Something rotted a long time ago underneath the kitchen sink, and the wood at the bottom of the cabinet was black and flimsy like a paper bag. There was a busted pipe there that must have been leaking for at least two months before I noticed it. And underneath the pipe I found a hole, where a pile of bugs crawled up from, scattering behind the spray bottles of cleaning junk I kept below the sink. The first time I saw them I screamed. I’d never seen a bug that looked like that before. Two hairy white hooks came from its face as if it could talk and sometimes a little bunch of them would stand up on their back legs, like humans to converse. They were white, almost translucent. Ugly little things. But mostly I screamed because they didn’t have any eyes.

“Termites,” my dad shouted over the phone. “Are they termites?”

I was bending into the cabinet with a flashlight, trying to explain to him the facial intricacies of this particular bug, the way that it grinned.

“I don’t know,” I said. “What do termites look like?”

One of them started to walk over to me, as if it wanted to box.

“Four years of college, and you don’t know what a fucking termite looks like?”

“Don’t shout at me,” I said.

Though I understood a little bit of why he was angry. He’d left the house for me to take care of after college, when the army stationed him in Virginia. And deal was I’d help him pay the mortgage. Make sure nobody broke into the house. In the winter, I’d turn the heat on, so the pipes wouldn’t freeze or bust. I’d collect the mail. Cut the grass. Chase the mice away. So, how come I didn’t notice that this very important thing was falling apart? Shit, even I was kind of pissed off at myself. And if I was my father, I’d want to find some clever way to punish me, too.

“Get your brother over there to look at it, then call the exterminator right the fuck away.”

Alright, I told him, I would and then, “I’m sorry.”

Though the apology didn’t work.

All summer long, we’d been trying to sell the house, but nobody wanted to buy it, because there was an old cemetery behind the backyard. And, once, after spotting the graveyard, this couple from Bensonhurst tried to knock a full ten thousand dollars off the price. My father, insulted, told them to go back to Brooklyn and fuck themselves.

“It’s impossible sometimes to talk to you,” I said.

“Impossible? What?” he said. “Why?”

“Because of your temper.”

“I don’t have a temper, kid. I’m just annoyed by your stupidity.”

“I don’t know any father who talks to their daughter the way that you do,” I said, only because I hoped it would make him feel guilty enough to forget he was mad.

“Oh, really!” Here my father paused and pretended to be heartbroken. “I’m going to tell you something I never told your brother before. Are you ready?”

I beeped the phone’s volume all the way up.

“Stop that fucking beeping,” he said. “Your brother doesn’t know this, so I don’t want you telling him. It’s sensitive information, okay?”

“I’ll keep it secret, father,” I said, placing a hand over my heart. “Nobody will ever know.”

“I trust you,” he said. “You’ve always been my favorite. You’re so much smarter than Jim.”

“You’re not fooling me,” I said, because last year during Christmas, at Grandma’s, Dad told Jim that Jim was his favorite, too.

“Listen, Tam-Tam.” That’s his own special way of calling me, not a nickname, but an expansion of a nickname.

I moved into the living room, pushed a hamper full of dirty laundry on the floor and sat on the couch.

“What I want to tell you is that I was adopted,” he said, starting this made up story he always like to tell me about growing up in an orphanage.

“You weren’t adopted,” I said.

Because he wasn’t. My father was born in Lutheran Hospital to my grandparents shortly after they landed in Brooklyn from Puerto Rico and grew up poor, but with two biological parents in the Gowanus projects.

“Stop,” I said, and then turned on the TV, because I didn’t want to miss My Big Fat American Lottery, which used to be this super fake reality show about an obese family who’d purchased a mansion in New York after living in a trailer for fifteen years.

“Are you going to listen to me or are you going to keep on interrupting me?” he asked.

I yawned. Loudly.

“My real parents – hope they rot in hell – left me by the Brooklyn Bridge till somebody found me in the bushes and sent me to Mount Loretto.”

