Brandy

It’s not your fault.
-Good Will Hunting

I babysat for my 5 year old cousin, Brandy. The most endearing thing about her were her crossed blue eyes. She had a perpetual runny nose, straggly blonde hair, sticky with pancake syrup, and wore over-sized unmatched hand-me-down clothes. She was the forgotten child, the last born in the last stages of severely alcoholic parents. Just like me. I was her pit bull big sister protector. She’d spot me and take a running leap into my arms.
Her mother would be passed out in bed every morning. The poor kid had to fend for herself. They lived in this cavernous house in Jamaica Plains. It’s the middle of winter, so she stacks wood for a fire. Then her nightgown catches on fire.
They shroud her with someone’s dead skin and stick her in an icy bathtub for 3 days before she died, her beautiful crossed eyes begging for help.
The legacy of her brief stay on this earth was to help pass the laws requiring inflammable nightgowns.