Jewel
by
Bret Lott

When the child is finally born, it seems that Cathedral's prediction
was empty: the baby appears normal in every way.  As the months go by,
however, Jewel becomes increasingly afraid that something is wrong with
little Brenda Kay--she doesn't cry, she doesn't roll over, she's hardly
ever awake.  Eventually husband and wife take the baby to the doctor
and are informed that she is a "Mongolian Idiot," not expected to live
past the age of 2. Jewel angrily rebuffs the doctor's suggestion that
they institutionalize Brenda Kay.  Instead the Hilburns shoulder the
burdens--and discover the unexpected joys--of living with a Down's
syndrome child.

Bret Lott has written a novel that spans decades, follows the lives of
several characters, and cuts back and forth between Mississippi and
California.  Given these challenges, a lesser writer might lose
focus.

Lott, however, has wisely chosen to keep his eye trained on Jewel--a
narrator who is smart, perceptive, and above all, honest.  He has also
bucked the trend toward political correctness by allowing his
characters to think, feel, and talk the way white Mississippians of
that era would have.  ("Mongolian Idiot," "nigger," "cracker," and
"buck" are just a few of the epithets sprinkled throughout the text.)

The language may be discomforting to some readers.  Few will deny,
however, that Bret Lott has crafted a clan that is all heart in this
bittersweet paean to the enduring strength of familial love.

Also by Bret Lott

THE MAN WHO OWNED VERMONT

A STRANGER'S HOUSE

A DREAM OF OLD LEAVES

REED'S BEACH

HOW TO GET HOME

FATHERS, SONS, AND BROTHERS

THE HUNTCLUB

JEWEL

POCKET BOOKS New York London Toronto Sydney hryo Singapoore

This book is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, places and
incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used
fictitiously.  Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.  .

POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc. 1230 Avenue of the
Americas, New York, NY 10020

Copyright t 1991 by Bret Lott All rights reserved, including the right
to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.  For
information address Pocket Books, 1230

Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

Lott, Bret.  Jewel: a novel / by Bret Lott.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-671-03823-0

I. Title PS3562.0784J49 1991

813'.54dc20 91-17842 @

First Pocket Books hardcover printing November 1991

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

2

POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.
Printed in the U.S.A.

And this is the father's will which hath sent me, that of all which he
hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at
the last day.  JOHN 6:39.

How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out.

ROMANS 11:33.

BOOK ONE.

CHAPTER 1.

I WAS BORN IN 1904, so THAT WHEN I WAS PREGNANT IN 1943 I WAS near
enough to be past the rightful age to bear children.  This would be my
sixth, and on that morning in February, the first morning I'd known I
was with child, I'd simply turned to Leston in bed next to me, the room
gray from a winter sky outside the one window, that sky not yet lit
with the sun, and I'd said, "There'll be no more after this one."

He rolled onto his back, his eyes still shut, the little hair he still
had wild and loose on his head.  He put his hands behind his head, and
gave a sort of smile, one I'd seen enough times before this.  Five
times before, to be exact.

He said, "Another one, " and kept the smile.  Then he said, "What makes
you think so?  " I said, "Doesn't take divining, not after five, " and
I paused.  I reached a hand up from beneath the quilts, felt the chill
of the morning on my skin, that skin the same color gray as the small
strip of sky I could see above the box pine and live oak outside the
window.  I touched Leston's cheek, did the best I could to smooth out
his hair.  He was still smiling.

I said, "I just know."

Then came the morning sounds, sounds of the everyday of our lives,
first the slam shut of the front door as James, our oldest, started on
his way to work at Crampton's Lumber, then the scrape of our other two
boys, Burton and Wilman, from their room above us, the first sounds of
tussling and fooling that started now and ended only after dark, the
boys back in bed.  Those two, I thought as I lay there, my hand back
under the quilts to keep warm as long as I could, we'd had too close
together, Burton seven, Wilman almost six.  Billie Jean, my second
child, would not be up for as long as I would let her sleep, around her
on the bunched and rumpled blankets of her bed the movie magazines she
lived for, fanned around her like leaves off a tree.  And Anne, my
baby, would be stirring soon, then following Burton and Wilman around
like a lost dog, wanting only to be one of them, blessed by the rough
and tumble of pinecone wars and whittling knives.

I heard Wilman say, "That's not yours, " then Burton putting in, "But
it was, " and then the pop and crack of the heart pine floor above us
as the two started in on each other.

"Boys, " Leston called out, his voice as deep and solid as every
morning.

The fighting stopped, the room upstairs as quiet now as when they were
asleep.

"Sir?  " they called out together.

Leston smiled, though on my boys' voices was the certain sound of
fear.

He said, "Chunk up the stove.  The two of you."

"Yes sir, " they gave back to him, and then their whispering started,
and I knew whatever they were fighting over wouldn't be settled until
sometime late in the day, if at all.

Leston sat up in bed, turned so that his back was to me, his feet on
the floor.  He looked to the window, then down to the floor.  He
brought a hand to his face, rubbed it, ran that hand back through his
hair.  Wisps of it still hung in the cold air, copper going gray, the
line of his shoulders still the same hard and broad line I'd seen the
first time I met him, the same shoulders I'd held while we'd conceived
each of our children this far.  But now, his head hung forward, his
hands holding tight the edge of the mattress, I thought I could see for
the first time the weight of age upon him, those shoulders with the
burden of our years and our five children, one of them already set to
working his way through the world, and me with a brand-new one now on
the way.

Leston had left the quilts pulled back, my face and shoulders and arms
out there to the cold.  He lifted his face to the gray window again,
gave out a heavy breath that shone in a small cloud before him, the
room so cold.  Leston said, "No more after this will set fine with
me."

Then I shivered, felt it through my whole body, a shiver so deep
whatever warmth I'd had beneath the quilts disappeared entirely, and I
knew my sleep was over, that day and all the days left to me until this
next child was born now begun.  I let out a deep breath, too, saw the
cloud it made in the room, and in that breath I saw what I'd known all
along, known all the days until this one when I'd been thinking maybe,
just maybe I was going to have another child, it was me, too, that age
was weighing down on hard.

I sat up in bed, put my feet on the cold pine floor, my back to
Leston.

I stood, called out, "Boys, " heard Wilman and Burton holler, "Yes
ma'am!  " The floor above us filled up with the scrabbling of two boys
trying to get their clothes on, then the rattle of them both on the
stairs.

I was on my way to the door and breakfast when Leston, behind me and
still on the bed, said, "Jewel Hilburn, you take care."

I turned to him, my hand already on the doorknob.  He'd gotten the
smile back, his eyes the same deepwater green I'd known for what felt
all my life.

I said, "You know I will, " and held my eyes on him.

He said, "That I do, " and nodded, and then I was out the door and on
into the kitchen.

I'd taken care of myself most all my days, though things had eased up
once I met Leston.  Before that, though, before Leston and the stop and
start of our having children and trying to feed our own selves, there
was a world sometimes I would like to sooner forget than think about at
all.  But it's history that matters, what keeps you together in the
tight ball of nerves and flesh you are and makes you you and not
someone else.

I was an orphan at age eleven, my mother dead of a fever, my father not
two months before she passed on having broke his neck on a log just
under the water at the bend in the Black River, the bend nearest town
where the post oak lay low to the water, and where, in spring, light
through the leaves breaks across the river so that nothing can be seen
beneath.  He broke his neck right then, right there, with the quick and
simple dare of diving into water, and when I was a little girl of
eleven with both my mother and father gone, and me living suddenly with
a grandmother I'd only met three times before, I used to imagine it
wasn't a fever that killed my mother, but a broken heart at the death
of her beloved.

But the truth was he'd moved into a logging shack a year before he'd
broke his neck, and only showed up to our house at twilight on Saturday
nights to have at my mother, then to attend church the next morning,
his black hair slicked back and shiny with pomade.  It was the thick
and sweet smell of his hair that woke me up Sunday mornings, me staying
up just as late as the two of them the night before, listening through
the walls to the mystery they tended to each Saturday night, sounds I'd
hear again only when Leston and I were together, so that on our wedding
night twelve years later the low moan he made and the pitch and twirl
of sounds I heard coming from me were like the ghosts of my long dead
parents, sounds I knew but had forgotten in the cloud of years filled
with taking care of me and me alone.

Sunday mornings we would go to church, where we'd sit in the pew, me
between my momma and daddy, their only child.  I'd had a brother, who
only now comes to me as part shadow, part light, a baby born when I was
three and who died when I was four, and there are times before I go to
bed when I will stop in at Burton and Wilman's room, sometimes even
James', though he has fast become a man and lost the look of a child,
and I will see in their faces the faintest trace of my brother, the
thin baby line of an eyebrow I believe may have belonged to him, the
open mouth and pale lips soft with air in and out which perhaps I am
remembering, perhaps imagining.  No real memories do I have of him,
except for the idea somewhere of my daddy holding Joseph Jr.  on one
knee and playing buggetybuggety, and the picture in my head of a baby
asleep.

But that's all I remember of my brother, and even calling that a memory
is giving the image in my head more credit than is due.

After church we would file out of the sanctuary into air even hotter
than inside, live oaks thick with gray moss like clumps of a dead man's
hair fairly lit up with the noise of cicadas, everyone everywhere
fanning themselves with bamboo and paper fans printed with the words to
"Amazing Grace" on one side, Psalm 23 on the other.  Daddy would shake
hands with Pastor, pass time with whoever might want to, all the time
his one arm round my mother's shoulder, his hair still just as shiny,
little runnels of sweat slipping down his sideburns.  He acted the part
of my daddy, would even on occasion hunch down and kiss me on the
cheek, pat my hair, smile at me, though everyone in the entire
congregation, and even those heathens not in attendance, knew we no
longer lived together.

Once we were home, he would simply see us to the door, give me the pat
on the head good-bye I hated even more than his showing up at sundown
the night before, and kiss my momma full on the lips.  Then he would
turn, step down off the porch.  Without so much as a backward glance or
the smallest of waves, he would head off down our dirt road, back to
the logging shack not two miles away.

Momma and I watched him go each time, watched until the road took him
deep into pine and cypress, the green of wild grape vines everywhere
that swallowed him up.  I wished each Sunday afternoon that green would
never let him go, wished he'd never make it back to whatever pleasures
he found during the week, pleasures he wanted to pursue more than plant
himself at home with us, his own.  We watched him go, and only once we
could see no more movement, no more slips of white shirt through the
shield of green forest, did we go in.  My momma always went in first,
though it had been her he'd given his kiss to, her who'd given her
whole self to him.  She turned, her eyes down to the porch floor, and
moved on inside.  I was always the last one out on the porch, just
watching that green, hoping he would not find his way out.

The day he broke his neck was a Tuesday.  I was already home from
school, out on the porch with my tablet and thick red pencil, doing my
figuring for the next day.  I knew even then I wanted to be a teacher,
something in me with the need to lead and stand before people and
explain in a plain and simple voice bits of the world they could not
know were it not for me.  I was only eleven, but knew already, too,
that my wanting to teach had to do with my momma and how she acted once
Daddy had gone, how our trips into Purvis had become ordeals for her,
her standing at the dry goods store and touching a bolt of gingham, a
tin of baking powder, looking at them as though they were troubling
bits of her own history, things she knew she needed but hated all the
same.  I ended up taking her by the hand to Mr. Robineau at the
register, where she'd give her feeble smile to him as I placed our
items on the glass counter, him never meeting our eyes but smiling all
the same.

So that on that Tuesday, when I saw four men through the green of the
forest, I was the one to go into the house and take her hand and lead
her up from her cane rocker, the one she spent most hours of the day
in, and out onto the porch.  The men had cleared the trees by then, and
I could see them, hair wet, faces white, jaws set with the weight of
whatever lay in the doubled-up gray wool blanket they toted, one man to
a corner, the middle sagging, nearly touching ground with each step
they took.  They wore only undershirts and blue jeans, all of them
barefooted, their feet red with the dust of the road they'd walked.

I wasn't afraid, not even when Momma, behind me, whispered, "Oh, "
then, louder, "Oh.  Oh."  I heard her take one step back, then another,
but there she stopped.  The men were off the road and onto our yard
now, their eyes never yet looking up to us, men I couldn't place from
anywhere.  I looked behind me to Momma, saw her there with a hand to
her face, covering her eyes, the other hand at her throat and holding
on to the collar of her dress.

I turned to the sound of the men on the porch steps, felt myself
backing up too.  The four of them moved toward me, struggling with the
burden they bore, the wool blanket seeming heavier than anything I'd
seen before.  Yet they were gentle with it, eased it up and onto the
porch itself and inched toward us, finally letting it down onto the
wood with a grace I would never see again.

They stood back from it, four men with hands on their hips, eyes on the
heap before us.  Then one of them, a man with hair as black as my
daddy's, hair flat and wet with strands of it long down and into his
eyes, squatted, his elbows on his knees, eyes still on the blanket.  He
put out a hand, held it a moment above the wool, then reached down,
took hold of the blanket, and pulled it back to reveal to us my dead
and naked father.

His head was bent back from us, so that what I saw first was his
throat, already swelled and purple.  His face was gone from me, twisted
up and away, and for a moment I had no genuine idea in my head who this
was, or why he had been brought here.  The blanket had been pulled back
far enough to bare his chest and arms and stomach and one leg, the edge
of the blanket left just below his waist, so that next I saw the
pencil-thin line of hair that started at his navel and traced its way
beneath the gray wool, disappearing there.  He had no hair anywhere
else, his skin already turning the milk-white of the dead, his arms and
the one leg I could see bent at the joints, him all movement and
peace.

"We was swimming, " the man with the black hair said.  He still held
the edge of the blanket, and my eyes went to his fingers, watched as he
slowly rubbed his index finger and thumb together.  "We was swimming,
and then he just didn't come up.  He was jumping off" "Benjamin, " my
momma let out, her word choked and hard in the air.

"Stop."

The man, this Benjamin, looked up.  His fingers stopped moving, his
eyes on my momma.

I looked up to her.  She still had a hand to her eyes, the other at her
throat, and then I moved toward the blanket, toward the body I still
didn't know was my daddy.  I wanted to see the face, know who it was,
and as I made my way toward where I would see him, two of the men who'd
carried him here moved out of my way, their hands still on their
hips.

I stood next to this Benjamin, and looked down at my daddy's face.  His
lips had gone blue, his eyelids gray, his hair matted and snarled.

Benjamin let go the blanket.  I didn't move, not yet certain what any
of this meant.

Then he put his hand to my back, held it just below my shoulder
blades.

The touch was near nothing, only contact.

He said, "Your daddy and me was brothers."

But the words didn't mean anything to me.  I was thinking of Sunday
mornings and the smell of pomade, and of me sitting between the two of
them while Pastor gave up to God our congregation's prayers, and how my
God had finally answered the prayer I'd been whispering to myself while
Pastor pleaded for everyone else, I wanted him never to come back.

Here was my reward for righteous, heartfelt prayer, for asking in
Jesus' name what I knew would make my momma and me better off in the
long run, no matter what those sounds I heard from their room meant.

Which is why I reached down and picked up the edge of the blanket my
uncle had let fall, and pulled it back over my daddy, covered him up.

The four men were watching me now, waiting, I figured, for whatever
might happen next.

I said, "Bring him on inside."  I paused, then said, "Somebody go find
Pastor, too."

It would be lifetimes later before I knew what'd really kept me out
there on the porch Sunday afternoons long after my momma, kept my eyes
on the green and searching for signs of his life.  Only after the
lifetime between my daddy's death and my momma dying, two months that
couldn't be measured by any means of a calendar or the movement of the
moon, then the lifetime spent on the little piece of childhood I had
left, spent with Missy Cook, my grandma, in a house more dead than my
parents would ever be.  Then the lifetime of school I spent away in
Picayune, lifetimes that ended, all of them, with my first night with
Leston and hearing the ghosts of my momma and daddy there in the room
with me.  And since then have come countless nights spent with those
ghost sounds surrounding us, the strength and power and quiet warmth of
Leston's hard worked body the surest comfort I have ever known.  My
silent husband's language grew to be my own body and how he touched me,
the miracle of a callused hand placed gently to my cheek, my neck, my
breast word enough of the love he held for me.

But on that first night, our wedding night, those sounds of my momma
and daddy rose up around us like the resurrected dead, I knew love
then, the doom and joy of it, the pain of Leston inside me and the
pleasure of knowing the promise of a future.  I knew only then that I'd
stayed out on the porch because I loved them both enough to wish my
daddy dead, but loved them both enough to wish him back.

I have taken care of myself since the moment I pulled the blanket over
him, a fact Leston already knew before he'd even let out his words to
the cold morning of our room.  I knew what loss was, knew what it was
God could take away from you, His answers to prayer sometimes the
greatest curse you could call down.  But even so, I prayed right then
and there, my husband sitting on the edge of our bed and growing old in
what seemed only the few moments we'd been awake, myself going the same
way, too, I knew, that the baby inside me would be born alive and
breathing, with ten fingers and ten toes.  That was all I sought, what
I figured couldn't be too much to ask.

CHAPTER 2.

WE'D BURIED MY DADDY THE NEXT DAY, HIM LYING OUT IN THE ROOM OFF our
kitchen just overnight, time enough for Pastor to have his hand at
trying to comfort us, and time enough for my momma to dress Daddy in a
bundle of fine clothes I'd never known we had.  Time enough, too, for
the men who'd brought him, my uncle Benjamin one of them, to get back
to the logging camp and settle up his monies with the foreman, then
pack up his belongings, all of them fitting into one yellowed
pillowcase.

When the four of them showed up on our porch the next morning, they
were all cleaned up and wearing what I figured were their best clothes,
new jeans and white shirts buttoned up to the throat, boots rubbed with
a daub of oil.  Each of them's hair was thick with pomade, and for a
moment I wondered if they'd used my daddy's own tin of it, greased up
their hair with the toiletries of a dead man.

I'd been the one to answer the door, and Benjamin led them in, the
pillowcase slung over his shoulder.  Once they'd filed in, Benjamin let
it fall off his back, held it in front of him.  He started to smile at
me, the corners of his mouth just turning up, but before he could
finish I'd brought my eyes down to the floor, closed the door quiet as
I could.

I didn't want to see him smile, didn't want to run the risk, I knew
even then, of seeing in his face any bit of my daddy's.

I turned from the door, and watched what would happen next.  If I had
my way, I thought, if I could fix all this, I would have them out of
here and back at camp, my momma and me the only ones waiting for Pastor
and for Mr. Reeves, the coffin-builder in Purvis and the man who would
be digging the grave not fifty feet behind our house.

It was what Momma asked for as soon as Pastor had arrived in his wagon
the afternoon before, as soon as he'd made his way in the door.  She'd
looked Pastor square in the eye, her chin higher than I'd ever seen it,
and said, "Bring a coffin tomorrow at noon.  Mr. Reeves can bury him
out back."

Pastor had only nodded, took off his hat, held it with both hands.  For
some reason I thought I could see fear in his face, as though her
merely meeting his eyes were enough to destroy him, or as though she'd
suddenly become someone else, a woman with standing, bearing, a voice
he knew he had to listen to.

She said nothing else to him, though he stayed until after dark,
reading to her from the Psalms and Ecclesiastes and the Gospels of Luke
and John, first by the light from the failing sun outside the windows,
then by the fire.  All that time she only sat in the rocker, her chin
still high, Pastor hunched with the work of recognizing words in a room
too dark for reading.

Then he left, his Bible tucked under one arm, the hat in both hands as
he backed his way to the door, me standing there and holding it open
for him.  When he made it to the threshold he paused, glanced down at
me.  He reached out a hand, touched my head, and I twisted away from
under his palm, the move now instinct in me.  I wanted no one, ever, to
pat my head again.

"Jewel, " he said, smiling.  "You'll be fine."  He looked at my momma,
still in the rocker.  "The two of y'all will be just fine.  Given time,
and the Lord willing."

My momma gave him a small nod, let her eyes fall back to the fireplace,
the dying light there, and he was gone.

As soon as I heard the sound of his wagon moving away into the night,
Momma stood, her chin now low on her chest, hands limp at her sides,
eyes nearly closed.  She stared at the fire a moment, then turned, and
I followed her back into her room, listened in the dark to the low
groan the bottom dresser drawer made as she pulled it out, heard her
move hands through whatever clothes were in there.  Then came the sound
of the drawer pushed closed, a small, high scream of wood on wood, and
I turned, not certain where she was behind me, but knowing we were
headed for the room off the kitchen, where the men had laid my daddy on
the table.

We moved through the darkened kitchen, the only light the small bits of
flickering red that made their way from the fireplace in the front
room.

Before me was the room my daddy lay in, but I could see nothing in
there, only black, a black so black it seemed to crawl into me, a
darkness that came in through my eyes and ears and skin, and I remember
closing my eyes, holding my breath, afraid the darkness would swallow
me up.  I moved into the room, my hand in front of me, feeling the air,
and then I touched rough wool.  I stopped.

Behind me came the sound of a match strike, the sudden and awful smell
of sulfur in the air, and I opened my eyes.

Momma had lit a candle she'd gotten from somewhere, before me now the
heap that was my daddy, covered with the blanket.  Across the gray
folds and contours danced my own shadow, Momma with the candle held
high behind me.  My head and shoulders were huge, moved across him,
bobbed and jumped with the light from the candle, and I knew I would
never be that big, knew I could never move in such fanciful ways, my
daddy now dead.

"You go on into the front room, " Momma whispered behind me.  "You
leave us two alone."  She was beside me, my shadow trailing off the
blanket and, I could see out the corner of my eye, taken up by the
wall.  I was even bigger now.

I stood there a moment, reached to the wool again, took a- piece of it
in my hand and fingered it the way Benjamin had.  Then I let it drop,
looked at Momma.

She had a bundle of clothes under one arm, the candle in the other.

She swallowed hard, her chin down, her eyes never leaving the
blanket.

