Red is my big brother and can kick anybody’s ass.

We’re sitting on the hood of our mother’s brown Ford Pinto in front of the apartment building where we live that’s mostly niggers and spics. The sun is hot and the metal of the car is hot too. There’s a public pool across the street but we’re not allowed anymore because I pushed Matthew Ackerman into the deep end so we could watch him drown.

Red is smoking a cigarette and he won’t let me have any because I’m too young but he’s only a year older. He stole them from the store on the corner of Parker and Walnut. He also lifted a liter of Coke and it’s ice cold. I drink it too fast and it looks like I’m crying.

Rocky Gill comes over to fuck with us and Red puts the cigarette out in his eye. Rocky cries and runs home to tell his grandma. Red laughs out loud and I do too. That was my last goddamn cigarette, he says, trying to sound crazy like Uncle Quick. Then our mother sticks her head out the window and sees us. She contorts her face. Get in here you little cocksuckers, she says. Hits us on the head with the flashlight that’s for emergencies.

My brother protects me until my mother gets tired and stops, leans against the doorframe. Coughs and says she can’t take it anymore. If not for you I could have nice things.

A fur coat and a convertible, she says.

She’s going to put us on a Greyhound to our father, that no good sonofabitch. I hope it crashes into a mountain, she says. I won’t go to your funeral. I won’t even wear black.

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