Growing up

"Growing up [Kenneth] slept with Bryan on the bottom bunk. The oldest of the three of us, I slept on the top bunk. Comfortable, plenty of room. Those were the perks. The morning I woke up to get ready for my wedding, the two of them were there, huddled against each other's backs. Bryan was fifteen. I remember one full year he was so fed up sharing a bottom bunk he slept on the floor, making a pallet out of two or three thick blankets. He probably couldn't figure out what took him so long to figure that one out.

"It was like that a lot. We were a family of seven barely making it. Food stamps. Reduced or free school lunches. School shopping once every year in July. Three to four outfits a piece, a pair of shoes, and then nothing until the following July. I side-stepped this a few times by asking for shoes for Christmas. Always Jordans, except the very last pair just before I was married. Those were Shaqs, blue and black. I'll never forget it, because when they got too small for me, my stepdad wore them another four years."

~~ from The Orchard Is Full of Sound by Sheldon Lee Compton