& it’s too complicated to get into here: let’s just say it had to do with this family of 
eighteen (five parents, Wyoming), the Sixties, shared clothes, few shoes, one bureau of 
drawers to serve thirteen kids less than nine months apart, competition (frantic hands in 
those drawers), five parents in the stone-strewn field all day, field that yielded nothing—
desiccated carrots, cabbages like cardboard—those same parents giving each child a legal 
name (after #7, though, papers filled out, never turned in, “6.5” they called the one buried 
near the failed kale, “not notated,” the father decreed, “no need—should have fed it to the 
others”) (no laughter from the women) and Sister, not quite the youngest (not clear who 
was the youngest), him not ever informed what underwear to wear, what shirts (if any 
were left), & anyway this was just about the time the parents, Our Parents, they called 
them (though one of the kids, an older girl, once joked that Father-parent should be called 
Faster Get It Over, that’s what the Mother-parents called him up there in the room), but 
only a few knew it was a joke & the boy didn’t, that’s for sure, & anyway his Random 
Clothes Period (lasted nine years) was around the time the Parents stopped calling them 
any names at all, just hollered Brother or Sister (Suster, one of the mothers pronounced 
it) and because of what he often ended up wearing they called him Sister, but there was 
one girl, the one who joked the Faster Get It Over thing, who whispered to him one day, 
You’re not Sister, Sister: you’re Brother, and don’t forget that, but that one, she walked 
out of the house the night Father-parent said Come upstairs, I want to teach you fealty & 
she went upstairs & learned fealty and then just before the sun came up Sister sat up in 
the middle of the floor-blankets & snorers & saw her go to the drawers, pull out some 
things & not put on shoes but carry shoes & she was gone, Sister never saw her again—
& I’m sorry, I just can’t get into all the history of the Sister thing & why he kept that 
name even after the Authorities came in their blue vans & by the time Sister was in the 
group home, by the time he was as old as the girl who left, they said We want to give you 
a name, what about Cody, what about Cheyenne, what about Orrin, but Sister, he kept 
saying, Sister, so they gave him Sister, & of course that part’s just part of it, not the 
Before Part about the Father-horsewhip or the Mother-shotgun (them taking turns & all 
that) & the Father-accident & sirens & the other Authorities, so Sister he goes out into the 
world, finds Our Lord Jesus Christ & meets a priest who says You have a vocation and 
we’re sending you to a special place, and Sister thinks he’d said vacation & anyway likes 
it where they send him, he has his own room & soon they call him Father Sister, and 
that’s where the trouble started, they say, it had to do with a certain sermon, one that 
went south they say on the Immaculate Conception—but that part, that’s a really 
confusing story . . .