I pretty much felt sorry for Clyman, but not his friends, and I was a little bit sorry for the other two boys. I still viewed as lucky the one that had died. I didn’t feel sorry for myself, though. Serafima told me I had the world on a string, but I knew that the other women in the neighborhood didn’t think much would come of any of us. After being scared, twice, that I might be pregnant, and then being talked about afterward, I decided to make sure the neighborhood women were wrong. At least about me.
I wasn’t as happy to stay ignorant as my brothers seemed to be. I had my mother’s books, lots of books, and I got my own library card when I was seven, the year before Mama died. Books meant the whole world to me, they were my whole world, except for the times I gave those lover boys a tumble. But that kind of thinking is long past me now. I started reading Mama’s books when I was just young. I didn’t understand most of those books, but they gave me something more than my brothers had, I could see that, and it taught me the world was mean but it didn’t have to be ugly, too.
The boys, Clyman, Duane, and Jeffrey, weren’t really my brothers at all. My father, R.I.P., had shoved them and their mother, R.I.P., into my life, after my mama died, and we moved out here from Arkansas. It seems like I never did a thing except clean from that time on. I still like cleaning a house, I like the results, but even then I knew it had its place.
Clyman, the oldest boy, seemed like a poor creature to me. I think he missed his real father too much. His father’s name was Royale. I never knew if he was really dead or still alive somewhere, because Clyman talked about him as if he was both. Clyman talked real loud, as loud as anybody could possibly talk, but he would always speak really quiet and gentle when he was around little kids. I think maybe Royale had been that way with him, once upon a time. As loud as Clyman talked, though, he didn’t talk often, but every time I thought maybe he was beginning to think about his life and the fact that he wouldn’t be a kid forever, he would prove me wrong and I realized he just didn’t talk much.
Duane was about two years younger than Clyman but he got away with acting like they were the same age. I never trusted Duane for a minute. He did cruel things that were so bad I’m not even going to talk about them. Duane was pretty good, though, at helping me keep things fixed around the house. He did this for his own sake. He just blew up when something broke, like the water heater, and he couldn’t take his hot showers. He fixed anything that directly affected his own existence, but when the old car engine sitting on the back porch fell through and splintered a bunch of wood planks, Duane didn’t even notice. It didn’t matter to him that it blocked the side of the house where I had my garden. He only cared about things that gave him immediate satisfaction.
Jeffrey was on his way to becoming a criminal, pure and simple. He hit or kicked everything in his path. He was only two years old when the baby was born, and he missed that little boy more than anyone when he died. I was the only one who seemed to know that. I don’t even think his mother knew. Jeffrey never talked to me unless he absolutely had to, not even when Laverle was still with us.
I was oldest, having hit the big age of fourteen when Laverle left, and I’m almost nineteen now. I tried to keep the house clean. I read a lot, mostly at night. I took walks, mostly in the little forest behind the neighborhood that was later turned into a bowling alley. It wasn’t really a forest, but there had been a little pond there, with bullfrogs and perch and crawdads, and all the kids loved to go there before the bulldozers came. I had a few jobs, now and then, cooking, but I didn’t want the benefit checks to stop and I thought they might if I got some kind of real job. Besides, what sort of résumé could I have put together?
The boy that died was my genuine half brother, Roscoe. Laverle got pregnant right after she started going with my father. I really loved that little boy. He had the same deep brown eyes as Mama. Mama’s eyes were like a dove’s, an orange-brown color ringed with black. It seemed to me that Roscoe really came from her instead of being Laverle’s baby. Also his name had my name in it. I believed for a long time that my loving Rocky too much is what made him die. Then my father died, and Laverle took off. I was left with those boys, and it wasn’t easy. I knew what that town thought of me. I thought the same of it.
For a while Laverle’s sister would come by on Laverle’s birthday, and she would show up a few days after Christmas, but I can’t say she was anyone I looked forward to seeing. She would always pick up the book I was reading and say, “Why do you read stuff like that?” but I never answered her.
Some social-worker-type people came around a few times at first, once with Laverle’s sister. Duane and Clyman just sat there with their knees together, and lied about their ages and everything else, and I’ve been told I look older than I am. Jeffrey took off when the welfare folks showed up, and they didn’t even seem to know he existed. I doubt that Laverle’s sister remembered him either. When they asked the boys, “Are you kids going to school?” I answered for them, “Yes ma’am.” I don’t know why I did that but I did, and I suppose the piles of books I always had sitting around were proof enough for the social workers. That was the one and only time the boys and I were in cahoots with one another. After a few visits, the welfare folks didn’t come around anymore. I was glad. There’s a lot of kids around there who needed them more than we did. Besides, what they had to offer didn’t look like help to me, anyway, which was probably dumb of me, but that’s how it worked out at the time.
We did get money, not much, but it was regular and directly deposited into my father’s account. I knew enough never to ask what that money was all about, ’cause I figured it would stop. My father and I had the same names: Frances Rose Hardcastle, that’s me — people confuse Francis and Frances all the time — and those checks went right into his account and I just drew on them, little enough as it was. Being able to do that gave me some control over the boys. I can handle money. I always made sure that the lights and the gas and the water bills were paid on time. We didn’t need a phone. If your gas gets turned off, they send someone out to do it, and I didn’t want any strangers coming around who would notice how we were living, since we were really just kids. Besides that money, the boys were dealers and thieves, with natural good luck it seems, because they were never officially caught at those things.
It never crossed my mind to stop cooking and cleaning, and see what education I could get for myself. I was waiting for the right moment, I guess, but I knew it was all up to me. I had read enough fairy tales to know that Prince Charming was about as exciting and gainfully employed as my brothers, and also way too soft and pale for a girl like me. Besides, he didn’t live anywhere near the area. That was clear.
Maybe I should feel sorry for my brothers, but I don’t think so. Serafima said they had their own choices to make, just like I did. She said the hand of fate is a helping hand, no matter how hard it slaps sometimes. She said you could give that hand a high-five and laugh, and that was okay. Or you could slap it ’cause it didn’t seem good enough. Or you could grab it by the wrist and pull yourself up one more notch. Serafima said no telling how many notches a person would need pulling up, but that was always better than no notches at all. Yes ma’am. Sometimes Serafima was as corny as the day is long. She said salvation comes in small packages and you needed the hand of fate to untie them. I didn’t always understand her.