The Son They Kept Poor

After I received my acceptance letter from Central High, I wanted to call my parents, who worked in the city, and tell them the good news. But a few comments suddenly appeared before my eyes. [God, this is sad. His parents are at Disney World with his little brother right now.] [He still doesn’t know, does he? His parents’ company, Bennett Construction, just landed that development site on the west side last month. They made a fortune.] [His brother Tyler just got the latest phone, and he’s still making calls on that antique.] [The worst part? That old woman who screams at him every day isn’t even his grandmother. His parents pay her two thousand a month.] My parents had left me in the countryside for sixteen years with a grandmother who didn’t love me. Now, thanks to those comments, I knew it had all been a lie. But I didn’t hesitate. Wearing clothes covered in patches upon patches, I walked straight outside and looked at her. “You’re not my grandmother, are you?” My hands wouldn’t stop shaking after I received my acceptance letter from Central High. Not from excitement, but from the weakness years of malnutrition had left behind. I rushed to the old rotary phone in our house, picked up the receiver, and called my parents in the city to share the news. Ring. Ring. But no one answered. I wanted to tell them I’d gotten into the best high school in the county. I wanted to ask if they would come home for Christmas this year. Still, no one picked up. Just as I was about to hang up in disappointment, several lines of translucent text appeared before my eyes without warning. Every message said the same thing: my parents were living the good life in the city while deliberately keeping me poor in the countryside. Even the grandmother who was my only companion was someone they’d hired! I blinked hard. The floating comments only grew clearer. I swallowed, my thoughts racing. Could this be real? I hung up and walked back into the yard like a puppet. Grandma was sitting on a little stool, sorting vegetables. When she saw me, she shot me a sharp look. “Making calls again? How many times have I told you long-distance calls cost money? Your parents work themselves to death on construction sites, and you just love wasting their money!” I stared at her mean face, my lips trembling uncontrollably. Thinking of the comments I’d seen, I finally asked: “Grandma.” “You… you’re not my real grandmother, are you?” Her hands froze. Then she flung the rotten leaves she was holding at me. “What the hell is wrong with you, Ethan? You don’t know whether I’m your grandmother?” She stood and jabbed a finger in my face. “All that studying has rotted your brain! Filling your head with nonsense all day! Go feed the pigs!” I didn’t move. I just kept staring at her. At the flash of panic in her eyes. The comments appeared again. [She’s scared. Look, she can’t even meet his eyes.] [Keep acting. Seriously, someone give this woman an Oscar.] I turned away without a word and walked into the pigpen. The stench made my stomach churn. Were the comments telling the truth? But what were they? Why could I see them? That night, I tossed and turned on my hard wooden bed. Rustling came from Grandma’s room next door. I held my breath, slipped out of bed, and pressed my ear to the cold wall. “Hello? Richard? It’s me.” “Ethan… something was off about him today.” “He asked if I was his real grandmother. I yelled at him, but that boy’s sharp. I’m worried he’s figured something out.” “Yes, you’d better come back tomorrow.” “Remember to dress… you know. Make it convincing. Don’t give anything away.” Something inside my head snapped. So it was all true. My parents really were rich. All these years, leaving me here had been part of a story they’d written for me. Everything was an act. I stumbled back to bed and pulled the musty quilt, patched more times than I could count, over my head. The tears came pouring out. In the dead of winter, my hands and feet would swell with chilblains, itching and burning. Grandma would take our only heater into her own room. The neighbors’ children all wore new clothes. I wore the old things Mom mailed home, clothes she must have picked up somewhere. The sleeves were far too short, and my classmates laughed at me for an entire semester. Once, I’d had a fever so high my face burned red. I lay slumped over the table, unable to get up. Grandma had only said coldly, “Drink some warm water. You’ll be fine.” All the suffering I’d endured hadn’t been because we were poor. It was because they didn’t love me. They lived in luxury with my own little brother while abandoning me in this remote village, paying a stranger to “raise me poor.” What a way to raise a child. What a heartless setup. My eyes ached from crying, and my heart grew colder by the second. Tomorrow. When they came back. I would expose this disgusting performance they’d kept going for more than a decade.The next day, the sun was directly overhead when I heard the screech of brakes outside the yard. They were here. A gleaming black sedan stopped at the end of the muddy