I couldn't recognize her.  I'd never seen her before, never seen the
hair pulled back and tucked above her neck, the soft curve of her nose,
the line of her chin.  A lady stood next to me, one whose beauty I'd
never felt nor could lay claim to, and I knew already she was on her
way to dying, something inside me, maybe the Holy Spirit, maybe God
Himself letting me know what was ahead, the word orphan suddenly too
close, loud in my ear.

She lifted her chin, blinked.  "Go, " she whispered, but there'd been
no need for the word.  I was already backing away from the two of them
and toward the kitchen, then toward the fireplace.  Once there I poked
up the flame, the spring night outside still holding close some last
shard of winter, and as I felt the warmth and comfort of the fire rise
up to me, I heard the hard, cold weeping my momma gave out, the give
and pull of the blanket as she revealed him to herself, and began
dressing him.

Benjamin and the others I would never know their names, never even see
any of them, my uncle included, again stood a few feet from my mother,
her rocker still set near the hearth, the flames and embers and heat
long gone.

He still had the pillowcase in front of him, then gently set it on the
floor.  He said, "Ma'am, " and paused.  I was next to the rocker now,
my hands at my sides, though some part of me wanted to place my hand on
Momma's shoulder, feel whatever life might be in her after she'd stayed
up the entire night with my daddy.  Her eyes were puffed up and full,
her hands white as she worked her fingers, clutching them, letting
go.

Then, quieter, Benjamin said, "Patricia, " and looked down.

"Ma'am will do just fine, " she shot at him, her voice iron.  I nearly
flinched, her words so quick.  Her chin was up, and the same feeling
I'd had, the feeling she was no one I knew, came on me again.

"Ma'am, " Benjamin said right back at her.  He looked up, and despite
myself I saw in his face pieces of my daddy, his cheeks high and shiny,
his skin a deep tan, black hair with the same smell as Sunday
mornings.

And there were his eyes, the irises nearly black, the whites all the
brighter for it.  Of course he was my father's brother.

He knelt, the pillowcase on the floor blossoming with the move so that
what lay inside suddenly spilled out.  "This here's his things, " he
said.

I leaned forward, looked down at the small pile.  No one else moved,
not even Momma, and for a moment I felt I'd somehow betrayed her by
giving in to what lay here.  But then I knelt, too, and began to take
things up, examine them for what they might tell me about the man I'd
wished dead.

The first thing I picked up was a cigar box.  I shook it, the sound
like rocks inside.  I opened it, found only one rock, a chunk of fool's
gold the size of my first three fingers, the gold specks in it bright
enough to give good reason, I figured, to keep it.  Next were two cuff
links, cheap things rusted where the gold paint had chipped off, in
there, too, were three small arrowheads, nothing special, one of them
even with the tip broken off.  I'd seen enough of them before at
school, boys bringing them in from the ground their fathers worked.

There was nothing else in the box.

No one spoke while I pawed through my daddy's souvenirs, what he'd
deemed keepable from his life, this pile his legacy to me and my
momma.

There were a few picture postcards from New Orleans, a steamboat,
Jackson Square, another of a smiling black mammy, a little burrhead
next to her, the two of them grinning and holding huge pieces of
watermelon.

Scrolled across the bottom of the picture were the words Greetings from
New Orleans.  On the backs of the cards were no words, no stamps.  Only
blank space and the small words telling who'd printed up the cards.  I
held them in my hand, just looking at the empty space.

"He couldn't write, " Benjamin said.  "Nor read, of course, neither."

I put them down, then pushed around an old comb, a coil of rope, a
belt.

I said, "When was he there?  In New Orleans."

No one answered, and I didn't look up, didn't want them to believe I
might truly be interested.  But I was.

Momma was the one to speak.  She said, "That's where your daddy and I
had our honeymoon, right down in the French Quarter.  That's where he
got those."

"Oh, " I said.

Benjamin took up the cards, held them out to Momma.  "You want to keep
these?  " he asked.

"I" she started, and I held my breath.  She stopped rocking, then
slowly put out a hand to him, took the cards.  Benjamin put his hand
down as soon as she'd taken them, and Momma let the cards rest on her
lap, her hands holding one another again.  She didn't look at them.

Then I found the tin of pomade, there beneath a shirt with three
buttons missing.  I opened up the can, saw inside the dull pink swirls,
evidence of his fingertips.  I brought the tin close to my nose, took
in the sweet smell, but this time it was too much for me, so that I
gagged a moment, brought the tin down and snapped back on the lid as
quick as I could.

Benjamin must have thought I'd begun to cry, because he put his hand to
my back again, the same touch he'd given yesterday when we'd stood
looking at my newly dead father, and said, "Now, honey, you go on ahead
and cry."

But I got my voice from somewhere, tried my best to make it the same
iron my momma had.  I said, "Don't you worry about me, " and reached
down to the bottom of the sack where a photograph lay face down, all I
could see of it the curlicued edges of the paper, the white back faded
to brown.

I picked it up, turned it over.  It was a picture of a man, the
photograph soft and worn, as though it'd been crumpled and rolled flat
any number of times.  He stood next to a big wingback chair, his elbow
resting on top, the other hand on his hip.  His chin was hard, the
bones in his cheeks high, his skin even darker than my daddy's.  His
eyes were black, turned from the camera to something far off.  He had
on a white hat, the crease in the crown perfect, the vest he wore black
and white stripes, gray pants.  His boots shone in the picture, one
foot crossed over the other so that the toe pointed down and rested on
the Persian rug beneath him.  Even through the wrinkles and folds of
the photograph I could feel the attitude he bore, the one that kept the
eyes focused somewhere else, the hand at the hip, his head tipped just
a hair to the left, as if daring the photographer to tell him to hold
it up straight.

Before I could think of what I might be asking, I said, "Who is this?

" Again no one answered, and I waited, the photograph in my hand.

I looked up from it after a few moments, saw Benjamin eyeing my
momma.

I turned to her.  Her eyes were on the window, searching for something
I couldn't imagine, and she nodded.

Benjamin said, "That's his daddy.  Our daddy.  Your grandpa."  He
paused.

"Jacob Chetauga.  Then Jacob Chandler.  Choctaw.  Was.  He been dead
twenty-one years."

I looked up to Momma.  Her eyes were closed now.

I turned to the photograph, tried to figure what this might mean, my
grandpa an Indian.

But it only took a moment before I felt my fingers go hot, felt my face
flush at the sudden knowledge that things tumbled down from this
photograph, down to me and who I was and the part of me that gave me
the same black, fine hair my daddy had, the same thin nose and skin
that stayed more tan than any child I knew, even through dead winter,
while my momma's skin turned red after twenty minutes outside.

I held it with both hands, ran a finger across the soft paper, and I
saw for the first time that no matter how much I'd wished my daddy
gone, he would always be with me, here in me, just as he was here in
his own daddy.  This was me I saw in the photograph.

I stood.  I could feel everyone's eyes on me now, even Momma's.  I
said, "This is what I'll keep, " and I turned, headed into the
kitchen.

Once in there I didn't know what to do, where else I could go.  From
where I stood at the sink-pump I could see into the room to the table
my daddy lay on, could see, in fact, his legs from the knee down, boots
stiff and shiny, pantlegs black.  I knew I didn't want in there, but
outside, right out the back door, was the coop and the garden, beyond
that the tree he'd be buried under not long from now.

Then Cathe ral stood in the doorway.  She was holding a huge blue
cookpot, her thin, black arms straining with the weight, the muscles
there shiny with sweat.  I moved to the screen door, the photograph in
one hand, and pushed it open.

She moved in, and already I could smell the food.  Chicken, I knew.

And sweet potatoes, and collards and biscuits.  Her teeth were
clenched, and I wondered how far she'd carried the pot, as she made her
way through the kitchen and toward the room my daddy was in.

"You can't" I started, but by that time she was in the doorway.  She
froze.

"Lord have mercy, " she whispered, and turned, her eyes shut, teeth
still clenched, sweat across her forehead.  She made it to the stove,
and set the pot down.  She opened her eyes, looked at me only a moment,
her eyes never meeting mine, before she brought them to the floor.

She'd never looked at me any longer than that.

Her hands were at her sides, and she shook them a little, loosing up
the muscles, her arms still glistening.  I'd always imagined she was a
couple of years older than me, her hips still narrow but her face with
a grimace I figured could only come with a little more age, more
knowledge about the world as she moved through it.  But all I knew of
her was that a nigger girl had showed up at our house not a week after
my daddy'd left, and had been here three times a week since to weed out
in the garden or to clean out the coop, take eggs into town, chop off
the heads and pluck the chickens we would eat, while my momma sat on
the porch and I practiced my multiplications.  One evening a few weeks
after she'd started I asked Momma where she'd come from, how she'd
gotten her name.

Cathe ral never spoke to me any more words than she had to, our
language a series of nods and glances defining which rows of tomatoes
she would work, whether the rhubarb was ready or not, each jerk of a
chin or half-word freighted with what we wanted to give it.  I knew her
name only because I'd asked her after she'd been working for us a
week.

Momma'd answered that Cathe ral's family'd been owned by Catholics in
Bogaloosa, and that she'd hired her on now Daddy was gone, that she'd
been paying her a nickel a week.  I believed her about the name, but I
knew that the money paid out wasn't true, I'd never even seen the two
of them talk to each other, much less exchange any money between
them.

She was only here, standing at the back screen door each Monday,
Wednesday and Friday once I was home from school, or there just at
sunup during the summer, waiting for me to signal her what to do.

She gave her arms one last shake, and stopped.  The room was choked
with the smells of food now, and I realized I hadn't eaten since the
day before.

Then Cathe ral spoke, and for an instant I didn't know where the voice
came from, or whose it was, my mind on chicken and collards and sitting
down to eat.

She said, "Missy Cook, she say bring this here to you."

I hadn't seen her mouth move, her eyes still on the floor.  She put her
hands together in front of her, held her fingers.

"Cathe ral?  " I said.

She looked up.  "Yes'm?  " she said, her eyes on my chin, then on my
chest, my shoulder.

I said nothing, only felt my stomach moving, hungry for what lay in the
pot.  But I was thinking about her, and about this look between us, and
about the full sentence that'd come from her lips.

"I sorry about yo' papa, " she said, and finally let down her eyes.

I heard myself say, "Thank you, " though I hadn't felt the words
form.

She looked up at me again.  "Missy Cook, she say tell you one more
thing.

She say tell you she the one be paying me to work for y'all.  And she
say she want you come live with her now yo' papa gone."  She paused,
looked back to the floor.  "I mean, now yo' papa pass on."

Missy Cook.  My mother's mother, and suddenly I recognized the line in
my mother's chin, and how she'd held it high, and why, perhaps, Pastor
had cowered in whatever small way he had last night, the three times
I'd met Missy Cook she'd held her chin the same way, up and above us
all, her mouth in a frown that let me know no matter what happened that
she was here and would always be here.  She was here to stay.  She was
the woman of standing, of bearing.  And my mother was her daughter.

She lived in Purvis proper, on Willow Street in a big house with
windows and drapes and fine china plates we actually ate off of, my
momma and me.  The last time we were there was just before Daddy'd
left, the other two times I'd been too small to recognize an
occasion.

But I'd seen the furniture, and'd been told to stay off of it by the
woman who now wanted me to come live with her.

I said nothing, kept my head as level as I could make it, my eyes cold
and steady and focused on Cathe ral, her twisted knots of hair, her
thin, cotton dress and bare, black feet.

"And be one more thing, " she whispered.  She glanced toward the door
into the front room, where my momma and Benjamin and three other men
were, none of them making a sound.  "She say she going raise you up
right, " she whispered, her eyes on the floor again, her voice so quiet
I wasn't even certain she'd spoken.  "She not be making the same
mistakes she make with yo' mama.  She say you her last chance in this
world."

She stood with her hands still at her sides, glanced up at me.

I whispered, "She told you to tell me that?  " She shrugged.  "Yes'm.

Except the last part.  The part about raising you up right, and about
the mistakes and all."

Though my stomach felt as though it might die on me right then, the
smell of cornbread and milk gravy now making its way into me, I held
on, thinking instead of my momma marrying some half-breed Choctaw who
couldn't read or write, me being born to the two of them, so that in
Missy Cook's eyes I was the biggest mistake her daughter could ever
make.  And now I was her personal mission, what she wanted to save from
the horrors of low-living in this world.

I looked at the photograph in my hand, wondered at the man there, my
grandpa, and what it took to hold your head just that way, who you had
to be.

I looked at Cathe ral.  I said, "Why did you tell me?  " She shrugged
again.  "Don't need no reason."  She paused.  "Just figured to warn
you."

Then I wasn't hungry anymore, and I turned, went into the front room
and past them all, nothing any different than when I had left, my
daddy's belongings still spread on the floor.  I went to my room, got
from under my bed one of my tablets, a pencil.  I took one more look at
the photograph, then slipped it between pages in the back of the
tablet.

When I came back into the kitchen, Cathe ral had already pulled out the
food from the pot, heaps of chicken and cornbread, bowls of collards
and gravy, a sweet potato pie, all of it in serving dishes from the
same fine china we'd eaten from in a three-story house in downtown
Purvis.

She turned from the food, glanced at me.  I said, "Cathe ral, you know
how to write?  " She gave her head a quick shake, put her hands behind
her.

I said, "Come with me, " and I moved to the screen door, pushed it
open.

She glanced up again, then looked to the doorway into the front room,
as though we were betraying those in there by abandoning this food and
who it came from, the woman Cathe ral worked for the woman who wanted
my life.

She stood still a moment, then said, "Yes'm, " and moved toward me.

CHAPTER 3.

I TAUGHT HER TO READ, AND SHE TAUGHT THE MANSHEENDED UP MARRYING, then
taught her own children as well, so that the four niggers outside our
back door, all of them employed by my Leston, could read and write, and
as I stood at the stove and carved off pieces of bone bacon into the
skillet, I held some small piece of pride in me, thought that maybe I'd
been a good teacher after all.

The four of them nelson, her husband, and their three boys, Sepulcher,
Temple and Crecheworked for Leston cutting down pines, then blasting up
the stumps and hauling them down to Pascagoula where they'd be turned
to turpentine for the war effort.  It was my part to feed them all.

Each morning I awoke to fry up eggs and bacon, boil grits and bake
biscuits for my family, Cathe ral's boys, and the rest of Leston's
crew, Garland and JE, cousins of Leston's, and Toxie, Leston's nephew,
the three of them the supervisors over the crew, then six more niggers,
boys and old men from up and down the woods.  We had four trucks in
all, plus the Caterpillar, none of it in anywheres near good shape,
Toxie and Sepulcher working on one or another of them from the time
they put their breakfast plates down until they disappeared up the
road, headed home.

But we had vehicles, Leston'd say time and again, ones that gave us
this roof over our heads, let our children wear clothes, and gave us
food to eat.

Food, I'd decided three years ago when he'd started in with but one
lonesome truck and Nelson only, would be part of their pay.  We were
comfortable in this house, the second one Leston had built for us since
we'd married eighteen years ago, and we had the steady work this World
War provided, a twisted sort of blessing, I knew.  We could give them
food.

Burton banged in to the room, behind him Wilman, the two of them in
their bib overalls and still fighting.  But rather than holler at them
to quiet down this first morning new life was in me, I took a second to
look at them, at how they'd grown, Wilman with the sprinkle of Leston's
freckles across his nose, Burton's skin taking my complexion, the tan
and my black hair.  Wilman's front teeth were out, and when he gave a
sneer to whatever it was they were arguing over, I could see all the
way into his mouth, the child-red gums, the perfect white teeth.  Then
he shoved Burton's shoulder, knocked him into the table.  One of the
chairs fell over.

"Momma?  " Burton cried out, turned to me.  "You saw that, Momma?  "
"Yes, I did, " I said, and sliced the last two pieces of bacon into the
skillet, the fragrant steam off the meat already making its way up and
into our morning.  I wiped my hands on the towel hung on the oven door,
then put both hands on my hips.  I said, "Wilman, pick up the chair
before your daddy gets in here, and straighten up, the two of you."

"Yes ma'am, " Wilman whispered, and looked at Burton, in his eyes the
hate brothers can only have for each other.  Burton, of course, stood
with his arms crossed, his head tilted just the same way his
great-grandpa's had in the photograph framed and hung in the front room
of this house.

It wasn't the first time I saw Burton in that pose, a stance I knew
he'd picked up studying that picture, and each time he struck it I
wondered if there weren't some danger to it, some invitation buried
deep to lead the wrongheaded life Jacob Chandler had led.  My momma'd
been the one who'd finally told me what I wanted to know about him, and
told me, too, what I shouldn't have heard.

On the last day she was alive, my momma about to die in the luxury of a
house in downtown Purvis, the two of us dressed up like china dolls in
a store window, she told me of the man in the photograph, though I
hadn't asked her straight about him.  Instead, I'd been spending days
beside her bed trying best to avoid Missy Cook and the books she'd
already laid out for me to read Middlemarch and Pride and Prejudice and
Wuthering Heights, all of them books I just as soon would read on my
own.  But Missy Cook's view of me and the world was angled so that the
only thing I could do with her was be what she wanted me to be, read
what she wanted me to read, answer the questions she wanted answered.

And I had done so the first week because there had been nothing else
for me to do.

I simply came home from school, a new one where most of the children
wore the same frills I did, frills given to me and my mother the
evening we moved in, just the day after Daddy'd been buried.

Missy Cook that's all any of us were ever allowed to call her was a
tall woman, her hair coiled up in a huge gray bun that sat atop her
head.  She wore eyeglasses with silver rims, behind the glass brown
eyes like bits of broken glass sunk deep into her sockets.  Many's the
night I have had dreams of those eyes and how, after my momma was dead,
she bore into me with them like a red-hot poker, an old woman aware of
her powers.

That first evening we'd arrived a little after sunset, and'd climbed
down off Pastor's wagon, the three of us having sat together on the
seat, behind us only Momma's rocking chair, our clothes wrapped in
bedsheets.  A frail nigger woman met us at the door, her hips not much
wider than Cathe ral's, and I knew right off this was her momma.

Once inside and the door closed behind us another nigger had appeared
from around the side of the house and'd started untying the rocking
chair, Pastor all the while still seated up at the reins, his eyes
straight ahead Momma turned to the nigger woman, said, "Molly, how are
you?  " Molly paused a moment, as if this pleasantry might be some
test, her answer either right or wrong.  She tried to smile, gave a
small curtsy, and said, "I fine, Miss Patricia."  She swallowed,
glanced up to me, said, "It be nice having you back to home here.  The
two of you, " and curtsied again.

"This is true, " came a voice from behind us, and we all three turned
to it.  Then Molly was gone.

Missy Cook was coming down the stairs, one hand on the polished
banister, the other at her chest.  The frown I'd always seen her with
was still there, chin held high, her deep and frightening eyes shrouded
even more so by the thin light from the gas-lit chandelier above us.

She had on a beige dress with a high, stiff collar that encircled her
throat, and I remember touching my own throat, wondering how she might
breathe.

Her waist was pinched down near to nothing, and I tried to imagine,
too, the corset she wore, and how that might cut out breath
altogether.

She seemed to float down the staircase, the hem of her dress simply
dancing about her hidden feet, so that for a moment I thought maybe she
had died, was in fact a ghost before me.

I looked down at myself, at what I had on, a pale yellow cotton dress
with a row of buttons up the front, my school shoes with no socks, and
suddenly I felt I looked no different than Cathe ral of a summer
morning, peering in at the screen door.

I looked at my momma, who wore a dress much like my own, but long
enough so that her ankles didn't show, the dress waist pinched in
some.

I knew she wore no corset, her shape a young woman's, not the filled
and forced shape of the woman who now moved off the stairs and toward
us, her hands low and open in front of her, coming to take ours.  My
momma's chin was high, too, and I saw the muscles in her jaw begin to
work, her teeth clenched.

Momma put out a hand first, and I followed.  Missy Cook hadn't yet
looked at Momma, but at me, her hand warm in mine, softer than I had
imagined it would be.  She said, "I am deeply saddened at your daddy's
passing, " and I let myself believe her for an instant.

Then Momma said, "No, you are not."  She let go Missy Cook's hand,
moved past her and to the staircase.  She put a hand on the banister,
placed one foot on the first step, and stopped.  She looked up the
staircase, and said, "Jewel."

I was still holding Missy Cook's hand, felt her fingers going tight
around mine.  Her eyes had never left my face.

I looked at the polished wood floor, the gleam of the chandelier
there.

I said, "Yes ma'am, " and she let go my hand.  I walked- around her and
toward Momma, who held out her own hand to me, and the two of us
started up the stairs.

At the landing I looked back downstairs, saw Missy Cook hadn't moved.

My momma didn't even look.

Later, after we'd gone through the boxes of new dresses stacked in the
room we were to sleep in, all of them made of lace and fine linen and
pearl buttons, and after we'd eaten the pork chops and cheese grits and
okra and biscuits Molly'd brought up to us on that same fine china,
Momma and I climbed into bed together, the two of us wearing matching
white nightgowns with thin, pink ribbons at the wrists and neck.  Then
Momma climbed back out, went to the gas key at the doorjamb.

But as she reached for it, Missy Cook opened the door, held her hand
over the key.  Momma and I both jumped, me taking in a breath, Momma
bringing a hand to her face as though Missy Cook might hit her.

"No one in this house, " Missy Cook said, smiling at me, though nowhere
in her face was there any bit of joy, any piece of happiness, "touches
the gas.  This is my responsibility, and no one else's.  Please
remember this."  She twisted the key, the room slowly going dark until
the gas gave a small pop.  She pulled the door closed behind her.  She
hadn't even glanced at Momma.

Momma stood in the darkness a few moments, then came back to bed.  Once
she was settled, I could hear nothing, the absence of sound deafening
somehow after living where we had.  I wanted words from my momma in the
room, wanted night sounds, something familiar to help put me to sleep,
and for a moment I even wished I might hear the sounds Momma and Daddy
made Saturday nights, anything to fill the dead air in here.

As though she'd felt what I wanted, she whispered, "This is a dangerous
place.  We have to be careful, or we'll be swallowed alive here."