“Mount Loretto?” I laughed.

“Terrible, terrible place. If you were a nice-looking white kid you got adopted, right away, like this.”

Over the phone I could hear my father snap.

“People would come to the orphanage, as if they were going to fucking Walmart to pick out new kids,” he said. “Those nuns were making a pretty buck, too, but man, those sisters were mean.”

“Ha,” I said.

“Why are you laughing? If you keep on laughing I’m not going to tell you the story. Are you going to keep on laughing? Because then I’ll stop.”

“I’m going to keep on laughing,” I said.

“Whatever. So, here I am five years old. One Sunday I get up and wash my hair in the bathroom sink, so that I could get adopted, and the nuns were like: What are you doing? Nobody’s going to take you home, kid – you’re ugly.”

I chuckled because that was a new addition to the story, and I liked it. I wanted to save the detail for later when I could retell the story to Jim.

“Stop laughing,” Dad said, his voice now distant, because he’d put me on speaker. “I told you no more laughing. So, one time I try to escape. I get a sack of potatoes from the cellar, and this emergency-shelter-spam. Then I meet these other two orphans. The boy was ten. The girl was like eight – fucking ugly, too. You could tell she had a hard life. Poor thing. It was sad.

“Once we escaped, we built a little fire in the alley. And we roasted the can then opened it and started eating the stuff with our hands. Our fingers were black from the cinder, but man, we were happy. The little boy started to dance. The ugly girl started to clap. It was beautiful. But then the police showed up and took us to the precinct. And the cops were like: Where are you guys trying to go?

“And the little boy was like: To my Mom’s! To my Dad’s!

“I looked at the kid. I said, Man, you don’t got no mom or dad. The little boy started crying, and I felt bad. I told him, okay – when they take us back to the convent, you can get the top bunk this time. Just don’t piss on me.”

“Poor guy,” I said.

“I say all of this for a reason, which is, that’s why I get a little sensitive sometimes when I see one of you kids being ungrateful. Especially that dumb brother of yours.”

“That’s not nice, Dad. Jim’s not dumb.”

“He’s dumb,” my father said, “and ungrateful. The both of you. That’s why I get so mad, when one of you guys fucks up. I think about that little boy dancing and that ugly girl clapping, and I think about how I came from nothing and worked so hard to feed and house two inconsiderate kids, who can’t even take care of the fucking house I worked so hard to give them. And here I am fighting for my country.”

“You get angry,” I said, the way my case manager at the Hope and Survival Clinic would say. “Not sensitive. You get a temper.”

“I become annoyed,” my father said. “At your guys’ vast stupidity. Your guys’ vast, expansive stupidity.”

***

The next day, when Jim came to the house, I told Jim what Dad said.

Jim went, “Dad loves to tell that story.”

“It’s his favorite,” I said.

Then we talked about the house and the different ways in which it was falling apart.

“It’s on a slant,” Jim said and pointed out a section where the wall had separated from the molding.

“There’s also a big crack in the living room on the ceiling,” I said.

The whole house was shifting because they built it fourteen years ago on a hill and half of it was constructed semi-legally on top of the edges of the cemetery.

“I know,” Jim said. “I saw it.”

He went into the kitchen and opened the cabinet doors beneath the sink to check out the busted pipe.

“The plumber came to fix the bottom bathroom,” I told him, “and asked me how old the house was? I said, fourteen years. Then the guy rolls his eyes and says, More like forty.”

“Thieves,” Jim said. “All of them, those plumbers. I should become one.”

“A thief?” I said, because a long time ago Jim had done two years for selling.

“A plumber, asshole.” He unfolded his toolbox on the kitchen floor and opened the cabinet doors underneath the sink. Right away, you could smell the mold. “He was fucking with you probably because you’re a girl.”

“I told Dad. He said you should have been there, when the plumber came. Now, the plumber’s charging extra for the sink.”

