Before Mom left, she gave me two hundred dollars. That was plenty, she
said, to buy food for Brian and Maureen and me for two months and pay
the water and electricity bills. I did the math. It came out to twenty-five
dollars a week, or a little over three-fifty a day. I worked up a budget and
calculated that we could indeed squeak by if I made extra money
babysitting.
For the first week, everything went according to plan. I bought food and
made meals for Brian, Maureen, and me. It had been almost a year since
the welfare man had scared us into cleaning the house, and it was once
again an unholy mess. Mom would have had a fit if I had thrown
anything out, but I spent hours straightening up and trying to organize
the huge stacks of junk.
Dad usually stayed out at night until we were in bed, and he would still
be asleep when we got up and left in the morning. But one afternoon
about a week after Mom had gone to Charleston, he caught me alone in
the house.
"Hon, I need some money," he said.
"For what?"
"Beer and cigarettes."
"I've got sort of a tight budget, Dad."
"I don't need much. Just five dollars."
That was two days' worth of food. A half gallon of milk, a loaf of bread,
a dozen eggs, two cans of jack mackerel, a small bag of apples, and some
popcorn. And Dad wasn't even doing me the honor of pretending he
needed the money for something useful. He also didn't argue or wheedle
or cajole or ratchet the charm way up. He simply waited for me to fork