I knew what she meant, had seen already the power in her momma, in her
hands and eyes, in the warm food, the fine clothes, but some part of
me, even after seeing whatever darkness lay in Missy Cook's brown eyes,
wanted to give over to it, to nestle down into the warm bed we were in,
to get up tomorrow morning and find a meal already cooked for us, put
on crisp, clean dresses and live this way.

"But " Momma started again, and there was a soft knock at the door.  A
crack of light pierced the room, then filled it as the door opened just
wide enough to let in Molly.

She whispered, "It's just Molly, Miss Patricia, Miss Jewel.  Come to
get yo' old clothes, take care of them for you."

"In the corner, " Momma said, and we watched as Molly made her way to
the end of the dresser and leaned over, took the pile of clothing up in
her arms.

"We see you in the morning, " she whispered.

I said, "Good night, " Momma silent beside me.  Molly pulled the door
closed, and here was the silence again, the dark.  I whispered, "What
were you going to say?  " But then I saw the color at the window, the
faint dance of orange and red across the black glass.

Momma was out of the bed before me, made it to the window first, her
black silhouette there against the growing color, her hands to the
window.  Each finger was outlined in an orange that grew brighter even
in the seconds it took me to get to the window, stand next to her,
place my hands against the cool glass too.

I looked down at the yard behind the house, where a fire burned some
twenty yards back into the rows of pecan trees.  The nigger who'd
unloaded Pastor's wagon for us stood next to it, a hoe in one hand, the
other on his hip.  He was just looking into the fire, his head down.

Molly appeared beneath us, coming from inside the house and down the
back steps to the yard.  She was carrying something, and I knew before
she was halfway to the fire that it was our clothes, the clothes she'd
just gathered up in our room.

The nigger at the fire looked up, stood taller, his hoe at the ready
while Molly came toward him.  She stopped at the edge of the fire, her
back to us, and started in to peeling off piece by piece our clothes,
tossing each garment into the fire.  I watched, silent, as she peeled
off what I knew was my dress, the one with the buttons up the front.

Molly held it up, looked at it a moment, the material illuminated, and
dropped it on the fire.  Thin wisps of flame shot out beneath it, then
swallowed it up.

"That nigger, " I said out loud.

But Momma said, "She's a good nigger.  She's only doing what she's been
told."

I turned to my momma, saw her face flicker with the movement of the
fire, the color almost lost on her.  I said, "Why?  " She nodded at the
fire, and I turned back to it.  Molly held up Momma's dress now, then
dropped it on the fire, this time the flames out from beneath it
bigger, thicker.  The nigger reached in his hoe to the fire, stirred it
up.  Sparks lifted into the air, bits of light that melted before they
even cleared the trees.

Momma said, "She's doing what she's been told.  You watch this, because
this is for you and me.  You and me are supposed to be seeing this,
supposed to be standing right here and watching it all."  She paused,
and Molly dropped in the last piece, one of Momma's old, thin
petticoats.

"Somewhere in this house Missy Cook's watching this, too.  There's not
anybody in this house, maybe not on the whole street, who's not
watching this.  But it's for you and me."

Then the nigger dropped the hoe and headed away from the fire,
disappeared somewhere near the house and to our left.  I glanced up at
Momma.  She hadn't moved, but when I turned back to the fire, I heard
her swallow hard, say, "I know what Marcus has gone for."

He reappeared, this time carrying something high and over his head,
Momma's cane chair.  Molly edged back from the fire as he came
closer.

He stopped, eased the chair down from his shoulders, and laid it on the
fire.  For a few moments nothing happened, the frame of the chair like
some strange and twisted skeleton, but then the seat caught, and the
wood of it, and the flames grew until the sparks it gave off drifted
high and above the tops of the trees before giving up.

"This is for us, " she whispered, and I didn't look at her, afraid of
what I might see.

The day she died, two months later, began with me sitting with a pencil
and tablet in an overstuffed chair I'd had Marcus pull close to her
bed.

She'd taken ill two weeks before, and hadn't eaten in four days, taking
in nothing more than sips of cool water Molly gave her.  Missy Cook had
nagged me enough times about being in a sickroom, but I didn't care.

I'd even gotten Cathe ral to stand watch for me at the door, warn of
Missy Cook coming up.  But she never did.

I hadn't shown Momma the picture of Jacob, had kept it hidden since the
day I'd gotten it, but for some reason that morning I pulled it out
from where I'd wedged it deep between pages.

The room was kept dark all day, summer beginning to rise around us in
thick walls of heat.  My legs kicked beneath me as I studied the
picture, and though it would be years before I would realize it, the
room seemed cooler that morning than any of the last fifteen.  Perhaps,
I would later think, it was due to the rain that would arrive late that
night, after Pastor had come to tend to the dead once again and after
he would once again try to pat my head in some gesture he figured must
be comforting.

Or perhaps it was due to the heat my momma gave off, the fever I could
feel even from the chair.  Or maybe, just maybe it was her soul already
departing even as she spoke there that morning.

She whispered, "Your Grandpa Jacob, " and my legs stopped kicking.  I
turned to her.  I'd thought her still asleep, but her eyes were open,
and she was looking at me, her eyes full and small in her face.  Her
hair, unbraided and fanned out on the pillow, was wet at the temples
and hairline.  She swallowed, closed her eyes and opened them again.

I said, "Momma, don't talk.  Don't " "You listen, " she said, and
looked at the ceiling.  She brought a hand from her chest to her
forehead, let it rest there.  "You need to know what stock you're
from.

I'm telling you."  She paused, let her eyes close.  "Your daddy's daddy
was long dead before T met Joseph.  But people knew about him.

People knew Jacob Chandler was a horse stealer.  He was."

She took slow, deep breaths, and for a moment I wondered if she was
awake at all or if she might be in some haze, maybe even talking in her
sleep.  But it didn't matter.  She was giving me what I wanted, some
history of me so I would know my place here, no matter how fine the
dresses, no matter how fine the china.  Since the night of the fire I
hadn't let Missy Cook look me straight in the eye, and at breakfast the
next morning, during which my guidelines were laid out no skipping
school, no playing with the niggers, no turning down the gas by myself
before going to bed Momma and I sat silent, our eyes on the food before
us.  We never mentioned the fire in the back yard.  Ever.

"Your daddy's momma was just a cracker, left Jacob Chetauga with two
boys, Benjamin and Joseph, when Joseph was only two, " Momma
whispered.

"And Jacob left those two with his sisters, Choctaws living in shanties
up near Columbus.  That's how your daddy was raised.  I thought he
would be different from his daddy."  She paused.  "He wasn't.  But it
wasn't stealing horses he was bad about.  It was me."  She swallowed
again, and I looked at the picture, rubbed my finger across the face.

"Your grandpa, " she went on, "was caught stealing horses, and they
brought him in to Columbus, run him through court and had him up to a
tree just north of town, him sitting on one of the horses he'd stolen,
a rope round his neck.  All this before sundown the same day.  They
were going to hang him.  And your daddy was there.  Him and Benjamin
both, sitting on the shoulders of those squaws.  They were there to
watch their own daddy get hanged for horse stealing."

All this time I was staring at the picture, at how he held his head and
the hand there at his hip.  She was talking more clearly than I'd heard
her in the last two weeks, but that was nothing I cared to think
about.

Maybe she was getting better, I figured, but I only wanted to look at
the picture, imagine this man with the invincible pose on a horse and
ready to be strung up.  This man I was blood kin to.

"They gave the horse a swat, and the thing was gone, your grandpa
hanging and swinging from the tree.  The way your daddy told it, the
only sound he could hear was the heavy creak of the rope.  He says he
watched his own daddy's feet stepping on air, trying to find something
firm to stand on.  But there was nothing."  She took a deep breath, as
though thinking about him hanging there was taking her own air from
her, then she went quiet, and I had to look at her to see if she hadn't
gone back to sleep.

Her eyes were open wide, her mouth closed.  One hand was at her throat,
moving slowly back and forth.  Her eyes, it seemed, were focused on
nothing.  "And then, " she whispered, "the rope broke.  It snapped up
near the limb, your daddy tells me, and Jacob fell to the earth.  He
didn't move for a while.  Neither did anybody watching.  But then he
sat up, looked around.  And he was smiling.  And then they let him go,
because it was God's will.  The sheriff just bent over him sitting
there on the ground, loosed the rope round his neck and the one round
his hands.  It was God's will."

I was looking at the picture, and here came my momma's hand, reaching
for it.  Her hand was white, as white, I thought, as my daddy's body'd
been when they'd pulled back that wool blanket.

I let her have the photograph, watched as she brought it close to her
face.  Her hands started to trembling with the effort, and I thought I
could see tears in her eyes, her mouth only a thin line now, no
color.

She said, "This here picture was taken not a week or two after that.

That's why your daddy kept this with him.  It's a picture of a man
who's lived through death.  That's what it is.  But I wish he'd been
killed.  I do."  She closed her eyes, and a tear squeezed out, slipped
down her cheek and into her hair.  "Lord forgive me, " she whispered,
"but I do.  I wonder how Joseph'd been different if he'd seen his daddy
die.  I think he might have been a good man if his daddy'd died before
his eyes.  But he didn't, and he kept this picture of a man who
couldn't be killed, and that's how come he turned out like he did."

Her hands were on her chest now, the picture face down, and I
whispered, "Why'd you marry him then?  " "Love, " she said right out,
the word quick and soft from her.  And, just as quiet, she said,
"Hate."  She paused.  "I knew I loved him.  I knew I hated my momma.

Those two things are why I married him."

She shot open her eyes.  She was smiling, the look on her face as
strange as any I'd ever seen her give, and I thought that maybe the
fever'd gone through her brain, ravaged her such that she'd gone mad.

She reached the picture over to me without looking at me, and I took
it, then scooted a little deeper into my chair, away from her.

She said, "But you have to know about this family, too, and what your
stock is from here.  From my momma.  You got to know that, too."  Her
eyes were still to the ceiling, as if the painted tin up there with its
rows and rows of circles in squares was giving something important to
her.

"There's things about my family you need to know, things Missy Cook
won't ever tell you."  She was still smiling, and I could feel myself
pushing even deeper into the chair.

"This one you won't ever hear her tell, because she knows it's true.

The reason we've got all this, " she said, and though she made no moves
of her hands or eyes to show me what she meant by this, I knew she
meant the house, the clothes, the food, the niggers.  What else was
there?  "The reason we got all this, " she said again, "is because she
married a Yankee carpetbagger.  A man from Pittsburgh, the man who was
my daddy.

And her daddy and this Yankee carpetbagger were in cahoots together,
buying up land and houses and banks after the war with money Missy
Cook's daddy'd been able to lay his hands on through my daddy.  Don't
ask me how, but that's true."

She closed her eyes, the smile grown even wider.  There was joy in her
now, pleasure found in telling me all this.

"But that's not the story.  That's not the one I want you to keep,
because plenty of women, plenty of old would-be spinsters like Missy
Cook married Northerners like my daddy."  She swallowed hard, opened
her mouth and took in hollow, quick breaths, as though she'd just
climbed a set of stairs.  I wanted to reach toward her, to touch her,
to stroke her forehead and tell her to stop, to save herself.  But I
didn't, because I wanted the story.

"No, " she whispered now, "no, what I want you to take is this, Before
the War, the town of Columbus was known as Coogan's Bluff.  That's
Missy Cook's maiden name, Coogan.  Her daddy was who the town was named
for, and that's because he owned the most niggers.  He owned the most
niggers in that part of the state, and he wasn't even in the
Confederate forces because he owned so much land, and so many
niggers."

She stopped again, and suddenly she seemed to disappear with her
whispered words, her breaths only shallow gulps.  I remember the room
going even colder a moment, remember gooseflesh all up and down my legs
and arms, remember holding myself in the near-dark of the room, the
photograph in my lap.

My momma was still smiling, her eyes still closed, fingers clutched and
drawing the sheet taut up to her neck.  "So when the Columbus, Ohio,
militia march into town, " she whispered even more quietly now, her
words only ghosts in the room, "they liberate the niggers, they rename
the place, and they burn down every last piece of property they know
belongs to the man named Coogan.  Missy Cook's daddy.  But they can't
find the man, and do you know why?  " She stopped.  Slowly she turned
to me, and before I realized what she'd asked, she was staring at me.

But she wasn't looking at me, I could see.  Her eyes were on me, but
passed through me, so that my momma was already gone, and I thought
again of her profile in the light of a candle held-above my dead daddy,
and how God had planted in me the knowledge she would die even back
then.  This was what my momma was leaving to me, the only legacy she
knew to give, stories of who I was from, however failed their lives.

I looked down, said, "Why couldn't they find him?  " She laughed, the
sound in her like dead leaves underfoot.  She turned to the ceiling
again.  Cathe ral or Molly or Marcus couldn't do any help now.  She
wasn't of this world anymore.

She stopped laughing, tears drifting down her cheeks.  She whispered,
"I watched my daddy get slapped cross the face by Missy Cook the first
time he told me this story, and I watched him laugh in her face, Missy
Cook standing above him, him in his favorite chair in the parlor, her
with her hand back to hit him again.  But he'd only laughed, and then,
because she didn't know what to do with that hand held high, palm open,
she came straight to me sitting on the divan, and slapped my face.  And
my daddy only laughed harder at that, brushed back tears from his
eyes.

Missy Cook just left the room."

She paused, reached up a pale hand to her face, and gently touched her
cheek, the look on her face surprise, her eyebrows knotted, her mouth
open.  "She hit me right here on this cheek, right near my eye, because
I'd only listened while my daddy told me why they never found my
grandpa."  She paused, swallowed.  "Missy Cook's daddy'd dressed as a
woman, and hid out in a nigger shanty.  And when those Ohio militia
came through to liberate all them niggers, let them know about what Mr.
Lincoln'd given them, the niggers still hid him, put him into a barrel
and let him hide.  Dressed as a woman and hiding in a barrel, right
there in front of all them niggers he owned, every one of them laughing
their nigger hearts out, I'm certain, and then when the militia'd gone,
and they're all freed slaves, they just brought him out of the barrel,
and stayed with him the rest of their lives, them and their children
and their children's children.  Molly, Marcus, all the field niggers.

They're all sons and daughters of the ones hid my grandpa when he was
dressed as a woman and balled up in a barrel.  And don't think they
don't remember it, neither."

My hands were together in my lap, beneath them the photograph of Jacob
Chandler.  Jacob Chetauga.

She whispered, "So you take those two stories now, and you decide.  Two
stories of people who lived through their own deaths.  You take them
both, and you decide why I'd marry your daddy."  She paused, and I
hadn't the courage to look at her, simply stared at my hands in my lap,
at the photograph.  "You choose which of the two you want to take, one
who'd lived because it was the will of God, no matter how bad the life
he led.

Or one who saved himself, God be damned, and passed on to his daughter
a shame so fierce only hate could cover it up."  She gave a small
laugh, the sound only thin air forced from inside her.  "Or you could
do the smart thing, and pass all this up.  Make your own story.  Maybe,
God willing, going out into this world with these stories like stones
in your pockets won't make a bit of difference.  The Lord knows it
wasn't that way for me."

I swallowed, closed my eyes.  I said, "And now you're going to leave me
here."  I held my hands even tighter, felt the grip of bone against
bone.

She whispered, "It happens to all of us one day, " her words so quiet I
had to hold my breath to hear.  "Your momma and daddy leave you at some
point, and then you are on your own.  Every one ends up an orphan.

Even me.  I been an orphan since I was born."

I let out my breath, opened my eyes.  I looked at her.  Her eyes were
closed, a smile on her face, her fingers holding tight the sheet.

She died late that afternoon, when I was downstairs in the kitchen,
Cathe ral and I drinking cold buttermilk Molly'd poured for us.  It was
Marcus who'd been there when she died, him to come into the kitchen,
eyes down to the floor only because I was in the room.  He said, "Miss
Patricia, she passed on now."  Molly gave out a quick breath, Cathe ral
only looking from me to Marcus and back to me, her eyes never really
meeting mine.

That night, once Pastor was gone, my momma's body taken to the
mortician's to prepare her for a proper burial, I climbed into bed with
the same nightgown on I'd worn our first night here, when we'd watched
our old clothes burn like pine straw in the night air.  The gas light
above me was still on, and out of habit I sat there, smooth, cool
sheets around me, and waited for Missy Cook to push open the door, give
me the same practiced and dead smile she gave each night, then turn off
the gas.

I was alone, finally.  Cathe ral had seen me into my room, followed by
Molly, who'd touched me with the gentlest hands I could remember.  But
now I was alone, sitting in my bed, waiting for the woman who'd struck
my momma for no good reason but that she'd been a witness to the truth
of her family.

So I waited no longer.  I climbed out of bed, went to the door, and
reached up, slowly twisted the gas key.  The room grew dark around me,
the furniture the dresser, the bed, the armoire in which hung my and my
momma's fine new clothing all changing into huge and ugly shapes,
drowning in the darkness I was giving.  Then the room was black, and I
heard the faint pop of the gas shutting off.

My turning off that gas was a move, I knew, just as logical, just as
inevitable as me pulling the blanket over my dead daddy barely two
months before, further evidence I knew how to take care of myself, even
if Missy Cook chose to strike me for it.  She couldn't have me, I
knew.

I wouldn't let her take into me, wouldn't give up to her.

I had the photograph, and the hard and sure memory of two stories my
momma'd told.  That was what would keep me alive here.  That, and Cathe
ral, and Molly.  These were all with me.

I climbed back into bed, drew the sheets up around me, and settled
in.

I thought of pretending sleep, waiting for Missy Cook to open the door
to find I'd broken the first rule she'd put on me the night we'd moved
in, but there was no reason to pretend.  It didn't matter what she
thought or did.  If she chose to beat me in my sleep, I'd awaken.  If
she chose to do nothing, I'd be asleep already, moving all that much
faster toward the day I would leave here.

CHAPTER 4.

MY BABY ANNIE TODDLED INTO THE KITCHEN A LITTLE AFTER LESTON and the
men had finished breakfast, Wilman and Burton just starting in to
theirs.

The niggers, who ate outside, had already finished, too, and'd stacked
their plates beneath the steps down from the back porch, the same place
they'd find them when they headed for home tonight.

Annie held on tight to the scrap rag that'd once been a blanket, what
now she called her nye-nye.  She had the blanket over one shoulder, her
red hair tangled with sleep, a hand to one eye and rubbing it.

Wilman and Burton, the two of them shoveling in grits and biscuits with
syrup and fried eggs as quick as I could turn it out, sang together,
"Annie, fannie, baby with a blankie."  They looked at each other,
laughed, started back in with the food.

Annie turned to them, and from where I stood at the stove I could see
her eyes squinch down to nothing, then she swung out at empty air with
the hand she'd had to her eye.  Burton imitated her, Wilman doing the
same as soon as he'd seen what his older brother'd done.  They laughed
even more.

From where I stood, too, I could see out the kitchen window to Leston,
Toxie, Garland and JE, the four of them standing outside with hands in
their jacket pockets, shoulders up against the cold morning, each with
a cigarette to his lips.  Beyond them, back near the trees, were the
niggers, the ten of them forming a jumbled circle.  The sun still
wasn't up, and I could see the bright red spark of a cigarette tip pass
from nigger to nigger, each taking one small pull, then passing it to
his neighbor.

Then Leston raised a hand in the air, gave a quick wave, and they were
all of them off, led by my husband.  He was first to disappear from my
view, followed by JE and Garland and all the niggers except Sepulcher,
a tall, thin boy whose pantlegs stopped a good four inches above his
ankles.  He and Toxie went off in the opposite direction, to my left,
back to where one of the trucks had been parked since they'd towed it
from the woods last Thursday.

Annie was hitting Burton's leg with her free hand, the other still
holding on to the blanket.  The boys were leaning over, poking a finger
in her hair, another in her ribs, another under her chin, them laughing
at each twist away their baby sister made, her giving only halfhearted
squeals, enjoying the attention.  It's what children did together, I'd
realized only after James and Billie Jean'd been at each other's throat
their first five years or so.  A game, see who could poke who the most
until one or the other cried, got Momma mad.

But I wasn't going that way this morning, not even after the age I'd
seen in Leston's shoulders earlier, not even after knowing there'd be
another whole stretch of time in my life when another child would fall
party to this game of attention and tears.

Annie, as always, broke first, finally gave up slapping at Burton's
leg.

She backed up a foot or so from the boys, and sat down on the floor.

Her eyes were closed, tears spouting out now, her mouth open in a loud
cry.

In walked Billie Jean, still in her nightshirt and socks, one hand
scratching at her head, a creased and wrinkled Photoplay in the other
hand.  She stopped in the middle of the kitchen, yawned, then opened
her eyes, and said just loud enough to where she knew I'd have to make
remark, "Why can't a woman get enough sleep in this place?  " She put
her hands on her hips, gave a look as grown-up and hard as she could
muster at her brothers and sister.

"Momma, we didn't make her cry, " Burton hollered, and Wilman put in,
"Momma, she did it herself."

Annie still cried.

But all I could see my way to doing was to stand there at the stove
cross my arms, and smile.  The bellyaching and crying still went on,
even Billie Jean looking up at me, saying, "Well?  Why can't a woman?

" They all wanted me to break, I knew, they all wanted in their own way
nothing more than what they'd lost when the next child had been born,
just a hug and a soft word from me.  My full and undivided attention,
what I knew I would never be able to give any of them again.  That was
the sorrowful part of being a mother, each of your children had to move
up a notch toward some end of childhood with the birth of the next
child.  And so I wouldn't get mad at any of them, wouldn't holler and
carry on about getting a switch or holding back the quarter for a movie
and popcorn in town Saturday if they didn't straighten up, all of
them.

No, this morning, I would only love them.  Soon enough they would know
what was coming.

That evening, supper spread across the table in steaming bowls and
plates of hot food, we gave thanks, Leston at the head of the table, me
next to him.  The children, starting with Anne next to me, were seated
around the table by age, so that James was sitting next to Leston, all
of us holding hands.  "Dear Lord, " Leston said, his voice as low and
even and empty of fear as every other night, "hear our prayer, we give
You thanks for the many blessings You bestow on us each and every day,
and ask that You bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies.

