My father never remarried, and we were raised by most of the Island's women. Willie and I were welcomed in every Island home and felt like we both bel...onged to a huge, extended, Island family. It never really occurred to me that we were the Island's Royal family until the week of my father's passing.As I walked back and forth among the dunes and washed up flotsam, I couldn't help wondering what I'd do if Frannie did sell the place of my birth. I'd never left this Island because all I had ever. ”“Kill?“ I say in disbelief. “For plant?““Not for the plant itself, but so they won’t be discovered to have it. For twenty or thirty plants the person who’s growing them could go to jail for ten years or more.”“This is madness!” I exclaim. “This plant, this marijuana, has many good uses that help people.”“I know, but we have other things now for those uses,” she says. “The thing is, mostly it’s used today recreationally, to get high. Like alcohol, you know.”“It was used so also among my people,. One night, I came home from my football game which had been about 75 miles away and Carla and her mom were sitting on their front porch. Carla was sipping a Pepsi and her mom was slugging down a cold BUD. I noticed that her mom had her legs slightly apart and was wearing some kind of really short skirt. I could see her while panties between her legs and could make out the slight outline of her pussy lips and since the material was really thin, I could actually see (at least I thought I could). In many ways most children grow up to be like their parents, she said, but in our case we grew up to be more like ourselves, untended, untaught except through our own isolation. "If we feel unloved," she said, "it's not because we weren't loved. It's because we weren't loved for who we are."The night wore on with neither of us able to stop talking. The subject eventually moved to the unique relationship between us."It just happened," Martha said, lighting another cigarette and hugging her knees.