Finding Our Way by Rene Saldana Jr

Author:Rene Saldana, Jr.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307433343
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2009-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

7

MY SELF MYSELF

They’re punks—the both of them, always hugging him cozy and patting his back like when he actually was a baby, and whispering in his ear, “Ooh, poor baby, poor thing, are you okay, did she hurt you?”

“I didn’t do anything. He did it to himself. Ask him: I didn’t even touch the big crybaby,” I say to them. I’m on the old, creaky swing set in our backyard. They’re sitting on the patio.

My poor excuse for a mother glares at me. My father shakes his head. They think they’re doing right by him, but here he is, middle-school age and they treat him like a baby. He’ll be a sissyboy if they keep that up.

My way, he’ll know what’s what in this world and how to deal with it.

“Hush up, Missy!” my mother says. “You hush up. You’ve done enough harm already. Just shut it.”

You shut it, Mabel, I think, but I don’t say it. I know if I do Mabel’ll let go of Deuce (that’s what my dad calls my brother, not Leonard Junior for being named the same). Then she’ll jump up and snag me off the swings; so instead I just think it and keep swinging. She won’t hold me in her arms. Dad sometimes does, but not in a good long while. So I’ve learned my own way. Who needs hugs anyway?

What a baby Dewey is. That’s what I call him, and he used to cry about it to Mom and Dad—“Missy’s not calling me by my right name, Mommy.” So I’d get a good talking-to, Mom sometimes shaking me by the arm and saying, “How can you not get it through your thick skull? Be nice to him. Stop teasing. He’s only a boy.” So, after our “talk” I’d go back to calling him Deuce, but within a week I’d forget the talking-to and the shaking by the arms and call him Dewey. He’d cry again, and again my parents would call me to their room.

You’d think he wasn’t in middle school and a starter on the football team, with his constant whimpering. He just now tried getting into Mom’s lap, but he’s so heavy that even Mom tells him, “Get off me and sit on the floor, baby, you’re too big to be sitting on your mommy.” But then she rubs his forehead like he likes, and they go inside to watch TV. I stay outside, swinging. The lightning bugs sparkling.

These last couple of weeks he hasn’t complained about me calling him Dewey because some of the guys at school, Franky the quarterback for one, also called him Dewey one day at practice. And now the name is cool, and that’s supposed to make Dewey cool too because the guys know his name.

Today, right before he went crying to Mabel and Dad, he and I were in the backyard. I was hammering anthills with a croquet mallet, and he was piddling around with his latest invention—a pulley, rigged up to the tree, that’s connected to his bedroom window.

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