Amen."

The children let go each other's hands quick as they could, but Leston
still held mine.  I looked up at him, saw him smiling at me.

"Almost forgot, " he said.  He closed his eyes, still smiling, and held
his empty hand out to James, who looked at me.  His face was his
father's, the same spray of freckles Wilman had gotten, the broad
forehead and giving eyes the same green as my husband's.  I smiled at
him, but it didn't change the puzzled look he'd taken on, mouth
slightly open.  He said, "Momma?  " and slowly moved to take his
daddy's hand.  My eyes fell to his hand as he placed it in Leston's,
and I saw the calluses and cuts, evidence of the hard work he'd been
doing for over a year now at the lumber mill.  But even those scars
were only pale imitations of the ones Leston'd had for years, his big,
red hand now swallowing up James'.  And I remembered for a moment
James' soft, white hands when he was a child, remembered my firstborn
at my breast, suckling to keep himself alive, drawing deep my milk with
the same mighty purpose each one after that'd had.

James'd dropped out of the high school last January when the first men
left for the armed services, back when Roosevelt was making the big
pleas for all able-bodied men to join up, and many a job needed doing
around here went begging.  He was only fifteen, but neither Leston nor
I minded much his quitting, he'd learned to read and write and figure
quicker than any of my children so far, had enough common sense about
him to pick his way through whatever this life would give him.

But he and Leston hadn't spoke much to each other since then, and I
knew it was because James'd chosen to take on at Crampton's, and not
follow his father out to the woods, not bore holes into tree stumps
with a hand auger, then shove in pieces of dynamite and light fuses,
scatter like scared bats.  A piece of me was glad for that, too,
Toxie'd already lost three fingers on one hand and the hearing in his
right ear, this the result of a fuse too short and too fast.  James'd
chosen instead to head out each morning to the mill, to walk the two
and a half miles there and tend saw, shove in boards at one end all day
long.

I knew the reason they didn't speak other than to ask for the salt or
comment upon the weather, though, had more to do with Leston than
James.

Something in Leston made him want the family with him, wanted his sons
to be there to take up what he'd grown to consider a firm income, an
honest trade.  Many's the night we would .  lie awake and dream out
loud for what we wanted, and though my own desires had more to do with
seeing my children grow up with their parents alive and well, loving
brothers and sisters surrounding them just those things I never had
Leston's was always about his own company, run by him and his boys.  He
imagined them all in old age, marching into the woods each morning, a
battalion of niggers behind them, until every stubborn stump of heart
pine'd been boiled down in Pascagoula.  To him, James'd already
abandoned the family, though I knew that for James, Crampton's was only
his first chance at trying out himself on the world.  "Momma?  " James
said, still looking at me.  "What's this about?  " At least the two of
them were still holding hands, I thought, this time of prayer what we
had left to unite us.  I whispered, "Just let's pray."

I smiled at him, gave a small shrug.  Leston's head was already bowed,
waiting for us all.

The children were looking at me, and I reached to Annie's hand, took it
in mine, her hand bigger than even this morning, her growing up with
every second that went through us all.  I bowed my head, knew the
children would follow.

Leston said, "Dear Lord, please make certain to take care of the new
life in Momma.  Amen."

When I opened my eyes, every one of my family was watching me, all
except Annie, who reached a hand to her plate for a piece of honey
cornbread.

Now it was over.  They all knew, and we'd begin the accommodations each
had to make from here on out.  Annie would be the hardest hit, I knew,
her not looking at me was sign enough she didn't yet know what any of
this meant.

Billie Jean was first to speak.  "What will I tell all my friends at
school?  " she said, on her face some kind of pure horror, eyebrows
twisted into each other, mouth fallen open.  Her hair was pulled back
in a tight ponytail, and she had on one of Leston's old shirts, the
sleeves cuffed up to her elbows.  She held a fork in one hand, her
knife in the other, forearms resting on the table.  "What am I supposed
to say?  Am I supposed to just say, Hey, y'all, my momma's having yet
another baby'?  " "Yes, you are, " Leston said.  "And you listen to how
you're talking to us.  You listen."  He'd leveled his eyes at her.

That would be his last words to her about the whole matter, I knew.

Billie Jean closed her eyes, nodded.  "Yes sir, " she managed to get
out.

She held them closed longer than need be, just to make to us some kind
of point, one lost on Leston, who looked down to his plate, forked up
collards.

"A baby?  " Annie said, looking up at me.  She'd already eaten half the
slab of cornbread she'd been given, the crumbs dusting her chin and
hands.  Nye-nye, like at every meal, was draped across the back of her
chair, a thin and forlorn comfort, though Annie couldn't see it unless
she turned all the way around in her seat.

"Another baby, " Burton said.  "A baby, a baby.  There's too many of
them here already, " and he turned to Wilman, gave a push at his
shoulder.

Wilman said, "You're the only baby, the only burrhead pickaninny around
here I know of, " and pushed Burton just as hard, the two of them
suddenly arms and hands.

"Wilman, " Leston said.  "Burton."  They stopped quick as they'd
started, and seemed to draw down on themselves, the threat of Leston's
belt across their bottoms unspoken in this household, but always
present.

He'd done it enough, just stood up from the table and carted them out
the house to behind the repair shed, where off would come his belt.  A
few minutes later there they'd march, the three of them in a line
headed back toward the house, Wilman first, Burton next, the two of
them with red eyes and wet cheeks and not making a sound, Leston behind
them and rebuckling the belt.

My heart broke each time that went on, but there wasn't much I could
do.

Once, a little over a year ago, he'd taken Billie Jean back there for
painting on thick, red lipstick she'd been given by a friend at
school.

I'd followed them out, certain I wouldn't interfere.  Leston was the
daddy, the one whose job this was, but when I'd seen her bend over with
her hands at her knees, Leston with his arm raised, belt in hand, I'd
let out a small cry, sound enough to give him cause to stop, glance at
me.

"Go on inside, " he'd said, his mouth barely opening with the words.

I'd had to turn, give up to him my child, my first girl, and head back
to the house.  I'd never struck any of them, always in my head the
clear and polished picture of Missy Cook slapping my momma for no
reason at all.  The punishment was up to Leston, and I was glad for
it.

The boys started in on dinner as though nothing happened, the moment of
Leston's silent warning and the news they'd have another child to
terrorize either lost on them or of no matter.  I wasn't sure how hard
Burton and Wilman'd fall when the next one finally came on.  They were
too close together, but maybe that was better for them, they had each
other, and if they chose to kill each other or to be best friends both
of which they were willing to do at any moment of a day at least they'd
have their own company.

No, it was Annie, my baby Annie, I was worried most about.  She was
still looking up at me, only nibbled at the cornbread now, more crumbs
than bread into her mouth.  She held the bread with both hands, then
let go with one, slowly reached above her shoulder and behind her, took
hold of the blanket on the back of the chair, her eyes still on me.

She blinked.

I leaned toward her, brought my face down close to hers.  I whispered,
"Now don't you go to worrying, Annie.  You're my baby girl.  You know
that."  I swallowed, the hurt of the possible lie I was about to tell
her thick in my throat, the memory of my momma dying pushed too close
to me so that I thought I might never breathe again, not after giving
to her the same comfort I'd had to give each child when they found out
they wouldn't be the ceriter of my world anymore, "Momma will always be
here, " I said.  "Just you don't worry about me not ever taking care of
you."  I reached a hand to her face, traced the perfect curve of her
cheek, touched a finger to her thin eyebrow.  "Momma will be here to
take good care of you."

She smiled, slowly pushed a corner of the cornbread in her mouth, took
a bite too big to handle.  She let go the blanket, and brought that
hand to her mouth, covered it while she chewed, her eyes on me the
whole time.

I sat back up, a hand still to her shoulder, and saw James staring at
me, a smile on his face, too.  His hands were flat on the table.  He
hadn't touched the ham on his plate, nor the collards or cornbread.

"James?  " I said, and Leston looked at me, then to James.  Their eyes
met for a long moment before Leston said, "Son?  " "Today is a fine
day, " he said, and looked down at his hands.  He closed his eyes,
shook his head.  Then he looked at me again.  "It's a good day because
you're having a baby."  He paused.  "It's a good day because there's a
new one on the way to take the place of this old one heading out."

He quick looked from me to Leston to me.  "Today's a fine day because I
signed up today.  That's why it's a fine day."

Leston turned back to his food.  He leaned forward, his forearm on the
table, and forked up a piece of ham.  He said, "You aren't old
enough."

Slowly James lost the smile.  "I signed up to sign up today, " he
said.

"It's a new program the enlistment officer downtown let me in on.  So
when I turn seventeen next month, I'll be in the Armed Forces."  He
smiled again, this time even wider.  He lifted one hand a little above
the table, slapped it down.  "Imagine that."

But I'd imagined this day all too much already, his news nothing of the
surprise he'd figured on it being.  Leston and I'd both known a day
like this one would be coming, a war we'd taken our sustenance from all
along now laying claim to our son like a bad debt we owed.

Billie Jean sighed, let out, "I can't wait to see you in a uniform.

It'll be so glamorous, " and James laughed, shook his head again.

I hadn't moved, one hand on the small shoulder of my baby Anne,
thankful she still had years I couldn't imagine before she'd be out of
this house, and suddenly I saw all my children lined up and waiting for
a meal like this one, when each in turn would give up the love and care
we had for them to a future no one could count on, and for some reason
I thought of Missy Cook dead and gone for near on twenty years, every
moment she was alive filled with the bitter taste of a daughter who'd
left her for a Choctaw half-breed.  You could take your child's
leaving, I saw, with either hate or love, no matter what doom or good
luck they seemed headed for.  Only hate or love, there wasn't any
ground between.

I reached a hand across the table to James, held it out for him.

Leston, still with his arm on the table, still not having looked at his
son, only took in another bite of ham.

James took my hand, held it tight, his smile only growing.  There was
no spite here, no malice aimed at his daddy, what I knew Leston
believed moved his son to work at a mill instead of for him, and now
made him want to join up and fight in a war we made our living from.

Here was only our son, our oldest child.

I said, "God will bless you, " and I felt my eyes begin to fill.  All
the children were listening, this moment none of us ready for.  Though
Leston's eyes were to his plate and nowhere else, I was still glad for
my oldest's hand in mine, for my youngest next to me, the rest of my
children quiet and watching, glad, too, for the baby inside me, already
growing.

And just as my eyes brimmed, one smooth warm tear slipping down my
cheek, there came a knock at the kitchen door.  It was a quick sound,
three crisp knocks and nothing else, and I stood, let go James' hand
and smiled down at my children, all of them watching me, mouths open.

Their mother was crying, and I tried for a moment to think of another
time I'd cried in front of them.  There was nothing I could recall.

I knew the knock, that strange authority Cathe ral'd taken on the older
she got, and when I opened the door, there she stood, across her
shoulders an ancient and frayed wedding ring quilt against the cold.

Light from the kitchen fell down to her at the bottom of the steps,
filled her eyes.  She was looking right at me, staring at me.  I
swallowed, touched the back of one hand to the tear at my eye.  I
smiled.

"Cathe ral, " I said, and took a breath.

Her eyes glistened in the light, her mouth closed tight.

I heard a noise behind her, the scrape of boots on hard ground out
there.  A small orange ember rose up, grew, died down.  Nelson was with
her, smoking a cigarette some ten or fifteen feet behind her.

"Go on, Cathe ral, " he whispered, and the night air came into me, and
I shivered, the same huge and awful shiver I'd begun my day with when
Leston'd pulled back the sheet.

Still she stared at me, this ability of hers to look me in the face for
as long as she wished something she'd found, I knew, when she was born
again, baptized in the Pearl River when she was- fourteen.  She'd found
Christ, she'd told me the next day, a little past two years after my
momma'd died, Missy Cook trying to hold me by the throat every day of
it.  Each night after my momma died I'd been the one to turn off my gas
light, and I'd taken to playing with Cathe ral as often as I could,
even let Missy Cook know I was teaching her to read and write.  For
these transgressions, Missy Cook'd had Molly take a switch to Cathe
ral, had spent three months straight coming into my room at night and
turning up the gas, then turning it down again, even had Pastor come to
the house each Thursday afternoon for a year, the two of us sitting in
the parlor as though he were holding some kind of court.  He asked me
time and again if I knew disobeying Missy Cook was a sin, and if I knew
teaching Cathe ral to read and write was almost nearly as bad.  Then
he'd go on to ask me how I felt about my momma perishing, and about
whether or not I thought she might be in Heaven.  Pastor never took his
eyes off me, the two of us certain Missy Cook stood just outside the
room, listening to all that went on.  I never broke, never surrendered
to him that I did all of this to give some sort of honor to my momma's
memory, what I thought she'd want me to do.

It wasn't but a month after Cathe ral'd found Christ that I'd been
baptized in the Pearl myself, the same Pastor working on me whatever
magic the Holy Spirit had given him to save my soul from the ravages of
sin.  When I came up from under water, Pastor's hand at my back and
lifting me, I'd expected to see a new world, one somehow clearer and
more delightful, leaves on trees brighter, greener, the sky some
miraculous shade of blue.  Instead, I'd only rubbed my eyes, then
opened them to the same trees, their dull green branches heavy with
late summer air, the sky a pale and hazy blue, the river itself the
same thin wash of brown.

I was thirteen, and the Sunday before had made the decision to come
forward after Pastor's invitation, and make my public confession of
Jesus Christ as my Almighty Savior.  The sermon over, the congregation
standing and moaning out "Nearer My God to Thee, " I'd simply made my
way along the pew and past Missy Cook without looking at her, afraid
that if I caught her eye she'd give some genuine smile, the possibility
of that happening a dire threat to any peace I planned to find in
Jesus.

Once in the aisle, it was easy, I only walked forward the few feet to
the pulpit Missy Cook always sat in the second row on the center aisle
and waited for Pastor to come down, ask me what I wanted, then present
me to the congregation.

But once his hand was on my shoulder, I saw this wouldn't be as simple
as I'd thought, somewhere inside his eyes was love, I could see, easy
and pure, a shine I hadn't expected, his hand on my shoulder not nearly
as heavy as I'd figured it would be.  He said, "What is it, Miss
Jewel?

" I closed my eyes, not wanting this man's hand on my shoulder, the
same one that'd tried to pat my head twice before.  Not wanting to see
in his smile that he was only a man, one who loved God the best way he
knew how.  My teeth clenched, I'd had to push the words from me, "I
want to accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior."

"Praise God, " he said just loud enough for me to hear above the roll
of verses being sung behind me, people all with their eyes on me, Missy
Cook chief among them.

The hymn ended, the long last Amen dragged out for days before the
organ went quiet.  The only sound left was the whisper of a hundred
bamboo fans.  Pastor held my shoulders, and turned me to face the
congregation.

My eyes were still closed.

"Through the powerful grace of God our Heavenly Father, " he began, and
I could feel his fingers tense with the words, as though by squeezing
my bones he might instill the Holy Spirit in me, "Miss Jewel Chandler
has come humbly before our congregation to declare publicly her
acceptance of Jesus Christ as her Personal Lord and Savior on this
day.

She will be baptized into the glory and righteousness of God our Father
next Sunday afternoon, and I am sure it is her wish that everyone here
be present to welcome her into God's precious fold."

That was when I opened my eyes, only to see Missy Cook, a lace hankie
to her broken-glass eyes.  She was crying, her shoulders heaving with
some divine relief, as if she'd had the largest part in my coming to
the Lord.

But of course it hadn't been her.  It hadn't been Pastor, either, the
sermon he gave that morning lost to the great abyss most every sermon
I've ever heard has fallen into.  It wasn't the congregation, which had
doubled by the time it'd made its way to the bank of the Pearl to watch
Pastor and me, the two of us in white robes that took up the river
brown as soon as our hems touched water.  None of them, I knew, were
there to see Jewel Chandler be baptized, but were there to see Missy
Cook's granddaughter be baptized.  They were there more to give respect
to the rich old lady in town than to witness the Holy Spirit descending
upon me.  l No, what I'd expected I'd see when I came up from the water
was a new world in which the quiet and practical God I knew had become
the strange and moonstruck one Cathe ral'd found, on the Wednesday
after she'd been baptized, the two of us were out back of Missy Cook's,
her hanging up wash, me reading out loud to her from one of my old
Mcguffey Readers.  Then I heard the wet swish of material dropped to
the ground.  I looked first at Cathe ral's feet, where one of Missy
Cook's finest white sheets lay in the dirt.  Then I looked at Cathe
ral.  She stood with her shoulders up, fingers stiff at her sides.  Her
face had gone slack, her eyes back in her head.

She spoke, and the words from her mouth all rolled out in a ball,
syllables and throat sounds and hard breaths I recognized from
nowhere.

She was speaking in tongues, I knew, and my knowing that seemed a
miracle of my own.

I dropped the book, stood with my hands clasped together in prayer.

Still she went on, the song moving up and down some scale only angels
knew for certain.  I felt myself begin to cry, the sound so beautiful,
so filled with a god who'd love you enough to bestow on you a freedom
from the same old words that chained us all.

Then Molly was there with us, moving toward Cathe ral still speaking.

She took Cathe ral by the shoulders and gently shook her, said, "No,
no, no, child, you can't be doing no speaking now."

Cathe ral's words began to thin down, the sounds broken and tired,
until finally she closed her eyes, let her shoulders fall.

My hands were still clasped.  Neither Molly nor Cathe ral had even
looked at me yet.  I took a breath, said, "Why does she have to stop?

" I swallowed, my tongue dry and thick.

Molly put an arm around her daughter's shoulder, Cathe ral's face wet
with sweat, her arms limp at her sides.  "Because, " Molly said, her
eyes on Cathe ral, "that what the Apostle Paul say.  He say, Wherefore
let him that speaketh in a unknown tongue pray that he may interpret.

They ain't no one to interpret here."  Cathe ral, eyes still closed,
leaned into her momma's shoulder.  Molly whispered, "We got to wait for
Sunday, that's what we got to do, " her words not meant for me, but for
her daughter, words suddenly earthbound and the same as always.

That freedom Cathe ral'd found was what I wanted, a freedom, too, that
let her look me straight in the eye for the first time since I'd known
her.  Since that day in the back yard she'd searched out my eyes, hung
onto them with her own.  That was the freedom I was after, what I
figured God must have given her, freedom from this earth and its words
and what you knew your only role here would ever be.  That would be my
triumph over Missy Cook, the abounding w..  grace of God.  All I need
do was to confess Christ and be baptized, the only two things required
to enter the new Jerusalem.

Ushered to the shore, though, after Pastor had held me under, I felt no
different.  There was a God, I knew, and he dwelt in me, took care of
me.

He was a God who so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son,
so that I might not perish, but have everlasting life.  This much I
knew was true.

When Missy Cook took my hand and pulled me to her, and I heard the slow
murmur of Hallelujahs around me, a sound like the vague roll of summer
thunder it might have been, I realized it was all information I'd had
before.  I'd believed all along, my standing before the congregation
and immersion in dirty river water only thin symbols of what had first
to be in the heart.  Cathe ral and I were of the same God, I knew, but
the face of Him she'd seen would never be the face I would come to
know.  The piece of God I'd gotten wasn't the flamboyant and exotic one
she'd found.  The God I'd found was the same one who'd answered my
fervent prayer with the death of both my daddy and momma, blessed me
with Missy Cook and a crowd come to see what the next generation of
Cook looked like sopping wet and crying.

"Cathe ral, " I said again, and now I was wringing my hands on my
apron.

"You want to come in?  " She shook her head.  Behind her, Nelson
dropped the cigarette, and I saw in the darkness the failing orange
light disappear beneath his foot.

She said, "First Corinthians fifteen five say, I would that ye all
speaketh with tongues, but rather that ye prophesieth, for greater is
he that prophesieth than he that speaketh with tongues."

She looked down, the same old Cathe ral, the only difference I could
see being in her face and the skin drawn taut over bones, her mouth
grown thinner.  She looked up at me.  "Nelson tell me you with child
again."

I nodded, smiled, though I felt certain she couldn't see me for the
kitchen light behind me.  "I guess Leston told y'all, " I said, and
looked past her to Nelson, quick disappearing in the growing dark.

He said, "Yes'm."

"I come to prophesieth unto you, " Cathe ral said, her eyes still on
me.

She moved her shoulders beneath the quilt, pulled it tighter around
her.

"I come to prophesieth unto you about coming hardship you or nobody
ain't ever be ready to bear."

I tilted my head, stopped with my hands in the apron.  I lost my smile,
though I'd wanted to show Cathe ral how pleased I could be at my age
with a baby on the way.  But I figured it wasn't the baby she was
talking about.  I said, "You know about my James heading off to the
War?  " I dropped the apron, put my hands together in front of me.  The
night was growing colder as we stood there.  "Because even though I
love my James, " I said, "God will bless him and us both, and his being
gone one way or the other will be a hardship we can live through.  At
least that's my prayer."

"I don't know nothing about James, " she said, and blinked.  Nelson
said, "We don't know nothing about that."  His voice curled through the
black around him, the words coming to me like an echo.

She looked down again, moved her foot on the ground.  The light from
the kitchen grew stronger the darker the world became, until now she
stood in a hard rectangle of light from the doorway behind me, my
shadow on the ground her only interruption.

She poked her heel in the dirt, tapped it twice, took in a deep
breath.

She lifted her head to me, swallowed.  "I say unto you that the baby
you be carrying be yo' hardship, be yo' test in this world.  This be my
prophesying unto you, Miss Jewel."

Nelson leaned into the light, reached toward her.  All I could see of
him was his arm and shoulder and head in the light from my kitchen.

His hand touched her elbow, and he glanced up at me, then at the porch
steps.

"Come on, now, " he whispered.

Cathe ral didn't move.

Slowly I shook my head, made myself smile.  "What are you saying?  " I
said.  "Why do you say this?  " Cathe ral smiled, let the quilt loosen,
slip an inch or so off of her neck.  "The Lord say to tell you, Miss
Jewel, " she said.  "You and me both know He work in mysterious ways.

