The Moth Tents

Family

Penny never spent that much time with our real father. I did more than her. I remember more about him than she does.

He was a kind man. My mother truly loved him. He was old, worn, and wise. He would tell me stories at night about magical creatures in the woods, and he'd take me exploring.

We'd pretend I was Peter Pan and he was Hook. When Penny was 6 and I was 9, I tried making her my Wendy, but it didn't work very well.

My little sister had something different in her brain. The doctors had called it mental retardation. I didn't like that word.

My father explained it like this: she would grow up like other kids, but her mind would freeze in place. She would be like Peter Pan in her head, never aging, but she'd still grow.

My mother changed from then on. Because my father was different, too. He had autism. It just made him act younger and more shy around strangers, and sometimes, he'd start pacing in the living room for no reason.

And I had dyslexia, which made it very hard for me to learn like other kids. I guess she got frustrated. My mother became convinced that it was my father's fault.

She started getting angry and distant. When my father got sick, she could barely look at Penny.

And when he died...she ignored us.

She had this sour look on her face whenever we'd walk into the same room. She blamed us somehow for him dying, said we'd made him weaker and weaker.

It got to a point where she would skip cooking dinner for a few days, and I had to do it for her because Penny would start crying for days on end. I was 13.

Then, my mom remarried to a man named Jeffrey Rodgers. He always acted weird around me and Penny. A little too close, a little too comfortable around us.

He was less of a dad, more of a stranger. Then he started drinking. By this time, my mom was pitifully drained of every drop of life she'd ever had.

People still say we looked like her, Penny and me, "before things changed"; I had the same defiant look to me, the same wild green eyes she'd had years ago, but Penny had her blonde hair.

She looked more docile and skinny now, and her eyes had gotten dark and sunken. She looked so tired all the time. Her sunny bright hair had gotten thin and lost its luster.

And Jeffrey started yelling. He'd come home from the bar late at night, drunker than I'd ever seen.

He'd stumble loudly into Mom's bedroom, his boots making the worst thumping sound against dense wood.

A few minutes later, we would hear screaming and the sound of a body hitting the floor again and again. Penny didn't like it.

I tried to put her to bed before it started, but sometimes, I couldn't, and she would cover her ears and I'd hold her and we would rock back and forth until it was over or until we fell asleep in each other's arms.

This went on for a year. When I was 15, something changed. Jeffrey had started going into our bedrooms.

"Sissa?" Penny spoke in the high squeaky voice of a child. She couldn't pronounce 'sister', so she said sissa instead.

She also couldn't pronounce Leslie, and that gave way to a short and sweet version: Lizzy.

"Yes, Penny?" "Do you think Mama will like my present for her?"

She's holding a mason jar with a with a small white moth fluttering around inside in her hands carefully, handling it as if it was a feather. Penny was sweeter towards our mother than I was.