dirt road. The doors opened. My father, Richard Bennett, got out first, followed by my mother, Linda. They wore faded work clothes. Their faces were smudged with dirt, their hair disheveled. They looked exactly like two worn-out construction workers. Finally, my brother Tyler climbed out. He stepped into the mud, instantly staining his brand-new white sneakers. Tyler wrinkled his nose in disgust, speaking just loudly enough for me to hear. “Mom, Dad, this is where Ethan lives? People actually live here? I wouldn’t even keep a dog in this place!” His words stabbed straight through me. I’d lived for sixteen years in a place he wouldn’t put a dog. I studied my parents carefully. They were good actors. But dirt couldn’t hide how soft their hands were. Those were hands used to holding pens and signing contracts. Their nails were spotless. The skin at their necks was smooth. These were not people who spent their lives doing hard labor. “Ethan!” The moment Mom saw me, she clapped a hand over Tyler’s still-running mouth and forced a smile full of concern and guilt. “We’ve missed you so much! Let me look at you. You’ve gotten so thin!” She opened her arms to hug me. Instinctively, I stepped back. Her arms froze in midair. I looked past them, fixing my gaze on the conspicuous black sedan. “Mom. Dad.” My voice was hoarse. “Do you… have money now? You can afford a car?” “Then can you bring me to the city for school?” Dad’s expression stiffened for a moment. Then he put on a good-natured smile. “Of course not! I borrowed it from my boss. When I heard you got into high school, I wanted to come home in style.” “The city’s expensive, and your brother’s schooling costs money too. For now, you should stay here…” The same old excuses. I lowered my eyes to hide my contempt. Borrowed. How convenient. For lunch, Grandma killed an old hen and made a large pot of soup. Tyler took one look at the chipped bowls and my patched clothes, then pursed his lips and refused to sit beside me. “Mom, I’m not sitting next to him.” “He stinks. He probably has lice!” Embarrassment flickered across my parents’ faces. Mom quickly pulled Tyler into the seat between them. “Don’t talk like that! He’s your brother!” After lunch, Mom took a thick stack of cash from her pocket and pressed it into “Grandma’s” hand. “Here’s two thousand, Mom. Thank you for taking care of him this month.” “Ethan’s starting high school, so he’ll need more. Buy him some good food. Don’t let him go without.” I watched the crisp bills and laughed bitterly to myself. That was this actress’s salary. Probably not even a tenth of that money ever reached me. Over the years, I’d gathered medicinal herbs in the hills, washed dishes at little restaurants in town, and hauled bricks on construction sites under the blazing summer sun just to cover school fees and books. The blisters on my hands burst, healed, and burst again. Whenever I called to ask for money, my parents said they hadn’t been paid yet, or Tyler was sick again. Life in the city was even harder than life in the country, they said. Eventually, I stopped asking. I’d thought they were truly struggling. Now I understood. The poverty they gave me had been carefully calculated. My eyes dropped to Tyler’s feet. White sneakers, with a bright red swoosh on the side. I recognized that logo. Brandon Miller, the richest kid in my class, had an identical pair. He’d bragged endlessly that his parents had asked someone in the city to buy them. Nikes, he’d called them. Two thousand dollars a pair. Two thousand. Enough to cover my living expenses for two whole years. Two years of my suffering were worth no more than one pair of his shoes. I gripped my enamel bowl so tightly that the chipped rim dug into my palm. I couldn’t take it anymore. I jerked my head up and stared at them through bloodshot eyes. “You’re rich, aren’t you?” My voice broke. “You left me here alone to suffer on purpose, didn’t you?” Dad’s face darkened. He slammed a hand on the table. “Ethan Bennett! What the hell has gotten into you?” Mom panicked too. She pointed at me and snapped, “Has school scrambled your brain? We work like dogs in the city to pay for your education, and you sit here making things up! What have we ever done to you?” “What have you done?” I laughed through my tears and pointed at Tyler’s shoes. “His shoes cost two thousand dollars! I don’t spend that much staying alive for two years! And you call this treating me well?” They froze for a moment, but Dad recovered quickly. His expression hardened. “My boss’s son didn’t want those shoes anymore, so he gave them to Tyler. What do you know? Nothing but nonsense!” Mom caught on at once. She secretly pinched Tyler’s arm. He immediately put on a pitiful expression. “Yeah, Ethan. You have no idea what I went through just to get somebody else’s unwanted shoes!” I watched their family performance with a cold smile. Clearly, no matter what I said, they would never admit they had money.That afternoon, my parents said they had to hurry back because “the construction site was busy.” Meanwhile, one thought was growing wildly