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1

When her family lost their money, she was thirteen. She had to move into the projects. A new lifestyle, all new friends. Food stamps, behind on the rent, eating toast three days a week. The only time her parents had money was at the first of the month when her mother got her welfare check.

2

Her father Stanley went into a mental institution after he lost his business. At home he was a turnip -- watching television, drinking Kool Aid, and eating Fritos. He never worked again.

3

Lotta became the girl who she used to tease, who smelled because she didn't bathe regularly, who never had money for lunch.

4

Lotta was ashamed when her mother would shop with her at the Salvation Army. She hated wearing other people's clothes. The only time she felt like she was herself was when she was naked.

5

At least the incest with her mother's brother stopped, after more than seven years. He would come around, but he never had the opportunity.

6

This is when Joey would show up. Joey was her other self. Her mother thought she was only being a tomboy, but it was more than that. It was like a demon had possessed her. The anger and hell that was raging inside of her needed to have a release. What was that release? Heroin and shoplifting.

7

Lotta hung around with Louie from the junk yard. His hands were never clean. She always had grease on her panties - hard to sell them babies nowadays. Even after he took a shower, his hands were rough and shadowed with black in the cracks. Lotta would only see him when she needed money. Everything had a purpose. If it didn't have a purpose, Lotta didn't do it. She wanted something. If you didn?t have it, she'd find another way to get it when she was Joey.

8

The softer side of Lotta. The side she put up for her mother and her father and the few people she cared about. She had a soft spot for people with disabilities.

9

She didn't take them in, but she recognized their existence and made them feel as if they were truly part of humanity. She worked at a nursing home and was doing good when she was sixteen, and bringing money home to help her mother.

10

She had forgotten about Joey, and Joey had evidently forgotten about her.

11

She felt for the old people that were in the nursing home. She'll never forget the day she came to work and a patient she had become fond of had died and was no longer there. That emptiness was an ugliness that would have normally been to much for her to handle, and prompted Joey to come out.

12

But Joey didn't come out! She had gained the strength from kindness that she had seen, that had been shown to her by the staff of the nursing home, who loved her.

13

Louie, who had been out of her life, came back into her life, wanting a favor. She had learned to be in a safe, constructive environment. Louie had her steal a doctor's script pad, and forge prescriptions for speed.

14

Now she was taking speed with Louie. Eventually they got caught and she lost her job. She was seventeen.

15

She went back to shoplifting and heroin,

16

She eventually went back to Framingham Women's Prison.