"I....I bought some land with my mother and sister. My sister had a plan to make me pay her way through life. She stole from me. She stole my money, my dreams, my life, and she knew that she did, she planned it, schemed her deception for years. She told me so. That is what she told me, after. My mother used me to remove my sister from her house because she was afraid. She is always afraid of trouble but I thought she was honest. She made promises to me because, she said later, she thought she would not have to keep them. Unlike other gamblers who misjudge she refused to pay up. I was only a family member, and much less, a mere child, one of those objects you can make to serve you and make your life easy. She cheated, she lied, she used me. She used me! Parents can have favorites among their children, I expect that, I'm not lovable, my sister and my mother were close friends and in temperament much alike, but I thought my mother and I had a friendship, and we did have promises between us. A promise should come before family loyalty, even a promise to a stranger. That is right, honest, but my mother broke them. She cast me away without hesitation! In order to welcome my sister back for a visit. She used me as a barrier between what was unpleasant and herself, unlike the stories of mothers who dash into terrible danger to save their children. My mother threw me away without hesitation, she threw me away and she killed the last remnants of my ability to trust. My mother and my sister did that. Isn't the family within the pale and all else without? No, not my family. They see members as victims, open season, you see, to use and cheat and take in order to get what they want and keep trouble away. I grew up among them and I never knew that until it was too late. My brothers said, do what your sweet mother wants when she wants it whether you want to do it or not because she is your mother. They were far away, though; they heard what they wanted to when they wanted to and had little time to hear anything and no time for me who wished to say unpleasant things such as there is another side to this. There is also my side, and I have been cheated, cut down, used, I have had my money stolen, my dreams ended and my heart murdered. I was murdered there. But I had to remain there because I had no money to leave. Then it was sold and I lived in a rickety cabin as caretaker until the new owner found a buyer. My mother has a new house. My sister has a new house. She has a good job and everyone praises her. I know the work it took for her to get and stay where she is. I knew it before they did. But still there is no mention of the cheating and the murder. There was never any acknowledgement that my claim had some legitimacy. I wanted that acknowledgement! Forgiveness, reparation, what is that, what it all might be, I wanted acknowledgement but there never has been any. They all go on as though that were nothing. They celebrate the anniversary of my sister's decision to go latent. There is no mention of her cheating and the lies which ended my life. There is counseling and other acknowledgements for spouses and for children of drunks. What is there for a sister? Drunks. Drunks. My sister. But they all supported her and now she's repaired her life and they're all going on and I am left here in this eddy of ruin where destruction lies thick on the ground about me in every direction. How can I ever get out of this maze where all is ruin? I'm excluded, I'm denounced, and I was the one who was lied to and cheated and upheld my responsibilities and the agreements we made and I tried to help her, my sister, I tried by trying to guide her into helping herself because that's the only way it will ever do any good. It was impossible for me. I failed. There wasn't any witness to my endeavor or my failure since there was only my sister and myself and she does not remember. She was drunk at the time. I had to cut myself free or I would have been dragged down. I had to throw her out, my sister, because that was the only way she would ever stand up and start over, being on her own, that was the only way she might find the courage instead of sagging all over me and my mother and the others. Tough love, my mother told me proudly, enjoying the term, it was the method the professionals used to help my sister restore herself. She never realized that that was what I had done. What I had tried to do. For years. I was denounced as a strange hard black bitch of the family. Alien. Never belonging. Never belonging anywhere but I thought at least with my mother and sister, these two family females with whom I had grown up, they at least would know me. I believed them when they said that they loved me and all the while they were lying and cheating and using. They would continue to, even now, if I let them. If I ever got near enough, they'd try to, even now. They don't understand why I have such an outrageous temper. They don't know why I don't want ever to see them, to realize my connection to them which is undeniable and suffocating as though I were trapped within a foreign body. They don't know why I can't stand to have them touch me!"