The ball went into the neighbor’s yard. Little Eli and his twin brother were playing and the neighbor’s dog got the ball. The boys’ foster mother didn’t like that. She got angry. She took Eli inside the house and held him while she turned on the hot water, holding him until the scalding hot water burned his arms. Then, to hide what she’d done, she wrapped Eli’s burned flesh in toilet paper. That’s the way they found him when Eli finally ended up in a hospital emergency room. Nurses wept. Some of them shouted in anger and frustration, but pre-school Eli knew what he wanted to do after what had been done to him. Eli wanted to peel the toilet paper and parboiled flesh off his own arms with his own burned hands.