“We have art,” Nietzsche said, “so that we will not be destroyed by the truth.”

This movie, “The Poker House”, came fully formed. A ninety-one page script turned into a ninety-three minute movie. The truth turned into art in real time. I did toil over every word, though, like translating from the original Aramaic. And without my writing/producing partner David Alan Grier, this film would have stayed a painting, the frozen movie of a young girl’s winter.

Now, a year later, watching what I made that cold season in Chicago, I wonder what in Jesus’ name was I thinking. And I crack myself up. It was a film that had to be made, so it showed up uninvited as my adolescence.

The rape of a young girl by her seducer is horribly common. The majority of the women who worked on my crew testified to that. Everyday I was unaware of my invisible robes as I listened to each confession. “I never told anybody this before...” is how most secret started. And it is also the secret of my mother and other women in our family.

But that is not the movie. The movie is how you make macaroni and cheese with mashed-up Nacho Cheese Doritos. The movie is the nine-year-old baby sister slowly waking up on a bare mattress, happy to feel the sun on her face. The movie is the twelve-year-old middle sister, up before dawn to deliver newspapers, the newspaper bag getting heavier with each paper she hurls, because she replaces the papers with a dozen discarded pop bottles.

The movie is the eldest daughter, me, realizing between a heartbeat, that things may happen to you, but, they don’t happen to you forever unless you let them.

Can’t nobody kill the laughter of those babies. Can’t nobody hurt their soul. But if you need a little help, Marvin Gaye, bar goldfishes and Howard Johnson’s fixes everything.