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Prospect Park: “There goes the rejected triplet. It hurts to even look at her”; “That’s her! I can tell by the eyes. And to think, she could’ve had everything”; “My goodness! The spitting image of her sisters, except, of course, they don’t live like animals.”
    There is no denying that babies are born into bad circumstances every day of the year, but, seeing Dorthea’s life from beginning to end, a person still has to wonder how these things worked. How come one daughter of a mean alcoholic grows up to be temperate and well-adjusted while another turns out dissipated and troubled? Why does one grown son of a prostitute feed the poor and help the needy while his brother stalks the shadows, indulging dark impulses? Dorthea could’ve played a part in one of these enigmas had she turned out differently. She could’ve been good water from a bad well and left everyone scratching their heads. It could’ve happened, but nobody expected it. They expected Dorthea to turn out like all the others in her family. But what about a third possibility? What about the possibility that she’d turn out much worse?
    Better or worse didn’t matter in the early years, though. If anyone had cared to look, they would’ve seen just another Railer child being trained up to be another good-for-nothing Railer adult.
    ~~~
    Nobody had told Dorthea that she needed shoes to go to school. It they had, she would’ve found some. She’d found an old tobacco tin to use to carry her lunch and could’ve found shoes too. She knew how to find things. She also knew how to steal.
    Dorthea had been looking forward to this day. The year before, Ermel had made her stay home to take care of the babies. She’d said the same thing this year but then a man knocked on the door and told her that kids have to go to school. So Dorthea washed her dress and stuck a sticky piece of tar paper inside the torn sleeve to hold it together. She scrubbed her elbows and behind her ears, grabbed her tobacco tin lunch box, and joined the other kids from Yucky D as they walked the two blocks down Pine Street to the little two room school house. When she got there, though, the lower grade teacher, Miss Parker, looked at her bare feet and told her she had to wait on the bench in the coat room. The kids laughed and whispered. At lunch time Miss Parker walked her back to Yucky D, where she waited by Dorthea’s front door and covered her nose with a hanky on account of the outhouses. Dorthea fetched Ermel, and when she came to the door, dressed in a dirty bathrobe and messy hair, she looked the teacher up and down and said, “Did she get in trouble already?”
    “No, Dorthea’s not in trouble,” said the teacher, “but she didn’t wear shoes to school, Mrs. Railer. I know it’s hard to keep children in shoes…and if she doesn’t have any—”
    “She’s got shoes,” said Ermel.
    “I do?” asked Dorthea.
    “Shut up, Dorthea,” said Ermel. “All my kids got shoes. Even the one that don’t walk.”
    Ermel lied sometimes.
    “Alright then, Mrs. Railer, if Dorthea puts on her shoes, I’ll walk her back to school.”
    “That’s very neighborly of you, Miss, but since the day is mostly over, she can stay here with me.”
    “Mrs. Railer…the Presbyterian Church up on Barton Road gives shoes to children.”
    “I said she’s got shoes.”
    “Alright then. I’m only trying to be helpful. I’ll see you tomorrow, Dorthea. Goodbye Mrs. Railer.”
    Later, when her dad came home—she called him “Dad” but Ermel didn’t like to be called “Mom”—Ermel took Dorthea up to Skinner’s Mercantile to buy shoes. The good day that turned bad turned good again.
    Skinner’s Mercantile had big jars of jelly beans and peppermint sticks and licorice whips. The barrels in front of the long counter held butter and crackers and pickles and stinky salted fish. At the back of the store, behind the big black stove, they kept long wooden boxes. Ermel said that’s where