I could feel the burning sensation building up in my throat. I had to get to the bathroom. The only problem was the bathroom hadn't worked for month's now. Just as the screeching door, mama didn't have enough money to fix it. I ran to it anyway. I could smell the rotten smell of flesh and feces as I reached the doorway and walked over the thresh-hold. Then I let myself go. The rancid smell of my own bile was making me feel even more confined. I closed my eyes trying not to think of getting ill again. I thought of flowers, pansies to be exact. Flowers always made me feel much better. I think it was because flowers are so free. Sometimes I wish that I could be free. I was twelve, I was starting to think more logical than when I was five and inept. I used to dream of being a pansy, flowing as one with the summer wind. When I felt all the nauseated feeling free from my body I opened my eyes to a hellish grin from the doorframe.

"Poor, little sis. Getting sick are you? I told you not to eat that rotten tomatoe." Jessica smirked.

"Jess, I didn't eat that tomatoe. I took your advice." I answered looking up at the face that once was grinning, but now was looking mournful for me. I wondered how someone can change emotions so fast, but shook the thought out of my mind as Jessica started to talk again.

"Right. Sorry Martha. I thought you did." Jessica's face changed again into that gut-wrenching grin. I knew she was laughing on the inside, laughing at me. She never had pity for anyone. Sudenlly I felt the burning sensation in my throat again. I turned over clenching the sides of the dusty toilet and releasing myself again. Never in my whole life had I ever felt so much pain. Yet, again maybe I have. I thought my sister had left, but she just stood there watching me, wearing that smile that haunted my dreams, laughing, laughing at me.

My sixteenth birthday, I was so excited. Mama managed to find some decorations in the trash at the back of some rich family living on the hill. You can see the hill from my window up stairs. I envy those people and hate. They don't care about people like me. We are but a penny to them, useless. What can a penny get you? A lot if you ask me, mama gets paid only 2.50 an hour and makes 120 a week. I get one new pair of clothes every year. When, they, get a pair a day. They will never know what poverty is until they live in it, smell like it, and live by it.

Sixteen, sixteen, I keep saying it over and over in my mind, sixteen. I definetly wasn't going to be the same person I was before, oh no, I was going to make it. Mama kept telling me I was going to be a star, walking on broadway she would say. If only, if only that were true. I didn't have a cake, just a candle. One candle, that I made the most important wish on it. I wished for, well anyway. Mama wasn't doing so good, she said that the coughes that I heard late in the night and the way that her leg or arm would suddenly start shaking and not stop, were just a small cold. She told me, not Jessica, not to worry. She kept telling me that she would be find in a couple of days. The days would change to weeks, months, and then years. She was getting worse. Yet, that didn't stop her from working extra hard on my birthday. No, on the contrary, she worked so hard she had to sit down and breath. I was so happy, maybe I was too happy. When I blew my candle out mama looked me in the eye and said she had a surprise for me. She pointed to her room and said walk into it. I was so excited, when I walked in it looked the same. Mama's knick-knacks on thier shelves, her hope-chest at the end of her bed. The smell of her vanilla perfume. I was confused and then I saw a peice of parchment on the hope-chest. I went over and was over joyed by what it said, but scared at the same time.