But this not any mystery.  He telling you right out.  He letting you
know.  He smiling on you this way."

I felt my palms begin to sweat out there in the cold.  I went to the
edge of the porch, moved down one step.

"Momma, " Billie Jean called out, on her voice the whine she'd
perfected in the last year or so, "close the door or come back
inside.

It's cold!

" "Momma?  " Annie said.

Nelson gently pulled at her elbow.  "Come let's go, " he whispered.

But Cathe ral and I were still looking at each other.  I moved down
another step, then another, until I was only a foot or so from her, her
eyes on mine, her smile still there.

I put out a hand, cold with sweat, held it in front of me.  I wasn't
..

.

smllmg anymore.

From beneath the quilt one of her hands appeared, took hold of mine.

She squeezed down with some unknown might.  l "We sorry, Miss Jewel, "
Nelson said, and now he tugged at her arm.  "We going on home now.  We
don't mean to burden you."

"The Lord smiling down on you this way, " she said again, and then
Cathe ral let go, her hand disappearing into the quilt.  She moved out
of the light.

I tried to watch them go, but they were lost to me even before they
made it past the repair shed.  There was no moon out, not enough stars
to do any good.  Just God above with some plan for us all.

I didn't know what to think, whether to believe her or not, and I tried
to imagine how news like this could be of help, and whether that
unaccountable piece of God Cathe ral had hold of could be trusted to
figure into the stone wedge of Him I knew.

The light I stood in broke to pieces, shadows falling about me, and I
turned, looked up to the doorway.  There stood James and Wilman and
Burton, the three of them, all my boys, crowded into the doorway.

Wilman and Burton pushed at each other for room, while James, a boy
suddenly taller than I ever imagined he might become, stood still, one
hand to the doorjamb.  "Momma, " he said, "what's going on out here?  "
I shrugged, uncertain myself.  I only knew I was cold out here, and
that somewhere along the road headed away from Purvis walked Nelson and
Cathe ral, the dark of no consequence to them.  And I knew there was a
baby in me.  "Nothing, " I said, and I shrugged again.

"Jewel, " Leston called, the word neither question nor demand.  Only my
name.

"I'm here, " I said, and started up the steps.

CHAPTER 5.

OUR HEADLIGHTS CUT THROUGH THE BLACK WOODS BEFORE US, THE ROAD into
Purvis unfolding like some mystery, a place I'd never been before.  The
baby'd been trying to make its way out for the last fifteen hours, my
mind long past battling with making sense of this world.  There was
only movement, darkness, light, an old, oiled road, and Leston hunched
up over the steering wheel, a cigarette at his lips.

"Just hold on, Sugar, " he whispered, and I thought I might have seen
the tip of the cigarette bobbing with the words.  "Sug, you just hold
on."

"Sug, " I managed to get out, and closed my eyes, the work of keeping
my lids open too much to bear.  "Sug, " I whispered again, and thought
of how I hadn't heard him call me that in years, not since we were
newly married and still in the years when whatever future a future that
would account for five children bore in these Mississippi woods seemed
somebody else's life, not our own.

But then we must have hit a pothole or someplace where rains had dug
into the road, because the world sank beneath me, and I fell what felt
two feet deep into the seat, my ears filled with the roar of our
slamming on through it, and I let out a yelp through no choice of my
own, both hands on my belly.

"Son of a bitch, " Leston whispered.  "Son of a bitch, Sug."

The other five had been born at home, all of them so quick that with
Wilman there hadn't been time enough for Cathe ral to make her way over
to deliver him.  James'd taken the longest with his six hours, Cathe
ral's presence each time as much a comfort to me for her friendship as
for her skill at midwifing.

This time she'd been to my door faster than any time before, showing up
not an hour after I'd sent Burton for her, Cathe ral all puffing, the
washed-out blue dress that hung on her sweat through, her hair pulled
back and knotted.  Her eyes were right on mine as she came into the
bedroom, Annie sitting in bed beside me.

"Now you move on out of here, baby-doll, " she'd said to Anne, though
her eyes were still on mine.  "Our Lord be blessing you soon enough
with another brother or sister, but right now you go play with the ones
you got."

Annie had looked to me, and I'd turned to her, smiled, though I could
feel another wave moving into me.  "Go on, " I said.

She slid away from me and off the quilt, dropped to the floor, her
nye-nye tight in one hand.  She backed out the room, and I heard Wilman
say from just outside the door, "Annie, let's go out and we'll play
kick the can, hey?  " then the shuffle of feet down the stairs.

"This one be the quickest yet, you think?  " Cathe ral'd said, smiling
now.

I'd started to nod, but the pain swept into me, mindless pain that
wouldn't even let me answer her, and she'd taken my hand, squeezed it
hard.  I closed my eyes, felt her settle herself next to me on the
bed.

Id sent Burton first to Cathe ral's, then to find his father, the crew
working its way through the woods out past Jacob's Ferry Road, a good
four miles from Cathe ral's.  I hadn't counted on them showing up for
quite a while, maybe even after this baby was born, new life in here a
giant surprise for Leston when he drove in.  Then I heard the engine on
one of the trucks moving up the road outside, the slam shut of doors,
the hurried banging upstairs.

I opened my eyes, saw the two of them moving into the room, Leston, hat
in hand, eyebrows furrowed, Burton just behind him, his hair wet,
cheeks flushed.  Cathe ral stood, moved away and to the washstand
beneath the one window, her back to us, and Leston came toward me.  He
let go the hat with one hand, and touched my cheek.  He smiled, and I
could smell gunpowder and pine tar and engine oil all at once.

I said, "What time is it?  " and heard how weak my voice had become, a
clouded whisper in the room.

Cathe ral looked over her shoulder at Burton, who hesitated only a
moment after he'd met her eyes.

"Momma, " he said, "I'll be outside if you need anything else."  He
crossed his arms, held them tight to his chest.  I nodded, said, "My
big man."

He looked down, embarrassed, but then smiled, said, "Take care, Momma,
" and he was gone.

"It's five-thirty, " Leston said, both hands at his hat again, and the
old pictures of bearing my other children started coming in, Leston
awkward and delicate when Cathe ral came, as if he were a guest come to
visit the near-dead in his own home, the shapes in the hard stucco of
the ceiling in this room, shapes I turned into mountains and foreign
countries and the grown-up faces of the children I was bearing as I lay
here, my fingernails digging into the pine headboard above me until
blood came from beneath my nails with the last few pushes, each child I
had James and Billie Jean in the cabin on Rosehill Road, Wilman and
Burton and Anne right here as Cathe ral surrendered them to me, wiped
clean and swaddled, ready for my breast.

"You be passed out for a time, Miss Jewel, " Cathe ral said, still at
the washstand, and then I realized what Leston had said, Five-thirty.

I'd sent Burton a little past one to Cathe ral's.

"Five-thirty?  " I whispered, and Leston seemed to move back from me,
still smiling.

"We would have been here a touch earlier, but Burton lost himself in
the woods for a time."  He paused, swallowed.  "How soon before this
one?  " he said, and he touched my cheek again, this time his fingers
there for only an instant before he brought them back to the hat.

"Only the Lord know, " Cathe ral said.  She came back to the bed,
touched her wrist to my forehead.  "Right now, Mr. Hilburn, you be a
better help to God and his mercies you head on downstairs.  I let you
know what going on up here."

"Oh, " he said, then, "Fine."  He almost seemed to bow, and backed out
the room.  "Take care, " he said.

I smiled, nodded as he pulled the door closed behind him.

Cathe ral took her hand away from me.  I said, "I never passed out
before."

Her eyes wouldn't meet mine as she sat down next to me again.  She
said, "Every birthing different, Miss Jewel.  You know that."

By nine, nothing had changed, every five minutes or so huge gusts of
pain pushed through me, my belly separate from me then, some white-hot
curse and blessing at once, me wanting it out more each time that pain
came.  But each time there was Cathe ral at the foot of the bed, her
saying, "You just breathe now.  Go on and breathe, " her eyes focused
between my legs, my knees up, the thin sheets wet with my sweat and
heavy as wool blankets.  It was only October, the day had been as warm
as any the last month, trees and vines and kudzu only in the last few
days losing the deep and sturdy green they'd held all summer to the
dull wax sheen that signaled fall was coming on.  Annie'd spent the
morning and early afternoon beside me, while I made breakfast for the
crew, dinner for the boys and Billie Jean once they came home from
school.  And then I'd felt the first one come, the first pain that
started at the top, just below my breasts, and shivered slowly down me,
that first small push telling me God'd already decided this would be
the day.  And I'd sent Burton.

But now was the time, I told myself, those pains on me for eight I
hours straight, the word Push heavy in my head.  I closed my eyes, bit
down hard on my bottom lip, the pain and blood taste there only a small
and welcome distraction to what I felt below my heart.  I let go my
belly, reached for the headboard, held on tight.

"Oh no, no, Miss Jewel, " Cathe ral said, and I heard her move from
where she sat, felt her rough hands touch my cheek, my chin, brush back
my hair.  "You can't do this now.  Yo' body ain't be ready for this
now.

All in the Lord's good time."  She paused, and I felt her hand in my
hair, her touch comfort.  Slowly the pain eased, and I pictured in my
head a lone tree somewhere, a young sycamore bent to a heavy wind, that
wind easing, green branches lifting up to blue sky.

"This baby just be borning different from the others, " she whispered,
and I opened my eyes.  She was looking at her hand, her eyes wet,
half-closed.  "I will stand upon my watch, " she said, "and set me upon
the tower, and will watch to see what he will say unto me, and what I
shall answer when I am reproved."  Her forehead, I could see even
through the haze of this long in labor, was wet with sweat, and I
wondered what she knew and wouldn't say.

I opened my mouth, formed the words my head stirred up, wanted spoken,
but my eyes closed, and I felt the room begin to tumble, felt the
center of it, my belly, become some fire wouldn't go out.  I dug my
nails deeper, trying to hold on, keep the bed from spinning me off the
face of the earth, but I disappeared.

I came to at the sound of whispers, voices swimming up, my mother
whispering in another room, and my grandmother whispering, too, and my
father and his father, Jacob Chandler as well, all of them whispering
words I couldn't make out, verses from the Bible that seemed somehow to
fit.  Someone held my eyes closed, a heavy hand tight on my lids, but I
managed them open, blinked at the light from the lamp next to the
bed.

I tried to move my arms but couldn't, the weight of our quilts now on
me, pressing on my chest, my legs, my belly and I remembered I was here
to bear a child still in me, the mound below me no smaller, no wails
through the room of a child letting the world know it was here, ready
to start in on the fight every life becomes.  There was only me here,
the door to the bedroom shut, behind it those whispers.

"Cathe ral, " I called out, my voice far away from me, not even of me
but mine for the name it called out.

The door opened, and Cathe ral, silhouetted by the light from the hall,
moved toward me.  Here was her hand on my head again, in my hair, that
familiar comfort, and I closed my eyes.

She whispered, "Now, Miss Jewel, it near on to four o'clock in the
morning, and you still not ready to have this baby be born."  She
touched the backs of her cool fingers to my cheek.  "So we been at this
for too long now, and Mr. Leston and me, we both think you best be
taken into the hospital now."

I opened my eyes to her.  "The hospital?  " I whispered.  "What's wrong
here?  " Leston came into the room, at first silhouetted by the hall
light, then lit with the lamp.  It was as if he'd only been gone a
m-moment, the hat was still in his hand, the brim moving round, and for
an instant I wondered if those useless hands could possibly be the same
hands I'd let fill me up with the same pleasures I'd known for so many
years now.

Hands I'd given up to, only to be ushered into this moment, and the
pain of bearing our next and last child.

He leaned close to me, Cathe ral moving away to give him room, and I
could see that, though maybe they were the same hands, something else
had changed in him, his eyes had become even older, fear dug into the
lines below them, into the creases beside them, the green gone now to a
color I couldn't name for the trouble they seemed to see, and I knew
this change signaled from God I was lined up to die, the birth of this
child my own death.

"Leston, " I whispered, and he held up a finger to his mouth to quiet
me.  He tried to smile, then reached that finger to me, touched it to
my lips.

"We got Sepulcher and Temple right here, two good, strong bucks,
they're going to carry you on downstairs and out to the truck.  We're
going to take care of you, Jewel.  You just hold on."  He paused,
blinked.  "I already got a call over to the hospital, and they should
be ready for us when we get on up there.  So don't you worry none.

That's all I want you to do for me, just don't you worry none."

"The hospital, " I said again, and Cathe ral edged in front of Leston,
touched a cold cloth to my face.  "Now hush, " she whispered, "now
hush."

She looked from me to the door.  Leston backed away, looked there,
too.

Cathe ral nodded, and in came two of her sons, boys with mouths closed
too tight, eyes turned from me, foreheads glistening though the room
was cold now, ice cold, and I knew that, yes, I was going to die.

I prayed, the words rising up in me suddenly, a small and perfect and
horrible prayer, If it's a death You want, I gave up to God, the words
in my head shiny and polished and black, let it be the child's.

Sepulcher came round to my right, Temple to my left, so that they faced
each other across the bed, Cathe ral tucking the quilts around my legs,
my arms.  Then the boys looked to Cathe ral.  She nodded, and they bent
to me, moved their hands beneath me until they met, and lifted, carried
me over the foot board and toward the hall, where Leston was already
moving backward, glancing over his shoulder to the stairs, to me, the
boys, over his shoulder.

I held on tight to Cathe ral's boys, my arms round their shoulders, my
eyes wide open as we moved down the stairs.  They took each step slow
and deliberate, eyes on each other as though that might give them some
greater balance.

But it wasn't fear of falling that kept my eyes open.  It was my
prayer, and how it'd come to me so easily, so clearly, the words
swelling in my head, my heart thick with them, Let it be the child's,
let it be the child's.  They made perfect sense, and though I tried to
stop them, another part of me held tighter to them, and to the purpose
I finally saw for them, I wanted none of my children to know the sorrow
of a lost parent, a sorrow I'd known too close my whole life.

We were at the bottom of the stairs now, Leston with his hat on,
holding open the door.  "Annie, " I said, and closed my eyes a moment,
conjured a picture of her on the bed next to me.

"She be sleeping, " Cathe ral whispered, and I felt the cloth at my
forehead.

"Burton, " I said.  "Wilman.  Billie Jean."  I saw my oldest in
uniform, somewhere in the South Pacific right now, blue water, beaches
the color of bone.  "James, " I said.

"Now you be hushing up, Miss Jewel, " Cathe ral whispered, "because you
know all yo' children be asleep.  They all asleep.  Even James, he be
asleep right now wherever he be."

I opened my eyes to the truck parked before the house, the yard a white
fire in the light cast by the headlights, and now other words came to
me, the words I'd formed to ask Cathe ral, the ones I'd put together
and readied to give her before I'd passed out in my room.

"Cathe ral, " I said as the boys eased me into the cab, Temple moving
aside, Sepulcher settling me in the seat.

She was there with the cloth again.  "You save yo' words, Miss Jewel.

You save yo' strength."

"Cathe ral, " I whispered, the words old, ancient, though I'd not yet
spoken them.  I whispered, "Is this the hardship?  Is this how He
smiles?

" Her eyes met mine for an instant, hung there only as long as she used
to let them, before she came to know her God.  Then they were away from
me, settled on the cloth she still held to my cheek.  "You just pray, "
she whispered, "you just pray."

She closed the door, looked through the glass to Leston, nodded.  He
gave it the gas, and we were gone, and I was certain she hadn't heard
me answer her, hadn't heard me say "I am" even before she'd So pulled
the cloth from my cheek, my black prayer already resumed, Let it be the
child.

"Push!  " the doctor yelled, and it was as if the word were a birth
itself, welcome and painful at once, me holding back as long as I
had.

There was no telling how long I'd been in the hospital, my mind gone
now, all I knew the white of a room, the first hospital I'd ever been
in, my legs apart and high in the air, strapped to metal bars poking
out the end of the bed, sheets hiding everything everywhere.  That was
all I knew, and the faces of the last people I'd know on this earth,
the doctor, all I could see of him above the sheets below me a flat
forehead and thick spectacles low on his nose, eyes all careful
concentration and focused between my legs, next to him a nurse, a woman
older than me and smiling, a tooth or two missing in front, loose folds
of skin beneath her chin, and one other nurse, a girl who seemed no
older than my Billie Jean, hands the color of porcelain as she held on
to one of my own.

"Now push, darling, " the younger one whispered, all of them here and
ministering to me, I saw, as if I had no idea what to do.

"Push, " the older woman said.  She nodded in what I figured was a
motherly way, though I'd no idea how my mother might have urged me had
she been here, me fast approaching her and the hereafter, if the Lord
chose not to honor my steadfast prayer.

I surrendered to the notion I was going to die here and now, the
feeling in me some white wave, a peace that took on whatever might
happen, me heading to meet my God.  I finally pushed, pushed with
everything I had in me, and then with even more.  I pushed, not because
they'd told me to, but because it was what my body'd led me to believe
was right, what it knew to do.

"Dammit, push!  " the doctor yelled, and the young nurse squeezed my
hand harder.  "Push, " she whispered again.

I pushed, my eyes squeezed tight to where I could see only swirling red
circles and squares whirl and pop before me, a red quick going to
white, and I thought I was at the gates of Heaven, readying for
entrance, round my neck the millstone of my prayer for the death of
this child.

I pushed, and pushed, felt something, a power greater than me, pushing,
too, the help of some force not of me at all, and I drove open my eyes,
my teeth clenched, my jaw tight as it would ever be.

It was the doctor, there beside me.  He was pushing on me, mashing down
on me, the fingers of his hands locked together, the palms at the top
of my belly.  He was mashing down on me, his moves quick and tough, as
if he were kneading dough, and with each push down I felt air leaving
me, felt the tear below me.  "Now is the time, " I heard him whisper,
then yell again, "Push."

The older nurse was below the sheets now, her eyes the same iron as the
doctor's had been when he was down there.  She licked her lips, ran the
back of a hand across her forehead.  She blinked twice, said, "Here it
is."

I pushed, felt his pressing on me, forcing my baby out, all these at
once, the moment in front of me the one between life and death, but
both of them just past my touch.  I was only watching, distant observer
at the birth of my sixth child.

Then the pushing stopped, the white wave cresting in me, falling, the
mashing on me gone, and I opened my eyes, looked below me to the foot
of the bed, where the doctor held blue-pink feet chest high.  He raised
a hand, held the baby a little higher, and slapped its bottom once,
twice, three times before it gave a startled cough, and cried.

No one except me not the doctor, not the mother nurse, not even the
girl who'd called me Darling took notice of the small cleft between my
baby's legs, that certain proof to the world that she was a girl, so
that, finally, it was me who called out in a voice as clear as if I'd
just been out for a walk in the woods, "She's a girl."

The doctor took her into his arms, said, "Why, you're right.  So she
is, " and I saw him smile despite the sweat on his face, despite the
thick glasses, despite the blood up to his wrists, his white gown all
the more white for it.

"Count them up, " I whispered, and already I was feeling the loss of
blood and strength, the loss of the will that brought her here.  I was
cold, my arms and legs jittery with that loss.  "Count them up, " I
whispered again.  "Count up her fingers and her toes."

"There's ten of each, " the girl said, her voice a warm whisper in my
ear, words mixed with the small cry of my baby.  "Stubby little fingers
and toes, ma'am.  But there's ten of each."

I was shivering, my body lost to me, and I cried, cried out of joy for
the two of us alive and here, God in Heaven choosing to honor not the
prayer for the death of my child, but the one I'd uttered the first day
knew I was pregnant, the one that she'd be alive, toes and fingers all
present and accounted for.

"Then go tell Leston, " I said, and I felt a warm blanket laid upon me,
listened to my baby's cry a moment longer before I gave in to sleep.

CHAPTER 6.

JEWEL, LESTON WHISPERED.  JEWEL, IT'S ME.

I opened my eyes.  I was in a room with gray walls and one window.

Light tumbled from the window, the shade up, and I blinked, turned from
it to see Leston next to me in a chair.  His face was near mine, him
leaning forward, clean-shaven, hair combed back.  He had on one of his
Sunday shirts, the yellow one, buttoned up to his neck, over that his
good Sunday jacket.  He was smiling.

I whispered, "Sug, " and put a hand up to his cheek.

His smile turned into a grin at that word, and he brought his eyes down
a moment, lifted them again.

He leaned even closer, kissed my own cheek, and pulled back, his green
eyes working on me, digging deep into mine in a way they hadn't in
longer than I could remember.

He said, "She looks like all the rest of them.  Just as perfect as all
the rest of them."

I swallowed, let my eyes close a moment.

He said, "You been out a whole day.  You been asleep for a whole day,
you and the baby both.  Pretty tough work for the two of you, I
imagine."  He touched my cheek again, and I could feel myself smile.

I heard footsteps into the room, hard and quick.  Leston's hand moved
from me, and I opened my eyes.  A nurse, this one round and pink-faced
with a paper hat folded in some odd shape atop her coalblack hair,
stood at the foot of the bed, a clipboard cradled in one arm.  She had
bright red lipstick on, cheeks rouged up.  She was looking at the
clipboard, flipped back a page, then brought that page to the front
again.

I said, "When do I see my baby?  " I glanced at Leston sitting up
straight in his chair.  On the low dresser behind him was his hat, next
to it a bunch of flowers in a glass, a few ragged daisies, a stalk of
geraniums, some greenery.

Leston looked at the dresser, back to me.  "The children, " he said,
and smiled.  "They send their love."  He paused, glanced at the nurse,
still looking at the clipboard.  "Anne wanted to send her blanket, " he
nearly whispered.  He leaned an inch or so toward me and no more,
afraid, I knew, the nurse might catch him showing too much affection.

"Cathe ral said no, you had plenty of them here."  He gave a quick
smile, glanced at the nurse again, sat up straight.

He cleared his throat, looked at the nurse full on.  He said, "My wife
would like to know when she might be seeing her child."

She still didn't look away from the clipboard.  She said, "That, sir,
will be the doctor's decision.  He will inform y'all when the moment
has come.  Not before that."

