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Baby Girl
He still called her Baby girl although she wore hip hugger bell bottoms, and fringed vests, and was a freshman in high school. And she still let him, her older brother Vinnie was the only one who got away with it. They were as close as a brother and sister born five years apart could be, and she looked to Vinnie for advise.
She missed the talks with her brother. He told her things, and advised her what to stay away from, and they always talked about Vietnam. Teresa new from the start her brother would enlist, he had talked about when rumors of a war first began, the war wasn’t popular of course, and many were burning draft cards, but that only unnerved Teresa, it seemed to her that they were disregarding what “the boys” over there were trying to do, and now her brother was one of those boys. She had started high school with her only brotherly advise coming from a letter dated weeks back.
She was now in the middle of her freshmen year and a few more letters came, Vinnie wrote every week as he promised, but his letters were vague and she worried about him. She could not imagine something happening to Vinnie, she did not want to think about the fact that so many of the boys were over there.
Teresa read and reread Vinnie’s letters until they were about to fall apart, but they were a part of him and he was her brother. He was the one who did everything for her, her Mother…
