Read Online A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries by Kaylie Jones - Free Book Online

suddenly found myself in front of the hole in the fence.
    I followed the sound of their boyish voices, apprehension filling my heart. Before I could see the tree house I heard them laughing. They did not notice me and I watched from behind a thicket as Stephane flung stones at the squirrels in the next tree. Then he handed the slingshot to Billy and Billy paused for a moment, his face wrinkled into a thoughtful frown. I waited, hoping he would put the slingshot down. He raised it, pulled back the thongs, closed one eye, and fired.
    “Billy!” I shouted, scrambling out of the underbrush.
    He dropped the slingshot on the floor of the tree house and lowered his eyes guiltily.
    Stephane picked up the slingshot, put in a new stone, and aimed it at me.
    “Girls aren’t allowed in here!” he said. “Go away.”
    I should have taken this as a lesson for my teenage years but of course did not. I thought Stephane was crazy, that boys never behaved this way. It was a sad lesson when years later I realized that he had not been the exception but a small taste of things to come.
    “You promised me,” I said to Stephane, hissing at him.
    “Fuck off,” he said. Billy sat motionless, looking down at his feet.
    In English, I asked my brother to please come back with me. Stephane, understanding the gist of it, said that my brother was a coward and a fag if he listened to me.
    My brother stayed where he was, gazing at his feet.
    I turned away and went back to the fence, feeling a rage and a hatred against the world that I had not known possible. I could not even cry I was so enraged. I went to find solace with Candida in the kitchen, but Candida, having no idea, only made me feel worse with her gentle words of affection.
    When Billy came in an hour or so later, I stared at him from the table where I sat while he poured himself a glass of milk from the fridge. He gingerly approached the table, trying to decide whether or not to sit down. He smiled at me in a shy, guilty blush and fiddled with the back of the chair.
    “You are not my brother,” I said in English so that Candida would not understand, slowly, with more conviction and more vehemence than I had ever said anything in my life. “You are not my brother, you’re a Frog and you will never be my brother. You’re adopted and you’re not their son. From now on I’m going to pretend you don’t exist.”
    Billy continued to stare at his feet, his face drained of color. We heard a gasp then, and both turned to find Mary-Ellen standing in the doorway. Billy’s face went from white to red in a second; very slowly, back erect, he walked past Mary-Ellen and out the door.
    “Whatta you say, Channa?” Candida said, her dark eyes shifting from Mary-Ellen to me and back again. “Whatta you say to him?”
    “I’m going to tell on you,” Mary-Ellen said slowly, in a voice very much like the one I had just used on my brother. “You’re not supposed to say things like that, I know, ‘cause my parents told me all about it.”
    “I don’t care,” I said, mustering up the last drop of courage I had left. “I hate you too. You’re fat and mean.”
    I walked past her, feeling her eyes digging into my back, and went to look for Billy.
    I went up to his room, which was next to mine, at the end of one of the halls on the second floor. The door was closed. I knocked lightly on the door, afraid to disturb the fathers.
    “Billy,” I whispered. “Billy! Can I come in?” There was no response. They had taken the keys away from our doors because they were afraid we’d lock ourselves in, so I turned the knob and walked into his darkened room. He’d closed the shutters and slats of sunlight lay on top of him on the bed. He was lying facedown in the pillow, sobbing without a sound. I could see his shoulders shaking.
    I sat down at his side and put a flat hand on his shoulder. He did not shrug me off as he usually did when I touched him.
    “Billy,” I said. “Billy, I didn’t mean