Hang the Moon

by Jeannette Walls

Admitting the truth only when you’re forced to—that’s a far cry from genuine honesty,

There are two kinds of family, those you’re born into and those you put together from pieces that don’t go anywhere else,

I try to be good to people, to be fair, but I know that at times I can sound hard.

That’s what some people said when Mama was killed. It is what you tell yourself sometimes, a way to make sense of things, a way to make you feel safer, that people who get hurt bring it on themselves. But it’s such a lie. Lots of folks don’t deserve what they get. Eddie, for one. Abraham Crockett. And lots of folks don’t get what they deserve.

SOME SAY THAT WHAT doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but that isn’t always so. Many a time, what doesn’t kill you leaves you broken and crippled, unable to fight the next fight, or sometimes it leaves a wound in your heart so deep and ugly that it never truly heals, leaves you bitter and angry, unable to forgive the world for its cruelty.