She turned, never having met our eyes, and left the room, her same hard
steps ricocheting round the bare walls.

"A hospital, " I said.  "So this is what I've been missing my whole
life."  I moved to sit up, tried to reach behind me to push down a
pillow, and the same old pains ground through me, what'd been white
fire now a bank of sharp embers settled low in my belly, between my
legs.

I grimaced, my eyes twisted closed, and heard the scrape of Leston's
chair on the floor as he quick stood up, jammed the pillows down
himself.

"Easy now, " he said.  "Easy.  Took you twenty-two hours to have that
baby.  Don't expect to get up and at em too quick."

Twenty-two hours, I thought, twenty-two, and when I opened my eyes
again, there was the doctor at the foot of the bed, the same doctor
with the wide forehead and spectacles.  But now he had on a red bow tie
and blue button-down shirt, his hair combed wet across his head from
the top of one ear to the top of the other.  He had the same clipboard
in his hand, eyes hard on whatever piece of my life was on that
paper.

He looked up from the clipboard, still without a word of warning or
congratulations, and faced the doorway, where in came the nurse with
the rouged face, lips drop-dead red.

In her arms was the bundle I'd waited nine months to hold, had battled
against my body more hours than I could have imagined I would.  The
nurse was smiling now, and as she neared me, her arms reaching my child
out to me, she became my friend, the best one I would ever know next to
Cathe ral, and I smiled back at her, our eyes meeting in the same way
they always did with Cathe ral each time she handed me my new life.

I peeled back the corner of the blanket that lay across her face, and
saw my daughter for the first time.  Leston was right, she was as
perfect as all the rest of them, a thin copper halo of hair, eyelids a
frail blue as she slept, one hand in a fist nestled next to her
cheek.

She was beautiful, even more beautiful than any of the others, I
couldn't help but feel, Leston and I never able to do better than the
newest baby in my arms.

"She's still sleeping it off herself, " the doctor said.  "Seems she's
even more wrung out by the whole thing than you.  But that's fine.

It's what her body's telling her she needs."

Just then her pale pink lips quivered, set to sucking at nothing, and I
whispered, "There's something else this little body needs, " and I
looked up at the doctor, the nurse, back to my baby.  I said, "And if
you will excuse us, we'll be getting to it."

"Why certainly, " the doctor said, and I glanced up to see him and the
nurse already turned, moving toward the door.

I turned back to the baby, but heard next to me the scrape of the chair
again.  Leston stood next to the bed, and I looked at him.  He'd
already grabbed his hat from the dresser, was leaning over to kiss me
good-bye.

"You can't go, " I said.  "You've got to stay here with me.  With our
baby."

He stopped, stood straight.  He tried to smile, opened his mouth to
speak.  He didn't want in here, I knew, not with a new mother ready to
start nursing.  This moment had always been between Cathe ral and me,
Leston's only role in all this him standing outside the door and
grinning at the birth of a new child.

But we were in a hospital now, my child just handed over to me by two
strangers as if she were a gift from them, their property, real estate
deeded to me.  She'd been out of my hands the whole first day of her
life, and now Leston wanted out.

I said, "You stay put now.  We don't know anybody here from Adam, and
I'm not about to nurse my baby in a cold room with nobody here."

Leston smiled.  He glanced at me, then the baby.  He shrugged, said,
"Be glad to stay, " and sat down.  He tapped the crease in the crown of
his hat once, then said, "This is my first time in a hospital, too,
don't forget."  He paused.  "Feel like I'm being bullied, all these
educated doctors."  He smiled again.  "That dolled-up nurse."

I nodded, smiled.  Here was my husband, the king of all he surveyed,
made to bow down to a pink-faced doctor in a bow tie.

"But, " he said, and looked at me.  "It's my baby daughter here what
matters.  And you."

I wanted to reach a hand out to him, wanted to touch his clean shaven
face again, but just then the baby in my arms let out the smallest of
cries, and I looked to her, shifted so she sat lower on me.  I peeled
back the hospital gown I had on, showed my shoulder, then my nipple, my
breasts filled, already a day late at this.

Her eyes were still closed, her lips still quivering, and I snuggled
her close, my nipple hard and ready, a drop of clear wet poised at n
the tip, and then my baby took me in, started life, taking from me what
I was glad I could give.

I smiled, though there was pain in my milk coming down.  But it was a
pain I took with my whole heart, a pain I wanted with me for as long as
my baby wanted my milk.  I could fix things, could bear up in whatever
came my way.  If I could live through this birth by the grace of God,
and come through it with the sweetness of my milk just as ready as it
was with every other child I'd bore, then I could do anything.

And I saw that I'd done the right thing in taking hold of my own life
and setting it straight, my momma and her stories of who I was and
where I came fromqike stones in your pocket, she'd said better
provision for me than the warning of burning clothes in a nighttime
orchard, or the threat in the cold, brown eyes of Missy Cook.  I'd gone
on from that life into this one, to a husband providing for me better
than most women I knew of, children healthy and fit.  The stories of my
father's father and of Missy Cook's father had been stones in my
pocket, all right, but not the kind to weigh you down, not the sort you
pile in before jumping off a bridge.  They'd been the polished and
smooth ones, stones cool to the touch, tough and foreign and necessary
all the same.

"You are a beautiful woman, Jewel, " Leston said, and I turned from the
baby to him.  He was leaned forward in his seat, watching the two of
us.

"What makes you say that?  " I said.

"Your being beautiful, " he said.  "And that baby you got there.

Plenty reason enough."

My newest baby still pulled down my milk, and Leston eased back in the
seat, reached a hand to the inside pocket of his jacket.

"Got something for you, " he said, and brought his hand out, held in it
a piece of polished wood.

It was a piece off a dogwood branch, I could see right away, a slender
piece, crooked in its own graceful way, and fit my husband's hand
perfectly, from the tip of his thumb to the tip of his pinkie finger.

It was a beautiful piece of wood, not so much for the gnarled knots
along the big end of it, nor for the thin point it came to at the
other, not even for the gray-brown color of the wood.

What made it beautiful was how it shone in the light from the one
window, and the care I knew he'd taken with it to make that shine come
up, make the grain glisten, those knots whorls of smooth color.

It was beautiful because of what he'd done to it with his hands.

"Found it last week, " he said.  "Just saw it on the ground.  Picked it
up."  With his other hand he turned it over, revealed to me new twists
in the grain, more new ways the light could shine off it.  "Knew I
could do something with it."

I looked at him, smiled.  I said, "It's beautiful.  Like all the rest
of the gifts you've made me."

The baby safe in the crook of my arms, still sucking away, I reached to
the wood, touched it.  This was his gift to me, his own small
tradition, one he'd started on his own at the birth of James, back when
we lived in the cabin on Rosehill Road, and I remembered then the
shutters he made for me at the birth of his firstborn.

They were shutters not for closing up when a storm came or cold
weather, but shutters purely for the beauty of them, and how fine they
made the house look.  They were white, solid, and in the center of each
was a raised cutout silhouette of a pinetree painted a dark forest
green, and I remembered right then Lying in bed one morning only days
after James was born, him there next to me and nursing away just like
the baby in my arms right now.  I'd heard some small scratch of sound
come through the walls of the cabin, a sound more like a squirrel
working away than Leston with a screwdriver outside my window.  Then'd
come Cathe ral's voice out there, her talking and laughing, Leston
giving out a word or three now and again.  Once the scratching'd
stopped, Cathe ral came into the house, James asleep, and helped me
struggle up out of bed.  She'd smiled, her eyes on mine all the while
as she led me through the doorway and out front of the house.

There had stood Leston, hands on his hips, grinning away.  He looked at
me, then to the house.  Slowly I walked to him, then turned, faced the
house to see his perfect gift, a gift of his hands and hard work,
shutters a crisp white, pine silhouettes a cool green, our cabin now
filled with the promise of new life a son and I'd turned to Leston,
smiled, kissed him full on the lips.  I whispered, "Thank you."

I picked up the piece of wood from the palm of his hand, felt how warm
it was, how soft and clean.  He'd sanded it just enough to give it this
feel, this touch.

"Wish I could've done more, " he said.  "But the work.  Too much of
it."

He shrugged, wouldn't let his eyes meet mine, him embarrassed at how
small this gift was.

Since the shutters, the other gifts had grown smaller in size as our
lives took off, time swallowed up even more with each new child.  After
Billie Jean was born, he built me a small cedar chest, after Burton,
three window boxes for geraniums.  After Wilman, it was a jewelry box,
though I had only a couple necklaces, one set of earrings.  Before the
piece of wood in my hand right now, after Annie'd been born, I'd found
on the kitchen table two cherrywood candlesticks.  "I'll make something
better, once things ease up, " he said.

"No, " I said right away, the wood in my hand still warm from where
he'd carried it in his jacket, still warm from the palm of his hand.

"This will do fine, " I said.  "It's beautiful."

He shrugged once more, grinned.  Then he did something strange and
wonderful, he stood, leaned over to me, and kissed me on the lips, and
I thought again of him calling me Sug, and how long ago it'd seemed
we'd abandoned those love names.

"Leston, " I whispered.  "Sug.  I love you."

He was already sitting in his chair again, his face gone red, him
smiling away at his hat.

"I love you, too, " he said.

I looked to the baby again, touched a finger to her fine, pink cheek.

I said, "This child needs a name.  She's got her whole life ahead of
her, one day of it already gone."

She let go my nipple, her eyes never opening, and I lifted her, amazed
like always how little a baby weighed, and brought her to my other
breast, let her start in there.

"I got the name this time, " Leston said.  He was smiling.  "The way I
figure it is, " he said, and looked at the baby, fixed his eyes on her,
"this is the last baby.  Last but not least.  So I get to name her."

"Depends, " I said, "on what you name her."  My milk was coming down on
this side, the same deep and dull pain in me.  I felt my jaw tighten a
little, blinked it away.

He took a breath, sat up straighter in the chair.  He put his hat on
one knee, fingers touching the crown.  He let out a little breath,
closed his eyes.  He said, "Brenda Kay."

Slowly I looked from him to the child in my arms, this newborn with the
beautiful hair, suckling in her sleep.  I said, "After your sister, "
and thought of Brenda Kay, a girl born ten years before Leston, and of
the stories he'd given of her, her auburn hair and green eyes, her
beaus.  I thought too of her dying giving birth to her first child,
Toxie, and how Leston had grown up with that boy, himself a kind of
older brother to him.  I placed no faith in namesakes and how some
people thought it bad luck, doom wished upon a new soul on earth if the
name of someone who'd died in a bad way were given.  Brenda Kay was my
husband's sister, a woman he had loved, family.  His own blood, and for
a moment I envied him those memories he had of her, evidence she'd
lived and had loved him.

I touched my daughter's hair, her ear, her fingers pink and small,
smaller than they would ever be from this day forward, my child already
growing right before my eyes, right in this room.  "It's a beautiful
name, " I said.  "The perfect name."

I looked up at Leston, and held out the same hand I'd touched our
daughter with, held it out for him.

He lifted his hand up, and our fingers touched.  "That's her name, " I
said, and we held hands that way for the longest time.

CHAPTER 7.

BRENDA KAY SLEPT.  SHE SLEPT THOSE FOUR DAYS I SPENT IN THE HOSPITAL in
Purvis, no one to visit but Leston, slept the ride home on the same
road we'd driven in darkness, the trees lining the road now alive with
a fall breeze that moved the high limbs, slept through meeting her
brothers and sisters the first day home.

Billie Jean seemed to forget she was a teenager with friends who'd be
appalled at this new proof her parents still actually touched each
other.  She'd leaned in close to the cradle next to my bed and touched
Brenda Kay's cheek with one finger, gave a small kiss to her
forehead.

Billie Jean turned to me, on her face a smile I'd never seen before,
proof to me she was becoming a woman, her face suddenly thinner, lips
fuller, eyes deeper.  Without a word she leaned over and kissed me on
the forehead, too, and hugged me.  I thought I could smell on her the
faint trace of rosewater, and hugged her the closer for it.

Next came Burton, who stood at the foot of the bed and said, "Momma, I
helped with this, you know."  I nodded, said, "Without you your daddy'd
probably still be out in the woods taking out stumps, " and Burton gave
a short, stiff nod, acknowledgment of the truth I'd uttered.  He looked
into the cradle, the same one he and each of the others had rocked in,
at his new sister, gave the same nod at her, and turned, left the
room.

Wilman'd been leaning against the wall near the door, hands still in
his pockets, head down.  Once Burton was gone, he looked up, pushed
himself from the wall, and made his way toward the cradle.  He looked
in, blinked, turned his head first one way, then another.  He looked at
me.

He said, "It hurt, didn't it?  " I smiled, shrugged.  I laced my
fingers together on top of the quilt.

"Yes, " I said.  "But the hurt doesn't matter, not when you see all the
love your children bring you."

He looked at Brenda Kay, brought his hands from his pockets and reached
down, fingered the blanket that lay over her.  He stooped, hesitated,
and brought his face to hers, kissed her.  He pulled away a moment,
then kissed her again, whispered, "Brenda Kay."

That was when I lifted my arms, held them out to him.  He smiled,
finally, and came to me, his shoulders in my arms a soft dream, one
coming to an end every day he grew up, every day each of them grew
up.

He patted me on the back, his small hands giving the finest comfort any
human being could give.

He pulled away, looked at me.  He said, "Don't cry, Momma, " and
reached a hand to my eye, touched at tears I hadn't known were
coming.

"Don't cry, " he said.

I nodded, took in a small breath, said, "Now send in Annie."

He smiled.  "I been taking good care of her, me and Cathe ral both, "
he said, and turned, ran from the room.

"Don't run, " I called after him, afraid for a moment of the sound his
steps made on the floor, my baby still asleep.  But she hadn't woken
yet except for her small cries at feeding.  Maybe waking her would be
the thing to do.

I leaned over, pulled back the blanket so I could see her, hands in
fists near her face, fingers curled into her palms so tight they nearly
disappeared.

Then Annie stood next to the cradle.  I hadn't heard her come in, saw
only her tiny feet next to the cradle, the ragged bottom edge of her
nye-nye on the floor.

I looked up.  Her eyes were on me, third and fourth fingers in her
mouth, nye-nye held to her shoulder.

"Annie, " I whispered, "this is your new sister, Brenda Kay."

She didn't move, only swallowed, reached up with her free hand and
rubbed an eye.

"Aren't you going to say hello?  " I said, and eased back into the
bed.

She shook her head once, fingers still in her mouth.

"Come here, " I whispered, and held out my hands to her.

She rubbed her eye again, then looked at the floor.  Slowly she edged
round the cradle and to the bed.  She still hadn't looked at me by the
time I could reach her, and I took hold of her hands, squeezed them.

I said, "You climb up here in bed and take a nap with Momma."

She wasn't smiling, her mouth open, the whites of her eyes the clean
and unbroken white of childhood, the brown irises filled with some
wonder at what all this was about, and who that baby in the cradle was,
and why everyone was so quiet in a house usually filled with noise.

All of that was in her eyes, and as she climbed up the quilt and then
under it, nye-nye still clutched in one hand, her body nestling in to
mine, I gave her no answers, simply decided that this time of quiet and
sleep was the best I could hope for.

And while she settled in next to me I thought of James in the South
Pacific, and of the only things I knew of that place, black and white
pictures in ancient issues of National Geographic I used to read when I
was in college.  Black water and black trees and gray dust, above it
all a white sun that burned away any color I might have been able to
imagine, though James'd sent home letters describing flowers he'd never
thought could be, shades of green deeper and brighter than any summer
in Mississippi, water the blue of a cold and cloudless November noon
here.

He was with the Seabees, him and his fellow sailors making barracks and
airstrips and offices on each new island we won down there, but in my
thoughts of him all that was gone.  There was nothing, only the
knowledge as sharp as a knife in my heart that James was there, me
here.

But even in the face of that knowledge cutting deep, even in the face
of my firstborn not yet knowing the beauty of his newest sister, I was
still grandly grateful for the God up in Heaven and His ignoring my
prayer to let this child die.  He was a merciful God, I knew, this fact
bore witness by the kiss Wilman'd given, the sweet nod of the head
Burton'd made.  His mercy was there in Billie Jean's eyes and how she'd
looked at me, in the warmth of my Annie in bed beside me, and I
wondered how I'd survived the sort of God I'd had inflicted on me when
I was a girl, a single child, no brothers or sisters to usher me
through this life, back when it was only me to stand before the world
and watch what it could give you and just as easily take away.

When it came clear to Missy Cook I wasn't going to change, wasn't going
to become the woman of taste and bearing and gentility everything her
daughter had killed when she'd gone for that halfbreed Choctaw I was
sent away to the Mississippi Industrial School for Girls, a place for
wayward trash and delinquents, certainly what I must have become in her
eyes.  Cathe ral was reading away by that time, the two of us trading
chapters in the Bible to read to one another while I worked at my
figuring, her doing her chores.  She'd already met Nelson by then, too,
him a short, thick buck working on the county road crew, the two of
them meeting at the Ebenezer AME where Molly attended.

It had been a day like every other in late winter, the overcast sky, I
could see outside the dining room window, heavy and dark.  Missy Cook
and I were seated at the table, and Molly came from the kitchen, sat
before us food in the same fine china I'd known for five years.

Missy Cook cleared her throat and, like always, took my hand in hers
for the blessing.

But instead of going right to her same old words over the food, she
smiled at me, her head tilted to one side.

Molly was gone from the room, and I looked down at my plate,
gold-rimmed with yellow flowers circled with cobalt ribbons, china as
fine, I imagined, as when her daddy had given it to her and her new
Yankee husband.

She said, "Beginning Monday the next, you will be attending a new
school.  The Mississippi Industrial School for Girls.  It will be a
place for you to grow up, to learn to become a lady of manners and
heart."  She paused, gave a small squeeze of my hand.  "A place where
you can build upon your walk with the Almighty, and where you can learn
how we are placed upon this earth and to what ends that placement will
serve us, if we only serve Him first and best."

I swallowed hard, did my best to let my hand go loose, but nothing
happened.  The muscles in my arm were tight, on fire.  I hadn't looked
up at her yet, my eyes on a single cobalt ribbon and how it glided,
danced about the perfect flowers.  I said, "Does this have to do with
teaching Cathe ral to read?  " not certain if she would know what I was
talking about, but testing all the same.

She let go my hand, and suddenly my hand was cold, her flesh having
warmed me somehow.  I could see steam up from the plate of food before
me, and I thought of Molly sampling the lima beans, her small laugh.

Missy Cook said, "I watch for you from upstairs simply because I feel
it my God-given duty to keep an eye out for you, to watch for your
welfare."  She brought her hands to her lap, her signal I should do the
same for our blessing.

I held my hands together in my lap, tried to warm them up, but
couldn't, and I suddenly felt I was dying here, and just as quick this
Mississippi Industrial School for Girls became some garden to me, an
escape, lodging in a night that'd started with the death of my momma
and daddy, the School one more minute closer to a dawn I hoped I would
recognize when it came.  Sometime.

"Our Father, " Missy Cook started, and I bowed my head, her voice the
high-pitched, pious whisper it always was.  "Bless this food, as You
have been so kind to bless this household and all its inhabitants.  We
thank Thee for the blessings of the future, the blessings of the
present, and the blessings of the past that have made so abundant this
table before us."

That was where she usually stopped, and I was already lifting my head,
ready to eat this abundance before it grew cold, before I'd be booted
on my way to whatever next new life was to come.  But Missy Cook's eyes
were still drawn tight and closed, her hands still in her lap, and for
a moment I wondered whether she might be ready to burst into tongues
herself.

What I did was wrong, I knew.  But there was nothing for it.  I simply
laughed, not loud or on purpose, but a laugh that left me, the picture
in me of Missy Cook's eyes rolling back, words from another world
leaving her, and that image was what made me give way to the freedom
suddenly in my heart, I was on my way from this place, from fine china,
the dead gray sky outside the window, from food blamed on a God who
would keep the niggers back in the kitchen from reading.

I laughed for only an instant, but loud enough for Missy Cook to hear
me, for her to crack open one eye, and I snapped my head down, held my
hands tighter together.

She said, "And bless my granddaughter on her imminent journey, on her
passage from child into adult, from ignorance into wisdom, from the
abyss of great darkness into the gates of Heaven.  Bless her, dear
Lord, with the knowledge of Christ's grace and love and tender
mercy."

She paused, breathe out in a heavy whisper, "Amen."

I had only a moment to look up before her open palm came down upon my
cheek.  A blast of white pain seemed to split open my face, the shock
of it enough to keep back tears, even to keep me from looking away from
her own face, her teeth clenched, hand up and ready to slap me again.

"You chose a path when you were baptized, and that path is not one from
which you can fall, " she said.  "Laughing in Christ's face.  For the
wages of sin is death, saith the Lord.  To laugh in Christ's face is
sin."

Her hand was still up high, the fingers beginning now to shiver with
what I figured must have been anticipation, more sin from me.

But I turned toward her, faced her.  I could feel the welt rising in my
cheek, the rush of blood there, but I looked at her, let her eyes enter
me, let mine, as best I could, enter hers.  I held her look for a few
moments, then closed my eyes.

I wasn't certain now how many Christs there were at work in this world,
how many Gods, from Cathe ral's and Molly's to whatever god had driven
my father and my mother toward and then away from each other, to the
one that operated somehow in the woman before me, but I did the only
thing I knew the Christ in me would have done, I gave her my other
cheek, offered up the side of my face that was still smooth and white,
untouched by the hand of her Christ in rebuke of me laughing.

I was frightened, but not of her hand, the coming blow.  What filled me
with fear was the sudden certainty of what I saw that gesture meant, it
was a dare, a line drawn in the dirt.  Christ knew that, knew the shape
of that moment when the accused would stand innocent.  And I wasn't
certain which was worse, me aligning myself with Christ, doing what
He'd instructed, or the hate that seemed to guide me into daring her to
strike me again.  There were two sides to the gesture.  Two sides to
everything, I saw.