“Fuck Dad,” Jim said. “Seriously. If we’re going to talk like that, he’s the one who should be here.” Then Jim pushed himself away from underneath the sink quickly and screamed, like a little girl. “What the fuck is that?” He pointed into the cabinet. “Jesus. What is that, Tam?”

I laughed because I knew he was talking about the bugs, and I hadn’t told him about them on purpose because I wanted to see his face when he discovered their alien bodies for himself.

I hopped down from the counter, and we looked into the dark of the cabinet, together, while I held up a miniature flashlight.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But they look like baby trolls. See.” I pointed at one of them, who’d turned its head to us, like an infant ET. “I think that one’s smiling.”

“Termites,” Jim said, shaking his head.

“No, I don’t think so. Wikipedia says termites hide.”

“Not these fuckers.”

Jim blasted a pile of them with a bottle of generic roach spray, and I imitated them dying, as the bugs limped back into the hole.

“Retreat,” I shouted, “I’m melting,” while some of the insects that got blasted writhed and then rolled up into balls.

“This is disgusting,” Jim said. “Really, Tamara. You should be ashamed.”

He stood up and wiped his hands on his jeans, dramatically.

“The violins, please.” I pretended to play them.

“Look at this.” Jim pointed to a small mountain of clear garbage bags full of cardboard and cans, crowded by the back door. “You got to take care of this place.” He jabbed one finger in my direction. “Take care of yourself, man. You look like shit.”

I bent to look at my reflection in the toaster.

“No, I don’t,” I said, even though it was true.

New angles had grown around my jaw, and lately, I’d been having trouble sleeping. I’d just started a new job, this on top of my old one at Sears: a three month gig as an enumerator, collecting surveys for the Census. All week, I crawled up and down the stairs, knocking on people’s doors. And once this little guido slid his window open and told me to get my Jehovah-Witness-ass off his block.

“You’re looking pretty hot there yourself.” I pointed to Jim’s stomach. “Ripe and round.” And then I laughed. Still, I didn’t like Jim talking about what I looked like. For me, it meant he could tell I was sick.

“See, everything’s a fucking joke,” Jim said. Then he packed up his tools.

From the upstairs window, I watched him as he drove away and imagined him pulling into Brooklyn, greeting his big mouth girlfriend and three-year-old kid, bending down to open the oven and taste dinner in his clean kitchen in Bayridge.

That night, I blasted the bugs underneath the sink one more time with some Windex. I dragged the bags of recyclables to the curb. I locked the doors. Turned the first floor’s lights off. Felt my way up the stairs to the bedroom in the dark.

In bed, I tried to fall asleep quickly, but behind my head I could hear things whispering. Something scratching on the other side of the wall. And I dreamt about Dad’s orphans. And in my dreams the dancing boy was named Chico, and I was the little ugly girl clapping by the fire, with my hands blackened by ash, because I was happy.

I could feel the fire twist around my face.

I didn’t yet know that we hadn’t escaped.

***

In the morning, after I went to Hope and Survival so that they could count my blood, I called Leonard Benkovsky, topnotch Staten Island exterminator at 1-800-DIE-BUGS, and he came to the house to give us an estimate. He was a tall man with a big belly, and all of his words bubbled through his lips.

From outside, our house looked just like any other townhouse on Staten Island, built cheaply by overzealous developers in the nineties to make a quick buck. Indistinguishable from the other ones attached to it. But behind this row of houses was a cemetery, which Benkovsky thought would decrease the house’s value, which I argued with him about because we had an elementary school five blocks away: “And we’re ten minutes by car from the ferry!”

“What does this matter?” Benkovsky huffed. “You live next to dead people.”

Then I tried to think of some of the perks of living next to graves. Growing up, when me and Jim played ball sometimes, he’d pop it over the fence of our tiny concrete yard into the cemetery behind us, on purpose. Mostly, it was an excuse for him to hoist himself over the chain link fence and check out the tombstones. He liked to bend over the weeded lot and rehearse each tomb’s date and name. That year Jim had watched Poltergeist for the first time, and he was really hoping that something like that could happen to us.

