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         It started with a show Anne watched on the Learning Channel about parasitic heads.She was sitting about two feet from the screen like always, so I was getting ready to yell at her about brain cancer and all, but the sight of a two-headed baby stopped me in my tracks. I sat down and watched it with her. It was about a baby girl from Egypt who was born with her sister’s head stuck to her own, except the sister had no body. The girls were the third twins in history to be born like that, and the first surgical success story. It was sad though. The family named the girl that was only a head, something like “daughter of God” in Egyptian. They gave her a funeral and thousands of people came. The surviving twin was okay, with only a bald spot where her sister had been. They said her hair would eventually cover that. Anne looked strange with the two-headed baby reflecting off her glasses, like some kind of alien scanning life forms. I mean, the show was interesting and all, but even I got up to use the bathroom.
        Then a few days later, Anne insisted that she had one, couldn’t I see it clearly, she said, sticking her cheek out towards me. No, I said. Stop it. There’re already enough crazy people in this family.
         With our genes, we need all the help we can get. Mom’s manic and Dad has schizophrenia. Everyone thinks that means he talks to a gazillion different people in his head, but really it means his brain’s rotting. That’s what I learned in psych class--that schizos get paranoid and hallucinate because their brains are rotting. Then they get ugly because they stop taking care of themselves. Dad was never that bad. I mean, he was taking meds to slow down the process and all. It wasn’t like he wasn’t aware of it. Manic means Mom was happy one minute and blubbering the next. But again, she knew she wasn’t all there. Anyway, that’s why we couldn’t live with them any more. CPS said that because Anne still wet the bed and I caught scabies, they had proof that Mom and Dad weren’t doing a good job raising us.
         It did get pretty bad at times; the medication can only get you so far. I made a lot of meals for Anne and I growing up, a lot of mayonnaise sandwiches. There was usually nothing else in the fridge beside mustard and rotten milk. And then one day, Dad decides to bring home these guinea pigs, but we don’t have a cage for them, so they just run wild and shit everywhere. Those things are pretty scary when they get hungry, nipping at our feet when we walked by. So one of Mom’s friends comes over and I could tell she didn’t like the looks of things. Anne was running around with only a dirty shirt on and no underwear, with knots all over her hair. The guinea pigs were running around too, begging Mom’s friend for food. There was a huge puddle of dirty water in the bathroom, and wooden pallets my parents stacked in front of the shower and sink, like islands to walk on. I mean, they love us and all, but even I have to admit they acted like kids.



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