I Am Nina — Chapter 3 — This Is Life Now
At nine, another move. Always from one nice house to another nice house.
Nina was rich, then poor on purpose, then rich again. And neither of the boys knows.
At nine, we moved again.
I was used to it by then. I packed on autopilot, knowing that on the other side there'd be a bigger room, a new bed, a new city to ignore.
Except this time the house was something else.
Two rooms. Bare concrete floor. A sink that dripped. The bed was a mattress on the floor of a room that was mine and my dad's at the same time, split by a curtain.
I stood in the doorway with my suitcase in my hand, not understanding.
— Dad, where's my part of the house?
— This is it, Nina.
— And the pool.
— There's no pool.
— And the lady who cooks.
— I'm the one who cooks now. You're going to learn too.
I asked for ten other things that first week. The answer was "no" to all of them. We don't have it, we can't, we won't.
I cried, I screamed, I threw tantrums on the floor like I always had. And for the first time in my life, nothing happened. Nobody came running. Nobody brought anything. My dad just waited for me to finish, and when I finished, the "no" was still there.
I spent months thinking my dad had gone broke.
It made sense. One day we had everything, the next we had nothing. I'd heard stories about people who lost it all. I figured that was it.