I held my eyes closed, waiting, waiting, but she only yelled,
"Insolence, " the thick and silent and cold air of the room
shattered.

On Saturday morning a wagon came for me, driven by a white man in
overalls and wearing a cap tipped to the left, almost covering one
eye.

Next to him sat a white woman in a gray dress, around her shoulders a
heavy black wool coat, a gray wool bonnet tied tight around her face.

She seemed not to have any lips at all, her mouth a hard slit, and I
knew that this was the end of one life, the start of the next, Molly's
eyes as she stood on the old porch shiny, her hands in front of her,
fingers laced.  Cathe ral stood next to her, her face holding nothing,
no smile, no frown, as she lifted one hand to me and waved.

I waved to her, me in the back of the wagon, in my lap the Bible Pastor
had given me after my baptism, next to me a tired and beaten leather
valise, inside it everything I needed, two dresses with petticoats, two
pairs of shoes, three tablets of paper, three red pencils, and, wedged
between sheets of the newest tablet, the photograph of my grandfather,
Jacob Chandler.  And somewhere above me, looking out a window down on
us all, was Missy Cook.

The driver gave the reins a shake, and we started off.

"Ezekiel thirty-seven, " Cathe ral called out, and brought her hand
down.  She stood with her arms at her sides, calling out the chapter I
would have read to her this afternoon had I not been sent away from
here by my grandmother.

"Ezekiel thirty-eight, " I called back, the wagon now at the foot of
the drive and pulling out into the street, where one last cold snap the
night before had near-frozen the mud ruts.  "Just you make sure you
keep on with your reading, " I nearly shouted, and I smiled, waved even
harder, my words meant not only as encouragement to Cathe ral, but as a
signal to Missy Cook, the same sort of signal a burning high-back
rocker had meant a night so many years ago.

Cathe ral nodded.  Molly hadn't moved.  Then the two were gone, the
porch now hidden behind trees on the street, and I was alone again in
the world.

I felt a hand on my shoulder, turned, looked up at the woman.  She was
smiling at me, said, "Now let's just be quiet back there."

I did my best to smile back at her, but the ruts in the road took over,
and I bounced hard, the only cushion beneath me a wool blanket.  The
woman turned forward again, her gloved hands gripping the edge of the
seat.

"Hold on, " the driver said.

But I'd already let go, had my Bible open, was turning in it to Ezekiel
37, and I started reading, "The hand of the Lord was upon me, and
carried me out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst
of the valley which was full of bones, and caused me to pass by them
round about, and, behold, there were very many in the open valley, and
lo, they were very dry.  And he said unto me, Son of man, can these
bones live?  And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest."

I shut the book right then, closed my eyes.  I knew this story by
heart, knew about the dry bones coming up from the ground and forming
an army for the whole house of Israel.  I was out of that valley now,
those dry bones, the savable ones, already up and walking, Cathe ral
and her boyfriend, Nelson, and in a way Molly, too, her knowing all
along I'd been teaching her daughter.

"You all right, child?  " the woman asked, and I opened my eyes.  She
wasn't smiling, on her face concern, her eyebrows together.

I said, "No ma'am."  I paused, watched my old street and the trees and
the other homes all falling away behind the wagon, places and things
and people I counted on never seeing again.  I said, "Just scared."

She nodded.  "You've every right to be, " she said, and I knew she
meant it, the way she'd nodded, kept her eyes right on mine.  What was
ahead was anybody's guess, so I did the only thing I could do, I sat in
the back of the wagon, started the long ride to the Mississippi
Industrial School for Girls in Picayune, hours away.  Things after that
would come clear, I knew, and I settled in, held myself against the
cold, against the banging wheels on frozen ground, against the lives I
was leaving behind.

Late that day, me sleeping on and off, the roads never seeming any less
bumpy than my old street, I climbed down from the wagon, finally, there
in Picayune.  The driver helped me, his hands cold in the evening air,
clouds low and near-black above us all, the woman smiling down at me no
different than before, as if there were plenty she knew about what
would happen to me here.  I followed her into the building, huge and
ugly, yellow brick with windows no larger than shoeboxes.  She led me
up to the third floor to my room, inside it six beds all with iron
headboards like bars from a jail cell door, walls the same ugly yellow
brick as outside, quilts as thin as paper.  The room had its own sink,
a mirror, beneath the sink a bucket and mop and can of Bon Ami.

Within a week or so I had a best friend, one Cleopatra Sinclair, a tall
girl with strawberry blond hair she kept in two ponytails, one on top
of the other at the back of her head.  She was from a town called Bobo,
Mississippi, placed here because she'd thrown a brick through a
storefront window in town two days after her father'd shot himself in
the head in the outhouse behind her old home.  Her mother'd died four
years before, and the town fathers figured on her best being served by
sending her down to Picayune.  "Where I could find a useful and
redemptive life, " were the words she used when she told me the story
of how she was sent here.

Cleopatra had brought with her the same brick she threw through that
window, slept with it under her pillow every night.  Another girl,
Mavis Petrie, a short girl with black hair to her waist, legs like tree
trunks, kept with her a mother-of-pearl inlaid brush and comb, gifts to
her from her aunt, who'd sent her here for no other reason than that
she'd caught her smoking rabbit tobacco out behind their wagon one
evening.  "It was the only thing wrong I ever done, " Mavis said each
night as she brought the brush through her hair a hundred times, "the
only thing I ever done wrong, the only thing, " though Cleopatra had it
on good measure that the real reason she'd been sent here was because
the aunt had found Mavis in bed with the uncle one Sunday morning, and
that the brush and comb were in fact gifts from the uncle, him thankful
for the good time she'd shown him.  Of course I never questioned
Cleopatra, never asked her where she'd gotten her information, but only
stared at Mavis each night as she brushed her hair and muttered about
what she'd done wrong, Cleopatra and I exchanging glances now and
again, amazed at what she might know about men, what neither of us had
any idea about.

And I'd secretly thrilled at the intimacy of our glances, Cleopatra's
and mine, and at how there were secrets we knew of others, and how we'd
nod our heads at each other when some other girl was around, the both
of us knowing precisely what we meant.  I thrilled at that, because I'd
never known such closeness, not even when I'd been reading to Cathe
ral.

This was a friendship, the kind, I figured, maybe only sisters could
know, and I was happy.

Another girl, this one about my height though a year younger, brought
nothing with her, only showed up one day in late July, my first summer
there, wearing only a pale blue dress stained with dirt and grease and
who knew what all, her hair matted and filled with burrs, her
fingernails bit to the quick, several of them bleeding.  She'd been
brought in by one of the hall mistresses, Mrs. Archibald, who'd simply
said, "Ladies, this is Bessy Swansea, " all the introduction she ever
gave.  She turned, left the room, at which point Bessy Swansea backed
into a corner, slowly slid down the wall.  She crouched there, elbows
on her knees, hands open, palms down, sizing us all up, her eyes
catching on each one of us a moment, then moving on to the next.  Dil
"Hey, " Cleopatra said.  She was Lying on her bed, just as the rest of
us were, all of us at work on the summer course homework we had to
finish before dinner, courses during the summer simple things like
Proper Care of the Home and Farming Chores and Preparing Vegetables,
the rest of the year was spent with the real courses, Latin, Geometry,
Grammar.

But she said nothing, only stared at each of us in turn.  Mavis, a
finger already wrapped in a lock of hair, glanced from me to Cleopatra
to Beaulah another girl in our room, famous for her nightmares every
Wednesday night, her waking us all up like clockwork with loud
screaming about horses and rifles then to the last girl in our room,
Duchess, a big-bosomed girl with blond hair like broomstraw and brown
eyes as dull as mud.  We all waited.

Finally, Cleopatra rolled onto her tummy, turned her back to the new
girl.  She said, "It's only hey, " and let out a sigh, shook her
head.

We all did the same, turned our backs on the new intruder, me the last,
all of us waiting now for the dinner bell.

It was a week solid before Bessy finally spoke to any of us, and then
it'd been to Mavis, and it'd been to ask if she could touch Mavis'
brush.  By this time Bessy'd been soaped down enough to where the grime
and burrs and all else had disappeared, leaving behind a girl prettier
than any of us could've imagined the night she'd come and sat in the
corner, though her nails were still bitten all to pieces, two or three
on each hand bright red and sometimes fairly dripping blood.  We all
wore the same uniform, a gray cotton blouse and black cotton jumper
with black leggings, but there'd been something in how the clothes wore
on Bessy that made all of us look at her more, see her differently than
the rest of us.  Her skin was soft, begged you to touch it, and her
hair, worn now in a single ponytail low on her neck, caught early
morning light when we took the mandatory four times-around-the-school
walk, all 165 of us in one big chain encircling the school grounds,
Bessy in front of Cleopatra and me bringing up the rear.  Her eyes were
always on the ground before her, her arms crossed and held tight to her
chest like this were dead winter, though we were still in July.

The night she first spoke, she'd only whispered to Mavis, "May I hold
your brush?  " All of us turned from our homework.  Mavis clutched the
brush to her chest, all of us up off our beds now, wanting in on
whatever was happening.  "No!  " Mavis whispered, then reached quick to
the comb that lay next to her, afraid, I figured, Bessy might take that
up instead.

"You can't, " Mavis cried, "you can't."

My eyes were on Bessy.  She opened her mouth, showed for the first time
a line of perfect teeth, white and shining and straight.  She leaned
her head back, her mouth open wide, and let out a laugh that shot
through all of us, made me blink and shiver at once, her ponytail
quivering with that long laugh.

"You, " Bessy said, and pointed a finger at Mavis, the tip blood-red,
the nail sheered off.  She pointed at each of us, one at a time.  "All
y'all, " she said, smiling, perfect teeth, perfect skin, perfect
hair.

"All y'all, you're all nothing but scared, that's all."  She paused,
let out a chuckle, but nothing to compare with that laugh of a moment
ago.

"You're all just a gang of scared, mewly, snot-nosed burrhead babies, "
she said.

It was Cleopatra to answer.  She said, "And who the hell are you?  "
Her hands were already in fists at her sides, ready for whatever this
new girl could muster, her head cocked, her hair out of the ponytails
and falling off her shoulders.

Cleopatra said, "Little Miss Pretty Fingers."

Bessy lit into her with a shriek that brought girls from the two floors
below heading for our room, the two of them falling backwards onto the
floor with a heavy sound that seemed to shake the beds.  Bessy was on
Cleopatra's chest, her knees holding her down, and she was pulling at
Cleopatra's hair, held two fistfuls of it, shook and shook and shook so
that Cleopatra's head seemed almost pulled off her neck.  Neither of
them made any sounds, though, Bessy's shriek was gone, replaced by the
echoes of girls running in the hall toward us, and with Duchess and
Beaulah and Mavis, all three of them sobbing.

Then, in a move so quick I couldn't even figure how it happened,
Cleopatra was on top of Bessy, though Bessy still had hold of her hair,
still shook.  But Cleopatra's hands were free now, no longer pinned
down by Bessy's knees, and Cleopatra started slapping Bessy's face, one
hand after the other, first the left then the right then the left
again, each hit a solid strike, and I could see the welts already
rising on Bessy's skin, that perfect skin all welling up red.  Still
she shook Cleopatra's head, and when I took my eyes off that beautiful
skin Bessy'd once had, I saw on the back of Cleopatra's head a bloody
spot the size of a peach.

Girls flooded the room, all of them surging in and around and
hollering, choking me off from what I'd finally realized had been on
its way since Bessy'd come in here, and since Cleopatra'd said Hey.

They were fighting, trying to figure who'd be boss around here.

I didn't move, let the girls who didn't belong in the room take over
and fill the room with more noise than the entire school'd heard since
as long as I'd been there.

Finally Mrs. Archibald and Mrs. Winthrop, the other hall mistress,
and Tory, the nigger janitor, made it to the doorway, pushed their way
through the girls, no one moving out of the way on her own.

Above it all I could hear Mrs. Archibald, the older of the two, hair
gone to gray, eyes heavy with wrinkles we called carpetbags.  "Girls, "
she was hollering, "girls, girls, " though no one was quieting down, in
front of her and doing the most work through the crowd Mrs. Winthrop,
silent, only holding on to girls and pushing them aside.  Tory, a
sad-faced nigger with red eyes that always looked like they were ready
to bust out in tears, only pushed along behind Mrs. Archibald, eyes as
much on the ground as they always were.

Mrs. Winthrop stopped, disappeared below the heads of all the girls,
all of them suddenly gone quiet, as though they'd never even noticed
her coming up.

Then she had a girl in each hand, held them by the collars of their
blouses.  Both of them were taking in quick, shallow breaths, hair down
in their faces, the two of them so alike in how they breathe , how
their hair fell down and across their eyes, mouths open, they could
have been sisters.  Both had bloody noses, both looked at each other,
both did nothing, only held there by Mrs.  Winthrop.

Mrs. Archibald stood before them now, looked first at Bessy, then at
Cleopatra.  Then she turned to Tory, who stood off a few feet, the
girls finally having cleared space for all that was going on.

She said, "Tory, bring the belt."

"Yes'm, " Tory said, and bowed his head, turned and headed for the
door, the girls he'd had to push through a moment before making clear a
path for him.  He was out in a second.

Girls were leaving almost as quick as they'd come in, all silent, all
heads down and looking at the floor, some even with hands folded in
front of them.  In less than a minute the room was empty save for we
six girls, and Mrs.  Winthrop and Mrs.  Archibald.

Tory came in, held the thick leather belt reserved for occasions just
such as this, though I'd never seen it before, only heard tell of it in
legends that went round the school.  It shone with the gas light above
us, glistened for having been oiled Tory only knew how many times.  It
was four or five inches wide, maybe a fingernail thick.  And, I saw, it
wasn't a belt at all, but only a long piece of leather, fashioned just
for this use, no buckles, no holes, nothing.  Only leather.

Mrs. Winthrop let go the two girls, and without another word they all
turned, headed out the door.  Once there, Mrs. Winthrop, the last one
out, turned, leaned into our room.  The girls behind me were still
crying, their sounds no different one from the next, just three girls
crying.

She whispered, "Lights out, " and reached with her hand to the gas key,
twisted till the gas popped.  She closed the door, then yelled, "Lights
out, " her voice as deep and heavy as any man's.

In the darkness I could hear their footsteps down the hall, the slam
shut behind them of the stairwell door.  We all knew what was next, the
sounds up and down the hall of everyone in the school crowding now to
get to the windows.  Though lights were out in every room, I knew there
wasn't a single girl in bed, the ones in the rooms across the hall from
our side were sneaking out and into rooms on this side, though none
were making their way into ours, this room cursed by what'd happened
here.

The four of us stood at the window, heads almost touching, faces
pressed up to the glass, and we waited, watched the dark down there.

Tory came out of the building carrying a lantern, the shadows dancing
and moving all about him as he walked on the sidewalk below us, behind
him first Mrs. Archibald, then the two girls, I couldn't decide which
was which, then Mrs.  Winthrop.

No one spoke, either in our room or down there in the courtyard, but
the moves they made were all perfect, as if they'd rehearsed it all,
Tory stopped at the flagpole, set down the lantern, backed off a few
feet, and stood with his hands at his sides, his head down.  Next Mrs.
Archibald went to the far side of the pole, followed by one of the
girls.  Mrs. Archibald stopped, the belt still in her hand.  She
turned around, and all I could see of her was her white face in the
lantern light, her white hands holding the belt in front of her.

The girl with her turned around.  It was Cleopatra, her hair tucked
behind her ears now.  She bent over, wrapped her arms around the
flagpole, and I couldn't see her face anymore.

Across from her stood Mrs. Winthrop, and then Bessy went to the
flagpole, bent down and wrapped her arms around it, too.  They were on
opposite sides of the pole, arms touching, heads close enough to one
another that they could have whispered to each other and neither Mrs.
Winthrop nor Archibald'd ever know.

Mrs.  Archibald folded the belt in half, held the ends with one hand.

With the other hand she reached to Cleopatra's jumper, pulled it up
over her hips.  Then she stepped back, held the belt with both hands,
reared back her arms, and brought the belt down hard on Cleopatra.

I could feel the sting inside the crack of sound the belt made through
the summer night air, crisp and clean and cold.  But then came the
terrible surprise I'd had no way to prepare for, Cleopatra howled, let
loose a sound from deep inside her that turned the crack of the belt
into nothing, just punishment for a fight in a room.  Her howl took out
my breath, brought sweat to my forehead and neck and down the small of
my back.

The sound stopped, and Mrs. Archibald stepped back, held the belt out
to Tory.  He took it, and went to Mrs.  Winthrop, gave it to her.

This was how they were going to do it, I saw, one whipping after
another, each girl given her turn, each hall mistress administering the
whipping, Tory the middleman, his the task of handing the belt back and
forth, back and forth.

Mrs. Winthrop lifted Bessy's jumper over her hips, brought the belt
back with two hands, just as Mrs. Archibald had, and for a moment I
wondered if they hadn't been given lessons in all this, some summer
course in Proper Whipping of Delinquent Girls.

But before she brought the belt down and onto Bessy, she paused, looked
up to the building, up at all of us girls hidden away in the dark
windows of Lights Out.  I knew she couldn't see any of us for the dark,
but still I flinched, pulled away an inch or so from the window, just
as Mavis and Beaulah and Duchess did, just as every girl in the
Mississippi Industrial School for Girls did, I was certain, and it came
to me what was going on in all of this, they were doing the same thing
to all of us as Missy Cook'd done when she'd burned our clothes, my
dead momma's words now floating up to me like ghosts themselves.  This
is for us, came my momma's whispered words, You and me are supposed to
be seeing this, supposed to be standing right here and watching it
all.

Mrs. Winthrop turned back to Bessy and the task at hand, and brought
down the belt.

I closed my eyes.  The crack of leather split the night, and then came
Bessy's cry, one not at all different than Cleopatra's, and I thought
again of the two of them after the fight, and how they'd looked so like
kin, sisters maybe a year apart.

I turned from the window, made my way through the dark.  Before I got
to the bed another crack came, another howl, Cleopatra again.  I
touched the iron foot board, felt the cold metal, heard the next crack,
Bessy's cry.

I undressed with my eyes closed, slipped over my head the sleeveless
cotton nightshirt we all wore.  Then I climbed into my bed, pulled the
sheet up to my chin, turned my back to the window.

I wasn't going to watch, wasn't going to do precisely what they wanted
me to do.  They couldn't make me see what they wanted, couldn't control
me that way.  That was why I'd taught Cathe ral to read, why I'd kept
close the stories my mother'd given me, why the photo of Jacob was
still with me, jammed into my tablet and shoved beneath my mattress.

But I could still hear the crack of the belt, the howls, heard them go
on and on, finally losing track of who was who crying out in the
dark.

* * *

The next morning, there on her bed lay Cleopatra, her face toward me,
eyes shut deep in sleep, her mouth open.  She had on her nightshirt,
her sheets bunched up around her feet, her hands tight together at her
chest.

I looked to Bessy's bed, saw her there, her face away from me, blanket
and sheet pulled up tight to her neck.  The blanket moved up and down
with her slow breaths in and out.

Although I'd listened what seemed all night long for them to come in,
I'd heard nothing, and for a moment I wondered if everything I'd seen
last night had really happened.

Then the two of them rolled over in their sleep, and I saw the truth,
Bessy rolled over toward me, and here came her face, the welts from
last night given over to blue bruises, eyes swelled slits, her lips
puffed up and near-black, cheeks not cheeks at all anymore, only fat
skin bruised and bruised.

I looked at Cleopatra, already struggling in her sleep to roll over
away from me, her eyes still closed, her mouth still open.  She lifted
her head an inch or so from the pillow, turned, and I saw the back of
her head, a huge gauze bandage taped on to bare skin there.  They'd
shaved off her ponytails.

When they awoke, the world was different, Bessy and Cleopatra were
suddenly best friends, the two of them never apart, though it took
three or four weeks for Bessy's face to come back to normal, and though
there was a place on her left eyebrow where it'd split in two and that
kept her forever touching a wetted finger there to try and get the
hairs to fall together, Cleopatra's hair was months in growing back,
the square of shaved head hid as best she could by piling and pinning
the top and sides back.

But I'd been given the role of follower, me the one behind on the
morning walks round campus, Cleopatra and Bessy ahead of me and
laughing and giggling along.

Cleopatra Sinclair was the only person could even come close to my
calling a sister, and she'd been stolen away from me with the slap of
fists, the mixing of their blood as they fought.  There'd come out of
their being whipped a new bond, something I knew I'd never formed yet
with anyone, never would unless I surrendered to whatever passion it
was the two of them set free in that fight.  My days from then on were
spent even more alone, me buried deep in the same kind of solitude I'd
carried since my brother'd died, an unrecognizable solitude, as much a
part of me as the color of my hair, the shape of my lips, my brother
always and only the memory of a baby on a daddy's knee, and of him
sleeping away in a cradle, breathing in and breathing out.  l Jr Wrl
That was my only history of the love of a brother that vague picture in
my head or the love of a sister the picture of Cleopatra there with
Bessy Swansea.  The two of them always walked ahead of me, me there
with my arms crossed against my chest, my eyes to the ground, while the
two of them set about making themselves their own sisters.

It was blood to forge that bond, I finally knew, my baby Annie here
asleep next to me now, blood coursing through her as she breathe in and
out herself, the light outside the window gone, night on us.  It was
blood that brought us all alive, as alive as the soft memory of my baby
brother, his blood and mine what kept him alive in my head.  Blood,
too, as red as the blood on the hands of the doctor who'd held up my
newest baby, asleep in the cradle next to me, and slapped her into this
world.

Blood part me, part Leston flowing through the bodies of all our
children.  It was that blood that made us all whole, made us this
family, the Hilburns, these six children, and my husband, and me.

Cathe ral came into the bedroom then, touched my shoulder in the dark,
whispered, "Miss Jewel, wake up.  Time for supper."

"I'm awake, " I whispered, and suddenly the world came crystal clear to
me, everything around me and everything that'd ever happened to me
solid and worth keeping.

"Cathe ral, " I whispered, and she gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze.

