While we waited for our pizza, my brother and I sat on the steps of our apartment building. I must have been around twelve. A woman I didn’t recognize walked by with two men from the complex, all three of them swaying, clearly drunk. Not long after, three other men came running in, machetes in hand. Almost at the same moment, the woman bolted away, and we heard screaming. We ran inside and watched from the window. Through a tear in the screen, we saw men rush back out, blood covering them...

¿Our happy place? Oh, that's the boat in the delta. Taking mom out was just pure joy, like discovering chocolate has zero calories. When...