It was summer of 1962 when it all started. I was still young—only fourteen years old, but I knew better than to sneak out of the house at night. For weeks I had been weighing my pros and cons, deciding what I did and didn’t like about my home. I had to look after old Grandpa Pat, who would sit in his chair and beg me to read him a story while he sipped his “giggle juice.” I didn’t know what it was, but Mama told us that it wasn’t good for you, and it could make you go crazy for a while. Mama never gave him any, so I would have to read to him out of one of my schoolbooks. I considered this torture. My sisters were twice as bad as Grandpa Pat. Josie, who was eight at the time, conveniently made me into her third wheel, when her friends from the neighborhood couldn’t play. I don’t know which I preferred—having to tromp around the house with her and Rosmarie, her button-eyed doll, or trying to cope while she, Rosmarie, and a few of her friends cradled their dolls in the parlor, imitating their crying at unreasonable volumes. And then there was Connie, my sixteen year old commentator. She critiqued nearly everything I did, and usually the feedback was negative. I remember when I was nine I asked her why she was so judgemental if neither Mama nor Dad were.
“Personalities are not inherited, Jack,” she said, twirling her blonde curls around her pointer finger.
“But how come your voice sounds like Dad’s?” I replied. “And how come you’ve got Mama’s hair, but not her personality?”
She scoffed and turned her lip up. “My voice doesn’t sound like Dad’s. Because I’m a different person. Nobody’s the same.”
“Well why’d you get their looks but not their personality?”
“Because way before I was born, God said, ‘I want Constance Faye Allen to look like her parents, but I want her to act sort of different.’”
I thought she had made a good point, but I wasn’t about to lose an argument to her. I tried to think of a good comeback, but all I could think of was, “Sort of?”
“Oh!” she grabbed the sides of her head and scrunched her face up real tight. “Why do you have to ask so many questions? Get out, Jack!”
After that I decided to just let her believe that she knew it all, although when I asked Dad that night whether God really did say that he wanted Connie to act different than him, he knit his eyebrows and said he supposed not.

Connie hadn’t been as bad for the past couple of months, now that she was helping Mama a lot with the chores. Mama was expecting another baby, so she couldn’t get around as easily. Connie would do the dishes and the laundry a lot more frequently, surprisingly without a complaint. Often I would see her purse her lips to speak, and then relax, as if deciding she didn’t have the time for me.
More work was coming my way, too.
“You’re a young man, now, Jack. I think it’s time you get a job,” Dad told me one night. “It might be a hard to find, but you are able bodied. I’m sure many people would want you to be working in their stores and homes and factories.”

That was the last straw. I lay awake for hours that night, thinking about the nightmares a job might bring. I wasn’t ready, and Dad was still forcing it on me. I decided that the cons of staying at the Allen home were more numerous than the pros, so I stuffed some of my clothes into a bag and crept down the stairs. Grandpa Pat was sleeping peacefully in his chair, as usual. I groped my way through the dark to the kitchen, and found a few slices of Mama’s homemade bread. I only took two, to maintain my generosity, and slipped them into the bag.
“Jack?” It was Dad’s voice.
“Yessir,” I said feebly, turning around. It was dark, but I could make out his figure, half sitting, half lying on the sofa.
“You know what’s out there, don’t you?”
“Yessir,” I repeated, fingering my bag.
He stood up and walked toward me. The moonlight only made half of his face visible, but it was enough to see that he wasn’t angry. He almost looked… proud.
“You’re a young man, you’ll take care, won’t you?” Dad clenched my shoulder gently with his large hand, smiling.
I nodded, choking back a sob. He wasn’t angry that I was leaving? I would come back after a while, I knew it. I slung my arm over his, and he pulled me to his chest. Quickly I pulled away, smiling back. “Yeah, I sure will, Dad.”
He released my shoulder. “Good luck, then.”
Then, I turned, quietly pulled the back door open, and stepped outside into the cool summer night. I was a young man, and I was free.