Mother banged her fists on the walls, the dirty wallpaper, probably once a striking pattern of white heather, leaving brown smudges on her fists. “You son of a bitch, Marty, you son of a bitch!” Witch each word, the flowers took a beating.
            I was quiet while she screamed into the wall. When her phone rang, she jumped, wiped her tears away and answered the phone. “You motherfucker,” she said.
            There was a pause. “No, you little rat, you did not sell me a protection spirit. I wish you’d done that! This giant beast won’t open the door half the time, it won’t let anyone, I mean anyone, inside expect me and Abbey, and its grip is so tight the bleeding walls are crumbling around me.”
            Another pause. “It means well? Wow, okay, I guess I’ll just let this slide then. I’ll just live in a god damn prison for the rest of my life cause the jailer means well!”
            She hung off the words on the other end of the phone, then took it away from her ear and silently jumped around, screaming with no sound. “You sold me an untrained protection spirit? You’re such a slimy little rat fucking eel turd, Marty! Fix this shit!” And she hung up the phone and flung it onto the grey musty couch.
            She looked up, breathing hard, and met my eyes. “Don’t repeat any of that around your grandmother.”
            I nodded and slid into the hallway. The walls shook as the spirit tightened his grip on the outside of the house, and Mother began hollering again. I ran up the stairs, into a room, out the window and onto the roof.
            Ivy was crawling up the outside of the house, framing the cracks running along the cream weatherboards and the holes in the windows. The dirt on the roof stuck to my bare feet, and I held out my arms for balance. A warm touch, like a cloud, steadied my weight, and I looked up at the pale looming spirit above me.
            “Don’t listen to Mother,” I said, patting its hand. “She’s just mad cause Marty didn’t train you properly before he sold you to us. It’s not your fault.”
            The spirit resettled around the house, and I found a comfortable nook on the roof and spread out on my back.
            I pointed to a cloud. “That’s what you feel like,” I said, and the spirit groaned in agreement.
            I watched as the ivory clouds drifted across the sky, birds sweeping through the air and releasing mocking calls to the wind. A white pigeon landed near my feet, before squawking and fluttering away. A single feather settled on my chest.
            “We should feel bad for Mother too, you know,” I said, but the spirit snorted. “She’s been through a lot, what with Father’s drinking and having to leave. This ruin was the only empty house we could find. Now Marty’s fucked us over and we’re not safe, even though she thought we were.”
            A silver car pulled into the weed-infested driveway, and a long skinny man in a suit and white tennis shoes slid out of the driver’s seat. He tiptoed around the holes in the concrete.
            “The shoes ruin the outfit,” I said, and the spirit moaned a laugh.
            “I wish we could go home,” I picked up the feather and twirled it around between my fingers. “I wish Marty could fix everything, not just you.”
            Mother’s yells sailed up from the living room, this time accompanied by Marty’s shouts. I sighed, sat up, and let the feather go, watching it drift off the roof and land on the shattered pavement.