Free Heaven by V.C. Andrews

difference between us, when nothing could, not ever.
    “Tom, maybe Miss Deale will give you another watercoloring set …”
    “It doesn’t matter. I’m not gonna be an artist. Probably won’t end up much of nothing, if you’re not there to help me believe in myself.”
    “But we’re always going to be together, Tom. Didn’t we swear to stay together through thick and thin?”
    His green eyes looked happier, then shaded. “But that was before Logan Stonewall walked you home.”
    “You walk Sally Browne home sometimes, don’t you?”
    “Once,” he admitted, blushing, as if he didn’t know I knew about that, “but only because she’s something like you are, not silly and giggly.”
    I didn’t know what to say then. Sometimes I wished to be like the other girls, full of silly laughter about nothing at all, and not always so burdened down with responsibilities that made me feel older than my years.
    Later that same night I gave Fanny a good scolding about her behavior and the consequences. She didn’t have to explain again. Already she’d confessed to me, on a rare occasion when we were like sisters needingeach other, that she hated school and the time it took from having fun with the other girls her age. Even at the tender age of not quite twelve, she wanted to make out with much older boys who might have ignored her but for her insistence. She liked the boys to undress her, to slip their hands into her panties and start those exciting sensations only they could give her. It had distressed me to hear her say that, and distressed me even more to
witness
how she acted in the cloakroom with boys.
    “Won’t do it no more, really I won’t let them,” promised Fanny, who was sleepy and agreeable to any suggestion, even an order from me to stop.
    The very next day, despite Fanny’s vow, it happened all over again when I went to Fanny’s class to pick her up and head her back home. I forced my way into the cloakroom and tore Fanny away from a pimply-faced valley boy.
    “Yer sister ain’t stuck-up and prissy like ya!” the boy hissed.
    And all the time I could hear Fanny giggling.
    “Ya leave me alone!” Fanny screamed as I dragged her away. “Pa treats ya like yer invisible, so naturally ya kin’t know how good it feels t’like boys and men, and if ya keep on pesterin me not t’do this an not t’do that, I’m gonna let em do
anythin
they want—an I won’t give a damn if ya tell Pa. He loves me an hates
ya
anyway!”
    That stung, and if Fanny hadn’t come running to throw her slender arms about my neck, crying and pleading for my forgiveness, I might have forever turned my back on such a hateful, insensitive sister. “I’m sorry, Heaven, really sorry. I love ya, I do, I do. I just like what
they
do. Kin’t help it, Heaven. Don’t want t’help it. Ain’t it natural, Heaven, ain’t it?”
    “Yer sister Fanny is gonna be a whore,” said Sarah later, her voice dull and without hope as she pulled bed pallets from boxes for us to put on the floor. “Ya kin’tdo nothin bout Fanny, Heaven. Ya jus look out fer yerself.”
    Pa came home only three or four times a week, as if timing how long our food would last, and he’d come in bringing as much as he could afford to buy at one time. Just last week I’d heard Granny telling Sarah that Grandpa had taken Pa out of school when he was only eleven in order to put him to work in the coal mines—and Pa had hated that so much he’d run away and hadn’t come back until Grandpa found him hiding out in a cave. “And Toby swore to Luke he’d neva have t’go down inta them mines agin, but he sure would make more money iffen he did once in a while …”
    “Don’t want him down there,” Sarah said dully. “Ain’t right t’make a man do somethin he hates. Even iffen t’Feds catch him soona or lata peddlin moonshine, he’d die fore he’d let em lock him up. Ratha see him dead than shut up like his brothas …”
    It made me look at the coal miners