How old was Phil?
Ten. Smart ten, I mean he knew enough not to drink Clorox or set fire to the apartment. Plus he was a really internal kid, the kind where if he had a book to read, he’d sit quiet for hours. Which is one reason I resented having to watch him: there was nothing to watch. It was like babysitting a pet rock. So what I’d do instead, a lot of the time, I’d take Phil out and park him somewhere, go off and do my own thing, and come back later and pick him up. And if my mom got home before us, or if it turned out she’d tried to call in from work to check on us, I’d just make up some story about how I took Phil to the523e zoo—and Phil, he’d back me up, because I’d threatened to sell him to the gypsies if he didn’t.
That worked out OK for a while, but eventually my mother got wise. One time I didn’t bring Phil home until nine o’clock at night, and she knew the zoo wasn’t open that late. Then this other time, I got caught shoplifting at a record store, and by the time I talked my way out of it, the library where I’d left Phil was closing. One of the librarians found him in the stacks and reported him abandoned.
It was after that that my mother and I really went to war with each other. She started calling me her bad seed, saying I must have gotten all my genes from my no-good father. Looking back on it now, I don’t blame her—in her shoes, I’d have done some name-calling too—but at the time, my position was “Hey, I didn’t ask for a little brother, I didn’t volunteer to be deputy mom, and if you think I’m a bad seed now, just wait until I get busy trying to earn the title.”
You say the fights turned physical.
Yeah. Slaps and hair-pulling, mostly. I gave as good as I got—we were about the same size—so it wasn’t like abuse. More like scuffling. She had more anger than me, though, and every so often she’d escalate to weapons: belts, dishes, whatever was handy. And like I say, I gave as good as I got, but long-term, that wasn’t a healthy trend.
What about your brother? What was your mother’s relationship with him like?
Oh, she loved Phil. Of course. He was the low-maintenance kid.
Did she display affection towards him?
She didn’t throw plates at him. Beyond that, I don’t know, maybe she kissed him on the forehead once in a while. I wasn’t jealous, if that’s what you’re asking. The only thing that bugged me about their relationship was having to hang around for it. She expected me to help mind Phil even when she was home, which struck me as totally unreasonable. We had a bunch of fights about that.
Was it one of these fights that led to you being sent away?
No. That was a different incident. Phil was involved, but it wasn’t really about him.
What happened?
It was kind of funny, actually. There was this big vacant lot across from our apartment building that some hippies had turned into a community garden. You could sign up for a plot of ground and raise vegetables or whatever. My friend Moon had some marijuana seeds, so we decided to try growing our own pot there.
In a public garden?
Not the brightest scheme ever, I know. But you have to understand, we’d only ever seen pot in baggies before, so we had no idea how big the plants got. We figured, it’s a weed, and weeds are small. We thought we could grow bigger plants around it as cover, and then harvest it before anybody noticed what it was.