SONNY'S SITE

Hi! I'm Sonny. I was born in Darlington.

When I was just a little kid, I lived next door to Blanche Spann. Her hair was red and curly, only it wasn't really red. Everybody just said it was. It was more like orange. Orange is my favorite color. She was a year older than me, but that was okay. I've always been attracted to older women.

Blanche had a swell mimosa tree in her front yard. It was great for swinging on until I broke a limb off and Mrs. Spann said I couldn't swing on it anymore. Blanche and I got along swell until she got mad at me for something I did. After that, she wouldn't speak to me for a while.

A few weeks before my fourth birthday, my family moved from Darlington to District Heights, just outside Washington, and they took me along. Blanche and I drifted apart after that. Neither one of us knew how to write and even if we had, we wouldn't have known what to say.

It was hard being the new boy in the neighborhood. At first, there weren't many kids my own age in District Heights and Shirley Duncan said I talked funny. Then the Sterlings moved into the vacant house next door to us.

Mac Sterling was getting ready to go to first grade in the fall. He knew a lot of swell stuff. He taught me how to spit between my teeth and told me how babies are born. I liked District Heights a lot better after Mac moved in, but I got homesick for Darlington and sometimes I remembered Blanche Spann, especially when Mac wasn't around and I felt lonely.

Want me to tell you some more about Blanche Spann and Madeleine Smith, and Wade-Hampton and my sisters, Elizabeth and Kitty? And Mac Sterling and George Pierce and Wilma Wentworth? If you do, just click on Jawbreakers or one of the other titles in the short story box on the lefthand side of this page.  In Jawbreakers I tell Blanche a lot of stuff I didn't know how to say when we still lived in Darlington.