It was the night of my eleventh birthday that my mom finally showed signs of being bankrupt. They had kept all of this from my brother and I, but we knew. We knew it all along. From the beginning of that week we knew something bad was going to happen, I was just hoping whatever it was wouldn’t happen on my birthday. But with my luck, it did.

Now, just mere minutes away from my birth eleven years ago, my mom was on the phone arguing with the cake maker about the amount of money on her credit card. Since we had used the same bakery since my brother and I were born, the bakery had our information on file. My mom was going through denial, she hadn’t had a gig for months, and my father hadn’t been home in three days. She told Tommy, my brother, and I that he was on a business trip and that he’d be back soon. Whenever I’d ask her if he was coming home for my birthday she’d tell me to go do something like clean my room or to go do my homework and have Tom help me.

Tom and I knew something like this was going to happen from the day that mom was informed that her current workplace was ‘letting her go’. As if she wanted to leave, my mom loved her singing job. She had a beautiful voice, and she loved being on stage. When I was little she used to make a stage out of pillows and all sorts of different things she found around the house and we would stand on those pillows, heads held high and do a performance for Tommy and dad, no matter how awful our voices clashed. They both would sit there and clap for us, even when they wanted to burn their ears off because of our racket.

My brother and I had saved up our allowance money from the day mom was fired until now, which was a couple of months later. I, of course, had spent some of the money because, being a girl, my friends and I went to the mall sometimes and I had to keep up appearances so my friends wouldn’t think I was a broke loser. So, when my brother asked me for the money all I could do was give him twenty dollars and start crying because I knew I had messed up. If only I would have saved that money the rumor that we were broke would have never circulated around town. We would never have been made fun of, my friends would never have started to look down on me, and Tom would still be on the basketball team, taking trips all over the state so that he could feel good about doing something for himself.

That year, we celebrated my birthday without a cake, without any candles, and without any decorations. My mom had to return all my gifts so that she could have some credit on her card. The only thing I could keep was a golden heart shaped locket with the word ‘Hope’ carved into the back. My mom bought that with her first two paychecks because she knew that someday she would want to give it to me. That was the only thing I had left to remind me of what I once had, what was once normal.

That night, when my dad came home, he was drunk. He could hardly walk in a straight line, let alone three feet without almost falling on his face. When he stumbled into mine and Tom’s room he stood at the door, bloodshot eyes looking at me and slurred a ‘Happy Birthday Carrie-doll’. That night, I cried myself to sleep knowing that my life would never be the same. Knowing life would never be the same for all of us.