Summon the Tiger

My little idyllic and peaceful life came to a screeching halt in the fall of 1972. My mother, unable to manage my seventeen-year-old sister, shipped her down to me. Tracy had been kicked out of a couple of high schools, I was told, and my mother was simply fed up. So I took her in. She got a job, since my mother was sending no support, and was taking the bus to and from work. I would drive her to the local high school for GED classes. It took no time at all before she was not coming home after class – she was coming in past one in the morning. I finally told her I was dead-bolting the door at one, which I did. That was no deterrent: she was locked out more than once. She turned 18 on December 28th of that year and left for good. What she had been doing was having Castro, the house boy, pick her up at the high school. She married him as soon as she could. Those were a rough couple of months – me 21, working full time, going to school, and attempting to manage my totally uncontrollable sister. She believes I kicked her out, her with pneumonia. I merely dead-bolted the door when I told her I would. I will never quite understand, even after all of these years, that she thought a 17-year-old should not have a curfew. She never did graduate from high school, but many years later she earned a GED, and then got an Associate degree.