I looked up to reply, reached out for the book to offer some help. My mother slapped my hand so sharply that tears came to my eyes as I jerked it back, then she turned to Isaiah, her voice like sprayed acid. “Boy don’t you be bothering me or your brother with your dumb-ass questions. He’s got important work to do. He cain’t be studyin’ your little homework that he already did. And probably better than you’ll ever do it anyway.” She turned back to my book as though no one else was in the room. The only sound was our mingled inhalations and exhalations, Isaiah and I each trying not to cry. After a few minutes, Isaiah walked out of the room, tears running down his face. He did not ask for help again.

It was after that incident that he began to slip away I do not think that my mother ever understood it. He stopped paying attention in class. By the time he was fourteen he had stopped going to school, except to see friends and hang out on the corner harassing girls as they entered. He came home late, when he came home at all, stinking of smoke and cheap wine. When we were little we shared a bed, and he always smelled like home to me—Dixie Peach pomade and the ashy scent of red clay. But now I barely spoke to him, tried to avoid him in the bathroom. Stayed out of his way as I scuttled from school to my after-school job to home, where he rarely was anymore. For a little while, my mother yelled at him about his behavior, her voice a shrill bullet to the brain. Then she just stopped. She watched his comings and goings with dull eyes and no longer asked him any questions. He was arrested my sophomore year of college for holding up a candy store. He got $35 and a Snickers bar for his trouble. He also got two years in jail. He was killed just a year after his release while participating in a similarly stupid crime—another robbery There was nothing I could do.