Jake’s Testimony [#3 of 10]

Maybe it always comes down to our fathers.  Or our mothers, I don’t know.  My mother, Becca– our mother, properly  — often speaks her praise of me. She’s always had something against Esse, though. She said we fought even while we were in her womb. I guess it was a troubled birthing. Yet we each survived it. As I have never forgotten, he managed to get himself into this world first. Just barely, but first.

Come to think of it, Becca has always gone easier on me, taken my part, over against Esse’s. She was always disciplining him; but it seemed like I could do no wrong. I wonder if he ever hated me for that? Maybe she just saw through his charm.

Izzy, though, always preferred Esse’s company to mine. Always. As soon as he could walk, my brother was hunting. And Izzy loved game meats and stews. I remember when we were just five or six, Esse would trap conies and bring them home to cook. Izzy would take out his long, curved knife – I remember its metal  was yellow like straw and green-tinged, and he would show Esse how to cut up the carcasses and decide which bits were for stew and which were for the roasting.

[Part 4]