in my head. I wanted to see this “construction site” and their “hard life” with my own eyes. I remembered Dad putting a bag of local produce in the trunk before they left. He’d opened it. Claiming my stomach hurt, I rushed toward the outhouse behind the house. Then, like a stray cat, I slipped silently away. The trunk hadn’t latched all the way. I used every ounce of strength I had to lift it just enough and crawled inside. I could see Grandma standing at the gate, waving eagerly, as though seeing off her own children. I curled up in the darkness, my heart pounding. The engine started. My parents and brother began talking. “That scared the life out of me. Did you see the look in that little brat’s eyes? Like he wanted to eat us alive.” Mom’s voice shook with lingering fear and relief. “He’s definitely getting suspicious. We almost got caught.” Dad sounded irritated. “Good thing I thought fast and blamed the shoes on my boss’s son. Otherwise, I don’t know how we would’ve explained it.” “This is your fault!” Mom complained. “You just had to wear those Nikes! How many times have I told you? If we’re going back to put on a show, we have to get every detail right!” “Mom, how is that my fault?” Tyler sounded both offended and impatient. “That dump doesn’t even have a proper road! I’m throwing these shoes out as soon as we get back. They smell like poverty now!” He paused, then added: “Mom, Dad, why don’t we just bring Ethan home? It’s not like we can’t afford him. We have tons of empty rooms.” For one brief moment, I stopped breathing. Then— “No.” Dad’s voice held no warmth at all. “Have you forgotten what that spiritual adviser told us?” “That boy was born under a terrible sign. He’s a curse on this family! We have to keep him poor, keep him low, keep him far away. That’s the only way our family will prosper!” “The moment he gets a taste of wealth, everything we’ve built will start falling apart!” Mom hurried to agree. “That’s right, Tyler. Don’t go soft on him. Remember when you were little? Every time he got a fever, your father’s business went wrong. The adviser said he was our family’s curse. He has to suffer out here to take the misfortune meant for us!” Curled in the darkness, I went cold all over. I wasn’t their child to love. I was a sacrifice they used to buy their comfortable lives. “Oh, I get it…” Tyler sounded enlightened. “Well, I definitely don’t want to go back to being poor.” “For me, and for our family, I guess Ethan should… keep suffering out there.” His last words were light as a feather. They still crushed my heart to pieces. I bit the back of my hand to keep from making a sound. Superstition. We’d studied it in school. Our teacher said it was ignorance left over from a darker time. I’d never imagined my own parents and brother would use something so baseless to condemn me to sixteen years of hell. I didn’t know how much time passed before the car stopped. I peered through a gap in the trunk with all my strength. What I saw stole my breath. This wasn’t some construction workers’ dormitory. It was a three-story mansion, with a neatly trimmed lawn and a huge fountain. I watched the three of them get out and punch in the gate code without hesitation. The ornate iron gates slowly opened. This was their home. I waited a few minutes until I was sure they were inside. Then I quietly pushed open the trunk, slipped out, and squeezed through the gate before it finished closing. Inside, it was even more luxurious than I’d imagined. Crystal chandeliers. Marble floors. A sweeping staircase. A woman in a housekeeper’s uniform was mopping the floor. When she saw them, she greeted them respectfully. “Welcome home, Mr. Bennett, Mrs. Bennett. Tyler.” I quickly ducked beneath a huge European-style dining table. The long tablecloth hid me completely. “Martha, get me an ice-cold Coke!” Tyler tossed his backpack aside and sprawled on the sofa like he owned the world. The table was covered in colorful bags of imported snacks. Their foreign labels were full of words I couldn’t read. I remembered eating moldy bread to save money. Digging wild greens out of the hills to fill my stomach, the bitterness lingering in my mouth. I watched Mom peel off her faded work clothes and change into a silk dress, then spray on perfume in front of a mirror. “I’m meeting Susan and the others for facials. I won’t be home for dinner.” Dad went into the walk-in closet. When he came out, he wore a perfectly tailored suit, his hair slicked neatly into place. “I’m heading to the office. There’s an important contract to sign tonight.” So this was their “construction site.” This was their “hard life.” Just then, Dad’s phone rang. He answered, and his calm expression changed instantly. “What?” His voice shot up. “Ethan’s missing? You searched the whole village?” “Could he have… followed us to the city?” Mom and Tyler went white. “Quick! Check the car! The trunk!” They spun around in a panic, about to rush outside. That was when I slowly crawled out from beneath the table. I brushed the dust from my clothes and spoke in a hoarse voice. “No need to look.”