My brother found our father in the basement when he was little. Dad had slit his own throat from ear-to-ear. He didn’t die, but became even more of a drug addict and drunk after he survived. My brother was always a sensitive kid and that kinda did it for ‘im.
Our mother was always a bitch—a partyer and pill-popper. I got pregnant when I was 17. The guy was an asshole, fucked anything that walked, but he married me and took me away, which REALLY needed to happen.
Mom had got herself a boyfriend who she wanted to move in. We were living in Old Dundalk down by Saint Helena. My brother was—is—four years younger than me. He was 13 when the boyfriend and his two daughters, [about 8- and 9-years-old], moved in.
The first thing was my brother lost his room, which was given to the two daughters of the boyfriend, who [the boyfriend] slapped him around and yelled at him. He would have to mill around in the kitchen until Mom and the boyfriend were done watching the news and the late show. He couldn’t sleep on the couch until they went upstairs.
He was never too strong. Seeing our father like that—being the one that found him, especially—affected him, so he cried a lot. Eventually the boyfriend gets so sick of him crying in the kitchen while he’s trying to watch TV that he puts him out. 13-years-old and my little brother was on the street. By this time I was with my husband down in Florida. I found this part out from the neighbors when I left him for fucking around and came back to Baltimore.
He had his little bag of clothes and old blanket and he’d search out cubby holes to sleep and hide in, which is how everybody got to callin’ him ‘Cubby.’ Neighbors started to notice this and would feed him and let him sleep on the couch.
Eventually the boyfriend left the picture, but my mother still shunned ‘im.
He hasn’t done well, doesn’t work, uses dope.
I help him, but can’t be his mother. I’ve got a husband and two kids to think of and Cubby’s need is never ending. He won’t starve as long as I’m around, but my husband won’t let him move in either.
It’s a shame.
-Darlene
Narco Night Train
The Hunt for Whitey
Recognizing and Surviving the Condition of Anarcho-Tyranny
It would really be a good thing for about 3 of the players in that story to have received a .45 ACP slug in their ear about 10 years ago 'pour encourager les autres'; even now it wouldn't be too late.
Even sow pigs don't do their offspring like that. Takes a human to pervert nature that way.
What struck me was the wooden detachment of his sister, like a disaster survivor relating the drowning of a bystander while in shock.
The saddest part is that this kind of thing is all too common nowadays. The streets are full of broken people, and very few of them will ever transcend their circumstances. “Cry for the dead, for turning their head, to ignore reality’s claw....”
Tragic. There's a Steinbeckian anthology just waiting for this entry.