“But people die in that movie,” I said.

“You could be the one that dies. Imma fucking survive.” Jim danced next to one of the graves like he was Michael Jackson singing Thriller.

“But do you have ghosts?” Benkovsky asked, now, his breath smelling like an old rag.

“No,” I said, even though it was a lie.

***

Once, a long time ago, when me and Jim were kids, we sat in our room crouched over a cupcake, trying to summon our mother back from the dead. She’d died the year before of cancer, but Jim was determined to bring her back. We lit a birthday candle and stuck it in the frosting and mimicked a séance we’d seen that night on TV.

Jim tightened his hands around mine.

“If you hear us, do something,” he said.

And though we waited for a long time, patiently and quietly, we heard nothing but the sounds of an ice cream truck disappearing into the dark.

Jim let go of my hand.

“This shit is stupid,” he said, throwing a pillow at the wall.

He pushed against the floor as if to stand up, which was when I saw it.

I said, “Wait. Look, Jim,” before he could turn on the light. I pointed to the wall, where we could see our twin shadows, sitting cross legged on the floor.

Beside us, a third shadow waved its hand.

***

After the exterminator left, I cleaned up the kitchen. I called Dad and told him what Benkovsky said about the termites, how much all of it would cost.

“Nineteen-hundred dollars,” Dad said. “Jesus. Fucking. Christ.”

I slid a blackened mop along the floor.

“Yeah, man. Fuck,” I said, in mutual disgust, which offended my father.

“Don’t talk like that, Tam Tam. There’s nothing worse than hearing shit language from a lady. Did I raise you to talk like that? Here I am fighting for my country.”

I turned the faucet on and put the phone on speaker, then placed it next to the sink. Through the window you could see the cemetery, its tall gray trees.

“What do we do?” I asked.

Dad’s voice boomed louder from the phone, but less articulate. “I don’t know. I’m going to have to think about it.” And before I could say anything, he hung up.

It got dark outside, as I finished the dishes, so that I could see my face in the window, long and pale, with holes for eyes. I quit cleaning. In the living room, I found a channel with this comedian, who the audience just loved. A laugh track played, and I joined it. But from the corner of my eye I could see something moving along the ceiling.

I could hear the motherfuckers eating my walls.

***

“This is what we’re going to do,” Dad said. “I talked to Vasquez. He says he knows a guy who’s brother’s an exterminator, and he’ll do it all for us half off. Vasquez is going to bring him over there and help out.”

“Half off,” I said. “That’s amazing.” But inside I was thinking shit man, Vasquez. He was this cute twenty-something-year-old guy who used to work with my father ten years ago, when I was like fourteen and shy and hiding in the kitchen, covering up my zits.

In the bathroom mirror, I inspected my pores.

“When’s he going to come?” I asked.

“I don’t know, kid. Just be ready.”

“What do you mean just be ready? I work. I have things to do. I need to know when he’ll come to the house.”

All around the living room there was an array of gross shit such as my bra dangling off the television set, a coffee mug full of cigarettes, a half smoked joint. An old vacuum stood in the middle of the room like a statue of an elephant, with its hose dangling upon the floor. I was’t ready.

“You work?” Dad said. “All of sudden you work, kid! Where’s my rent?”

He was pissed because I still owed him a few hundred dollars from last month, when I wasn’t working, before I got the job at the Census.

“Where’s my new plumbing?” I said. “Where’s the exterminator? Where’s the heat? My father the slum lord!” It was like a spoken word poem. “Charging me rent while I sleep with all of these bugs. Just give me one more week, and I’ll get it to you!”

I had two months of student loan payments due and an old Macy’s bill. That didn’t even count how much I was co-paying out of pocket these last six months for ARVs, which of course I hadn’t yet talked about with Jim or my Dad. I’d been too scared to tell them that I was sick.

