[ 1 2 3 ]	That Jones Family by Dana Kaye We all knew the Jones family down the block was struggling. Ever since Father Jones had died in that car wreck, Mama Jones and her two sons hadn’t been the same. They used to always be outside, Father Jones reading on the porch, Mama Jones gardening, the kids tossing a baseball, riding bikes. But for the three weeks following the funeral, we hadn’t seen them leave the house. They hadn’t been like our family, twin brothers, forever joined at the hip but forever arguing, parents working, getting picked up from school by the babysitter. Mama Jones was a stay at home mom, Father Jones brought home the dough. Her eldest son was in fourth grade, like we were, but the younger son was in preschool and stayed with Mama Jones most of the time. It seemed like the four of them never fought and were always smiling, like they functioned as one. But we hadn’t seen the eldest son in grade school for three weeks. Didn’t know his name, just his face, from the block. He didn’t talk much, it seemed. We’d see him on the playground or in the hallway, playing with his glasses and scratching his buzz cut. We had thought about asking him to sit with us in the cafeteria or to play kickball at recess. But none of us ever got around to it. We didn’t need to see the Jones family to know they were struggling. We just knew by the outside of their house, the green lawn and flowerbeds rapidly dying, overgrown with crabgrass and dandelions. Bobby, the paperboy, would toss the rolled up newspaper onto the porch every day, adding to the three week old pile, still left untouched. Johnny from next door went over there with his parents. He told us he heard his mama muttering how she could feel the pain and misery infesting the walls like a sickness and was anxious to leave. When we asked him what Mama Jones and the boys looked like, he told us they looked like corpses, freshly raised from the dead. We went to look for ourselves, peeking our tiny identical heads over the dusty window sill, but all we could see was the silhouette of Mama Jones sitting next to a glass of wine with her head in her hands.