepest darkness. One night, I woke needing to use the bathroom and clambered from my bed to make the trip upstairs to the only bathroom in the house. The bathroom was our only connection to the others who lived in the house with us, the need to relieve bodily functions our only acknowledgment to those who lived above. This night, I neglected to turn on the bedside lamp to light my way. Why should I? It was a trip I had made countless times before. I could have easily negotiated the course with my eyes closed. But this time, for whatever reason, somewhere along the way, I got lost.

I think that I became conscious of the darkness. That must have been it. The void of the absolute absence of light. Only a few steps from my bed, I paused along the familiar path. I tried to see my own hand held inches from my eyes, but I couldn’t. I was blind. Lost. Frightened.