VI
H
ow
is it possible for one to love and to hate someone at the same time? Yet I think that is how I felt about my brother Elijah in those golden days. Two years older than I, he was vastly bigger and more courageous. Indeed, never once did I see the occasion when his will was broken by another man, or woman for that matter, though he was never much for women, when I think about it.
It was as though, being different from anyone else in our family, he had set himself to fight us all from the start. His lank wiry frame, his black hair, so unkempt despite my mother’s constant cajolings and threats, his long pointed nose and square jaw, all spoke defiance. I can only see him like that in my memory—yet I came to learn that there was a strange tenderness beneath this appearance. I even thi