“It’s embarrassing the way you take care of that house. Ever think about that?”

“All of the time,” I said.

And I did.

I thought about the carpet my father had laid with his own hands, and the wainscot he’d nailed into the walls, and how now when I tapped them they sounded hollow.

***

Patiently, I waited for Vasquez to come and exterminate my house. I bought a new mop from Rite Aid and dragged it up and down the floors. Scrubbed the grease away from the stove, vacuumed the curtains, washed the towels. At night, I opened the cabinet door and whispered, “You’re going to die,” to the bugs.

But when Vasquez, finally came, he didn’t look the way I remembered him. He had shrunk over the decade, and all of his expressions had tightened across his face like a string being pulled on a guitar.

He and two buddies showed up at the door with black rubber gloves and steel canisters strapped to their backs, goggles dangling around their necks. This made me feel better. That I was more attractive than them. I was wearing a short, white dress, and I’d done my hair the day before with rollers.

I opened the door wider for Vasquez, grinning.

“You look like a bunch of ghostbusters,” I said.

Vasquez smiled at me politely, like I was a little girl.

Which I was not, I wanted to say. I’m not a little girl anymore, Vasquez. I’m not little.

“Where to?” he asked, though he lifted his arm as if to go upstairs.

“Where ever you want to go.”

The men searched the house. One of them, short and chubby, dressed like a teenager in a long Nike shirt. The other one, old and thin, with a plaid button down. After the first two floors, they banged all the way down the stairs with their equipment to the basement, and I stood in the kitchen alone with Vasquez as he quizzed me about the house.

“You know, if you fixed the floors downstairs, you guys might have some better luck, selling it. I’ll talk to your Dad,” Vasquez said, almost winking. Was that a wink? “I think in the end you guys are going to be alright.”

“It gets pretty here during the summer, too.” I said. “And the cemetery isn’t really that bad. The trees in the back got flowers.”

I tried to swallow. Then I got so nervous I started to cough on my own spit.

From downstairs one of the men called out in Spanish and Vasquez moved toward the stairs. I followed him down to the basement, where the old man was standing on the dryer directing his flashlight at a beam below what must have been the kitchen floor.

And, at first, I did not see them. They blended so well into the ceiling. But then the beam looked like it was moving, writhing underneath the old man’s light. And I saw dozens of termites eating the wood. Here the man with the Nike shirt tapped on a perfectly smooth wall, but you could hear it echo, from where they ate inside of the house. The old man moved his flashlight along the walls, and I saw everything that had been concealed by the basement’s dark.

“All of it,” the old one said, “is infested.”

Then the two men hopped in a van and drove away while Vasquez stayed in the house to call my dad. I sat down on the couch and waited. From the living room, I could hear my father moan over the phone, in dismay. All the time Vasquez looked at me embarrassed, shaking his head and smiling politely, probably listening to my father curse. And I felt miserable at that moment, as if I could never have someone like Vasquez.

“He wants to talk to you,” he said, passing me the phone.

Dad’s voice boomed now from the cell. “The whole fucking house? How could you have not seen this? How could you have not told me?” he asked.

I didn’t know, I wanted to say. It’s not my fault. And without realizing it, I started to cry.

Vasquez motioned for me to give him back the phone.

“It’s okay,” he silently mouthed to me. “We’ll deal with it,” he said to my Dad. “Don’t worry.”

Though I remembered the old man standing there crouched on the dryer, the way he stepped back from the ceiling and cringed. Vasquez hung up, took his canister off and sat beside me on the couch. He patted my head.

“Why are you crying? Everything will be okay.”

“I’m ashamed,” I said, and then I shrugged. “I wish I wasn’t me. I wish I was somebody else.”

Softly, I shifted my knee beside his.

“It’s okay,” Vasquez said, but he moved away, almost embarrassed.

So, I kissed him. Even though I could feel he didn’t want it. He drew his face away, at first. But then he let me. For one small moment. And I was thankful.