I stepped up to the small microphone beside my winning painting — a piece titled, though they didn’t know it yet, Three Bags.
“Thank you all for coming,” I said. “Most of you know I was raised in a little yellow house on Mercer Street. What most of you don’t know is how I got there.”
The room settled.
“When I was ten, my parents decided they didn’t have room for me. They packed my things into three plastic garbage bags and left me with my aunt for ‘a while.’ A while turned out to be the rest of my childhood. They never came back. Not for a birthday, not for a graduation, not once.”
My mother’s smile started to falter in the front row.
“Then I won this prize,” I said. “And two days later, for the first time in twelve years, they came to find me. To ask for a car. And a condo.”
