WHEN she’d been ten years old, Leandra Butler had learned three things the hard way: one, it didn’t matter if you could run faster, hit harder, and calculate better than any other girl; boys never took you seriously, anyway; two, in some places, single black mothers were more likely to get laid off than single white men; and three, shitty things happened to good people even when their situation was bad to begin with, because life wasn’t fair.

They weren’t easy lessons to learn, because it was her mama who sat in the kitchen crying at night and it was her big sister in the wheelchair after a hit-and-run. Happy endings, it turned out, were for other people… or maybe they really only happened in fairy tales. The Butler family sure didn’t get one. The driver was never found and the insurance didn’t pay for everything and her mama didn’t get her office job back. Little Lee stood by feeling angry and powerless, too young to help, too old to be oblivious.

They scraped by, because the Butlers were a tough breed and because they simply had no other choice. After a while, her mother found work again, but most of the time she had to juggle two or three part-time jobs, always and forever losing one and looking for another. Kitty adapted to life in a wheelchair even though she never stopped hating her useless stick legs. Lee tried not to be underfoot, kept her head down in school, and aced every test.

It made her mama happy. It made Kitty roll her eyes and call her “nerd” in that half-envious, half-proud kinda tone. Being smart was a good thing.

Growing up, Lee discovered a few more facts of life and like the sharp, ambitious kid she was, she internalized the information and then set out to climb out of the framework trapping her. She knew no one would help her, because no one cared about her but family. That was all right, though, as long as she didn’t forget. Her mama and sister provided her with the emotional safety net she needed, if nothing else. There was no money for college, but the United States Army offered education benefits, scholarships, and career opportunities aplenty if you were willing to commit

yourself. Since Lee had long realized that the notion of independence was a pretty illusion, and, despite all talk to the contrary, society as a whole was still in fact a patriarchy anyway, she saw no reason to shy away from joining the military.