Free The Darkest Child by Delores Phillips

nostrils.“It wouldna burned you so bad if you’da been still,” she says.
    I remembered wanting to fade back into the darkness, but being unable to. I will forever wear a brand on my lower left leg that I am able to hide beneath a sock. Sometimes when I am most afraid, I touch my scar to remind myself that I am not a coward. I am a Quinn.

nine
    V elman Cooper was standing beside the flag pole when I came out of the post office, empty-handed, on Friday afternoon. “Hey, little sister,” he called when he saw me. “I was kinda hoping you’d come by today.Where’s Martha Jean?”
    “At home,” I answered irritably. “She doesn’t go everywhere with me.”
    “Stop trying to be so mean,” he said, smiling and exposing the gap between his teeth.
    “What happened to your tooth?” I asked.
    “Got it pulled out. Something you don’t ever wanna have is a bad tooth. Had me walking the floors. Felt like somebody was hammering away at my mouth and my head at the same time. I was crying like a baby.That was years ago when I was still in Dalton, but I ain’t never gon’ forget that pain.”
    “Oh, is that all?” I asked flippantly.“I thought somebody knocked it out.”
    “Ain’t nobody bad enough to knock my teeth out, little sister.”
    “I bet one of my brothers could,” I said, and immediately regretted my remark, because I had the feeling he was not being arrogant now, but was only trying to get a smile out of me.
    “Maybe, and maybe not,” he said with a smirk. “I been asking around ’bout yo’ family. People say you got some pretty tough brothers, but I don’t know that they could knock my teeth out.”
    “What else do people say?”
    “Not much.”
    “Liar.”
    “Yeah, you right, I am lying,” he admitted, “but what people say ain’t hardly worth repeating.”
    “How about worth believing?” I asked.
    “You can’t believe everything you hear, either,” he said.“People had me dead once. Said I had been struck by lightning under Miss Thatcher’s peach tree. I musta been about eight or nine. Me and some mo’ boys was out there stealing peaches, ’cause Miss Thatcher had the biggest, healthiest peach tree in Dalton. All of a sudden the sky got just as dark as night, and Gabriel commenced to calling my name, ‘Velman.Velman.’ He wadn’t blowing no horn, but his voice was howling out my name. He had done seen what we was up to and he knew it wadn’t no good.
    “I looked up and saw him standing there in midair, swinging his horn in his right hand and staring down at me. Gabriel is a Negro, little sister. Don’t let nobody tell you he ain’t. He’s a big fat black man, darker than soot, and he was standing on a cloud. Every time he opened his mouth the wind howled. He raised that horn, and rain fell on us like rocks, and lightning zoomed ’round our heads. We didn’t know whether to run or just stay put, so we did a little bit of both. Some of us took off running, and some of us stayed under the tree waiting for the rocks to stop.
    “All of a sudden—whack—something hit me upside my head and I fell to the ground.Wadn’t nothing but a peach done got shook loose from the tree, but by the time I got back on my feet, I was the only one under that tree.Them other boys had done took off and told my mama I was dead, done been struck by lightning.”
    “You’re making that up,” I said, trying to keep from laughing. “You’re just trying to change the subject.”
    “No, I ain’t, either. My mama come running through that yard wit’ tears and rain mixed on her face, crying that her boy was dead.
    That ain’t nothing to lie about.”
    He’d ended his story, and I realized that I wanted him to continue. I enjoyed the sound of his voice and the way his hands occasionally swept though the air to place emphasis on some of his words.
    “Why you staring at me like that?” he asked, and I averted my eyes, but did not deny what was obvious.
    “I’ve got to go,” I told