"Twenty-two hours, " I whispered.  "And now God's smiling."

I thought I could see her smile in the dark.  She whispered, "You put
in the work, and now God given you a beautiful child."

I nodded, whispered, "Six of them, " touched Annie's warm body next to
me, but still on my heart the stone of James being gone.

She held her hand on my shoulder a moment longer before she stood,
slowly moved to the door.  "Yo' supper be up in a minute.  Meantime you
be keeping it quiet like you been."

"Six of them, " I whispered loud enough for her to hear, and she
stopped in the doorway.  She looked back, one hand on the doorjamb.

I heard from downstairs Burton say, "First dibs on the legs, " then
Wilman whine, "Me first, " and Leston, "Boys."

"Smiling, " she whispered.

Annie moved in her sleep, an arm onto my lap, and I touched her hair,
smiled myself.  l CHAPTER 8.

STILL BRENDA KAY SLEPT, ON THROUGH THE REST OF OCTOBER, AND then into
November, me by that time thanking even more my God for the blessing of
a child who took so little tending.  And she was a blessing, certainly,
four children all growing bigger, calling for more of me with each next
morning, Cathe ral slowly disappearing from us, her help around the
place falling away as it did after the birth of each new child.  By
early December, I was only seeing her every now and again, word of her
and her boys and how they were all doing coming to me through Leston
through Nelson, and there were days when I wondered if I might even see
her again, this new sleepy child my last baby.

So that the blessing of Brenda Kay sleeping was only magnified, I had
time for mending, time for tutoring the boys and Billie Jean with their
homework, time for Annie, who'd taken to napping with me each
afternoon, the three of us Brenda Kay, Annie, me a sort of girls' club
for sleep.

None of my other children'd slept through until at least five months,
Wilman not until he was eleven months, and there were cold mornings now
when I would wake and realize I'd forgotten about the baby in the
cradle next to me.  But then my breasts would start to filling, and I
would roust Brenda Kay out, her eyes opening for a few minutes, eyes
the closest to Leston's green of any of the children, and she would
start to feed.  She was healthy, ate just as much as any of them had.

She was a little small, and those fingers curled into her hands seldom
unfolded, but I counted all this a blessing.  She was a different child
was all, maybe my change of life baby, and I wondered how delicate her
skin might be when she grew up, if she would be as beautiful as her
namesake, have as many boys following her home as Leston told me his
sister had.

By late December she was awake an hour or two a day, and on Christmas
morning I dressed Brenda Kay up in the silliest thing I'd ever paid
for, a red flannel outfit, more a sack with arms, around the collar and
at the wrists puffs of white cotton, along with it came a little red
flannel nightcap, a cotton puff at the end.  Before I let anyone
downstairs to see what Santa'd brought, I laid Brenda Kay on the bed,
Leston already down in the front room and stoking the fire, the
children stamping like horses, ready to run.  But I took my time with
Brenda Kay, this her first Christmas ever, and once I'd gotten her
dolled up I couldn't help but laugh at this little elf on my bed.

I picked her up, held her with her head at my shoulder, and opened the
door.

"Go ahead, " I said, and all four of them tore off down the stairs.

Leston was the only one dressed, him in his overalls and a red corduroy
shirt.  The tree was set up in the far corner, before the front window,
on it the strings of popcorn we'd made the day after school got out,
here and there ornaments we'd gotten over the years.  Nothing like what
I saw in the magazines, not in Saturday Evening Post or the ads in the
Reader's Digest or the occasional Life I'd pick up when we took the
children into Purvis Saturday afternoons for the matinee.  In all those
magazines the trees were lost in too much glitter and light and
tinsel.

But our tree, I knew, looked as trees ought, something clean and
different in the house, a guest here, rooms filled more than ever with
the smell of pine.

The children went at their presents, each lost for a while in them,
Wilman and Burton both got shiny new pocket knives, Billie Jean a
hairbrush and mirror, Annie a store-bought doll with two outfits.  Next
they took in to the stockings above the fireplace, Burton first to
upend his on the floor, treasure spread before him, a pack of Beeman's,
chocolate candy coins, three new red pencils, a gum eraser, a
tangerine.

Then Wilman dumped his, got instead of the Beemans a pack of Juicy
Fruit, instead of the gum eraser a ruler, and though I knew the
differences in their gifts would start a fight, I didn't care.  Juicy
Fruit was for my baby boy, Beeman's for my little man.

And I thought of James, wondered if this morning somewhere south of the
equator where, he'd written last week, it was dead summer, he were
opening the package we'd sent him, a new razor and strop, a Whitman's
Sampler, and pictures of home drawn by the boys, Annie choosing instead
to draw a picture of the three of us asleep of an afternoon, no
difference in our sizes, just two stick bodies Lying on a stick
bedframe, another stick body in a stick cradle next to it, all of it
drawn with a green crayon.  Billie Jean had written him a long letter,
and I was proud of her for that, for taking four nights to write it.

I'd wanted to look over it before I sent it, but she'd already sealed
it in an envelope, across the front the word PERSONAL written in her
teenage curlicues.  She'd smiled when she gave it to me, and though I
knew Leston wouldn't have approved what, he'd wonder, did a sister have
to say to her brother the rest of the family couldn't hear?  I'd only
nodded, tucked it in with the rest of the package.

I imagined him there in a barrack or whatever it was they lived in, and
opening the box, getting all those presents, sharing the chocolates.

Maybe he thumbtacked the pictures against a wall near where he slept,
or maybe folded them up, placed them in his shirt pocket, him touching
those pictures two or three times a day, making certain we were there
with him.

I was sitting in my rocker now, Brenda Kay still against my shoulder.

Billie Jean took her stocking from its nail, knelt- with it.  "Momma, "
she said, "I'm too old for this here, " but she wasn't even looking at
me, only dumped the stocking out near as fast as the boys had.  In hers
was a roll of cherry Lifesavers, a little note from me saying I'd
resubscribed to Photoplay for the next year, and a small compact of
corn-silk powder, a tangerine.

She looked up at me when she saw the compact, then held it in her hand,
opened it.  She took out the little powder puff inside, lifted it to
her face, held the mirror up, eyed herself.  The movements were too
quick, I saw, almost routine for her, and I hoped Leston hadn't picked
up on what I figured must be the fact she'd done this a hundred times
already.

She stopped, looked to me again, then to Leston.

He was sitting in the chair next to the fireplace close enough to where
he could lay in wood as he saw fit.  But now he was looking at Billie
Jean, his elbows on his knees and leaning forward a bit.

He looked at me.  I'd bought it for her, hadn't told him about it.  I
smiled, gently shrugged, Brenda Kay stirring a moment.  I said, "Who
can blame Santa Claus?  " He stared a minute more, then let his head
fall, slowly shook it.  When he looked up again, he was smiling, though
I could see, too, he was trying to hold it back with a half-hearted
grimace.  He said, "You women."

"Yes, " I said, "we are."

Billie Jean still held the puff near her face.  Her eyes were huge, her
mouth open.

"You'll catch more flies than boys with your mouth hung open like that,
" Leston said.

Billie Jean's cheeks went red.  She stood, my oldest daughter, and I
could see beneath the flannel the swell of her new breasts, the curve
there.  She'd begun her monthlies two years ago, but nothing had gone
on up top for so long I hadn't paid any attention.  Now here she was on
a Christmas morning, full on her way to the beautiful woman I knew she
would turn out to be.

She came to me, gave a small kiss to my cheek, and smiled at me, at her
daddy, then moved quick to the top of the stairs and for the privacy of
her bedroom to try out her new toy.  I'd have to show her sometime this
afternoon the trick of how wet cherry Lifesavers worked near as well as
lipstick if you did it right.

"Don't you worry, " I said to Leston.  "She'll grow up whether you
forbid her to or not, so you might as well not worry yourself over
it.

It'll happen" He looked up at me, smiling, and nodded.  He said, "Now
what about presents for Momma?  " Wilman and Burton had their knives
open, Burton with his cradled in both hands, Wilman with his in one
hand, turning it this way and that.

Annie'd undressed the doll, held her naked in her arms, gently rocked
her.

Leston looked up.  "Well?  " Both boys snapped shut their knives.

They'd heard him, of course, but only played out the moment, what all
children did, act as though you hadn't heard, then go for as long as
you could ignoring whatever command you'd been given, what was in your
hand the center of the world at any given moment.

They crawled across the floor to the tree, and both pulled out presents
for me, two small boxes wrapped in plain blue paper.  The presents
looked exactly alike.  They always bought the same things for me, one
year two sets of stationery with the exact same yellow lily design at
the top, another year two tortoiseshell headbands, and I wondered what
it might be this year, what Billie Jean had helped them pick out at the
five and dime.

They crawled over to me, each with his closed knife tight in a fist.

Burton held his present out to me first, but Wilman pushed his arm
aside, held out his.

"Wilman, " I said, and he let out a heavy breath, pouted, sat back on
his legs.

Burton held his present out to me, grinned.

"Thank you, " I said, "but will you open it for me?  " I motioned with
one hand at Brenda Kay.  "My arms are a bit busy now."  I smiled.

"Sure, " he said, and tore at the paper, had it off in a second.  He
held the white box, opened the lid, and reached in with two fingers,
brought out a small red change purse with a gold clasp.  He held it up
to me, his grin gone to a true smile, lips together, head tipped to one
side.

"It's beautiful, " I said.  "Thank you, Burton."

"For you, " he said.  Then he opened the clasp, turned the purse over,
and a shiny gray penny fell out.  He held it up, said, "For good luck,
" and dropped it back in, snapped closed the purse.  He looked up at me
again, his face the serious one of an eight-year-old bent on
instruction.  "Now don't you ever spend that, you here?  That will
bring on bad luck.  And you don't want that."

"Not at all, " I said, and solemnly shook my head.

He scooted back, made way for Wilman, who moved closer, and I wondered
what I could say about a second change purse.

He paused a moment before he opened the lid, two fingers tapping the
white cardboard.  Then he opened it.  He reached in, pulled out one end
of a piece of red yarn, pulled it higher and higher until out came a
pinecone tied at the other end.  On each leaf of the cone was a dab of
gold glitter, and as he held it up, the pinecone slowly turned on its
own, first one way and then the other.  He held it away from him, and I
could see behind it the fire in the fireplace, that pinecone slowly
moving, surrounded by the soft orange light.

"It's beautiful, " I said, and my heart filled up with the pride and
sorrow and joy only a mother can feel for her children.

"He made it himself, " Burton said, and reached a finger over to touch
it.  I thought Wilman would have pulled it away, but he didn't, just
let his brother touch it, watched it swing to the left and right, still
twirling.

"It's beautiful, " I said again, those the only words coming to me.

Wilman nodded, satisfied.

Annie sat next to the tree, the naked doll still in her arms.  She
looked at the pinecone, then turned her eyes to me.

Nye-nye lay on the floor next to her, and she took a fistful of it.

She stood, and the four of us my husband, my two boys, and me watched
as she came toward me, dragging the blanket behind her.

She made it to me, and held out the hand with the blanket.  "This is a
present, " she said, and I glanced at Leston.  He shrugged, shook his
head.

"This is a present, " she said again.  "This is for you when we
sleep.

You can use nye-nye when we help Brenda Kay sleep.  She needs our
help."

Slowly I reached for the blanket, certain that was all I could do, take
the gift from my child, thank her.

My fingers touched the blanket, and I held it there a moment, the two
of us touching, her eyes on me.  I said, "Thank you, Annie, " and she
let go.  I nodded, felt my chin about to give way, felt my eyes filling
up.

"You're welcome, Momma, " Annie said, and if the feeling I'd had
looking at the pinecone on a string, the change purse in my lap, had
been a mixture of joy and sorrow and pride, the blanket I held up to my
chest and covered my last baby with now let in a new feeling, one
that'd been somewhere inside my head and heart and wanting in for a
long time, fear.

Fear, because now it was clear and strong even to my Annie, my youngest
until three months ago, that something was wrong here, and that Brenda
Kay sleeping this much had something everything to do with it.  That
fear I'd put off believing in for the last month or so walked right in
Christmas morning, three of my children smiling up at me, my oldest in
a war somewheres and carrying in his shirt pocket a picture of green
crayon stick figures sleeping away, Billie Jean practicing how to be a
woman in an upstairs room right now, the gift of a compact and cherry
Lifesavers suddenly a nail in her coffin and mine both, me pushing her
to grow up when there was nothing for it really, growing up, family
here and around and always with you is what mattered, I knew,
especially now, when I'd finally recognized in the small gift of a
ragged blanket that my baby Brenda Kay was wrong somehow, that
something in her was wrong.

Still my children smiled, and I looked at Leston, saw him smile, too,
then lean toward the heap of wood on the hearth, toss into the fire
another chunk.  I watched as sparks flew up, disappeared into the
chimney, Wilman still holding high the pinecone.

CHAPTER 9.

BUT I LET THAT FEAR HOLE UP INSIDE ME UNTIL FEBRUARY, PRAYING each day
something might happen, that my baby would smile up at me when she came
to, that she would roll over, that the sound of a baby's laugh might
escape her and make its way into the house.  Nothing came.  Now she was
five months old.

I told Leston after the children were in bed that we needed to take
Brenda Kay to the doctor.

"Why?  " he said.  He looked up from the cigarette paper he held at his
fingertips.  He looked back to the paper, pulled from his shirt pocket
the small sack of tobacco he kept there.  He pulled the drawstrings
loose with his teeth and free hand, tipped in the tobacco.  He licked
the edge of the paper, rolled it with just his thumb and those two
fingers.  I'd seen him do it a hundred thousand times, his moves so
smooth and quick.

When he was finished he didn't put it to his lips, only held it there
in his fingers.  He was waiting for me.

"I don't know, " I said, giving him the easy lie, the one I wanted to
believe myself, the one would absolve me from taking her in earlier, me
hoping for some miracle to turn things round, God's big hand changing
the world.  I knew what was wrong, though I couldn't say exactly what,
My baby sleeps too much, my baby can't roll over at five months.

I swallowed, whispered, "Something's wrong, Leston."

Dr. Beaudry's office was above the hardware store in Purvis, the door
into the place at the top of a steep set of stairs on the outside of
the building.  Leston went up first, me behind him, carrying Brenda Kay
wrapped tight in blankets against the damp cold, the sky bruise blue,
rain coming.

We hardly ever saw a doctor, living as far out as we did and having
children up until then who'd remained fairly healthy.  We'd been here
before to set a broken arm James got when he was eight, jumping out of
a haymow playing cowboys and Indians one Saturday afternoon, Wilman was
here for a nail he'd stepped on while making his way to the outhouse
one summer night, him the one who'd left the board and nail on the
ground late that afternoon after giving up on a tree fort he and Burton
were building.

But Dr. Beaudry acted as though he knew us all the same, ushered us
into his office after Leston had knocked but once.  He offered us cups
of hot coffee, his smiling eyes all the while working over what little
he could see of Brenda Kay, still in my arms.  "No thank you, sir, "
Leston said, and I knew he meant no coffee for the both of us.

We took seats in hard straight-backed chairs, Dr. Beaudry on a
stool.

He was a few years younger than us, though his hair was gone except for
a brown fringe just above his ears and collar and a tuft above his
forehead.  He had on a white coat buttoned up almost to his neck, black
pants and shiny black boots, and sat with his hands laced in front of
him.

"So, " he said, still smiling.  He looked at me.  "What might be the
problem here?  " "She's been sleeping " I started, but then Leston
cleared his throat, and I glanced at him.

His eyes were on mine a moment, then turned to the doctor.  He seemed
to square his shoulders, sat straighter in the chair.  He said, "She's
sleeping all the time.  My wife says there's something wrong with the
baby, seeing as how she's sleeping so much.  Can't roll over yet,
either."

He looked back to me, and I thought for an instant I'd seen something
in his face, maybe in his eyes.  There was something, I was certain,
but then the look was gone, his eyes back to the doctor.  He was only
my husband again, a man who figured he had to be in charge of this
strange and ugly visit, whatever the reason.

But I wanted to say to him right then, right there, is's my baby.  I
wanted to say to my husband it was me to tote the child day in, day
out, to nurse it, let it sleep with me every day all day long.

And it was me who'd put off finally coming here so long, whatever guilt
accrued for that waiting all mine.

So I turned from Leston, looked straight at the doctor.  I said, "My
baby is not well, " me full aware I'd used that word my, as though the
child in my arms belonged to me and me alone.  I said, "She's nowhere
near being as far along as the rest of my children were at her age.

That's why we're here."

I paused, looked at Leston, still sitting up straight in the chair, his
bottom on the very edge of the seat, his back not even touching the
back of the chair.  He held that same old hat with both hands, his jaw
set, eyes hard on the doctor, and I wondered if he'd even recognized
what my words'd tried to say, is 2s my baby.

"Well, " Dr. Beaudry said, and lost the smile.  He let go his fingers,
reached out to me and the baby.  "Just let me take a good look-seev at
this baby, " he said.

I hesitated a moment, not certain of what was going on inside Leston's
head, not certain what was going on inside mine, my baby and whatever
was wrong with her, whatever I'd kept to myself these long months, was
about to be revealed.  Then I gave her up to him.

He held her in his arms, jostled her a little, said, "Baby Brenda?  "
"Brenda Kay, " Leston said.  He hadn't moved, hadn't even blinked
yet.

"Her name is Brenda Kay."

Dr. Beaudry glanced at him, tried to smile.  "Brenda Kay it is, " he
said, and looked back at the baby.  "Baby Brenda Kay?  Baby Brenda
Kay?

" I said, "She was up for a while not long ago.  She was up two hours
ago, so she'll probably not come awake for you."  My voice seemed frail
in the room, too small for the importance of this place.

Still he jostled her, though he was looking at me.  "How long was she
awake?  " I looked at my lap, afraid again of giving the wrong answer,
the one that would show to him I'd been a poor momma to this child.

But it was the truth he was after, I knew, the truth, too, what I was
looking for.  I wanted to know what was wrong with my child.

I swallowed, said, "Twenty minutes."  He said nothing, and I looked up
at him, saw him tickling her chin.

"Brenda Kay, " he said, "pretty baby Brenda Kay."

"Tickling her seems to do nothing, " I said.

"Doctor, " Leston said, his voice low and flat.  He still hadn't
moved.

"We didn't bring her here to be tickled.  We want to know what is wrong
with her."

"Leston, " I said, tried to make my voice sound as reproachful as I
could muster.  Still his eyes didn't move from the doctor.

"Well, " Dr. Beaudry said again, but now he stood, made his way from
the office toward the door that opened into his examining room, the
room where James' arm'd been set in plaster.

He reached the door, opened it.  White light fell into the room, and I
could see beyond him those white walls and white cupboards.

He stopped, turned to us, Brenda Kay held in one arm.  He smiled at the
both of us, said, "Who'd like to come in and supervise this little
hoedown?  " I looked at Leston.  Though I knew it could only be me,
something made me turn, look.

He nodded once, as though the decision were his to make.  He let his
eyes fall to his lap.

I stood, followed the doctor in.

* i *

Naked and on her back on the examining table, Brenda Kay looked like a
different child, though I'd seen her this way as many times as a mother
would.  But here it had to do with the lights, severe and bright to
show off whatever might be wrong.  Her legs seemed shorter, thicker,
her forearms smaller somehow.  She lay with her arms held against her
chest, her hands just beneath her chin, her legs out straight, eyes
closed, mouth open.  Her hair had started coming in now after she'd
lost it early on, hair the same copper Leston's had been the day I
first saw him, and she was putting on weight, though I knew she was
truly small for what five months ought to be.

Dr. Beaudry first pulled her fingers out straight, bent her arms at
the elbows, then examined her toes, bunched up and curled, too, like
her fingers.  But Billie Jean'd been born sucking at her first finger,
kept it there for near on till she was two.  Who was to say, I figured,
that toes and fingers curled down and held tight wasn't just how this
baby was formed inside me, what she would outgrow?

He bent her legs at the knees, pushed and poked her tummy and sides and
underarms and chest.  He opened her mouth wide, peered inside.  He
looked in her ears, peeled back an eyelid, covered the eyeball with the
palm of his hand and quick took it away, then did the same with the
other eye.

He propped her up, listened to her heart in front and back.

He lay her down again, and went back to her eyes, opened them again,
let the lids close.  Finally he stopped, held her head with both hands,
Brenda Kay still sound asleep.  He stood there in the hard light of the
room, and looked at her face, looked and looked.  Then with one thumb
he gently touched an eyelid, let the thumb trace its outline.

He wouldn't look at me after that, and I knew whatever was wrong was
real.  Softly he rubbed a hand on her chest, said, "I hope this
doll-baby isn't getting cold in here."  He touched her forehead with
his fingertips, said, "You can go ahead and bundle her up."

"What's wrong?  " I said, that word wrong a dull hammering in my
ears.

Whats wrong?  Whats wrong?

"You just bundle her up good and warm, and I'll be out with you in a
minute."  His eyes nearly met mine, but didn't as he touched me on the
arm, fiddled with the pile of clothes and blankets.  He turned away
from me, went to the counter on the other side of the table, started
writing down whatever words he was keeping secret from me.

I dressed Brenda Kay, my bottom lip between my teeth the whole time, my
baby limp as I struggled with first one arm, then the other.

Dr.  Beaudry came out holding a piece of paper, looking down at it.

Leston and I hadn't spoken yet, in my eyes when I came out of the
examination room enough fear, enough tears ready to go, to signal him
no words were needed.  I'd only come back to my seat, Brenda Kay in my
arms.

He'd reached over one hand, placed it on my knee.  Next had come Dr.
Beaudry's voice as he spoke on the telephone, the sound of words behind
a closed door, even the pauses between them as he listened to words I
would never know, all as dark and heavy as the sky outside, Leston's
hand the only comfort I knew.

But as soon as the doctor was back in the room, Leston's hand was gone,
back to helping hold his hat.  It was gone, and the doctor spoke.

"I've just spoken to a doctor in New Orleans, " he said, and looked at
me, at Leston.  Then he looked down at Brenda Kay, reached a hand
toward her and touched her cheek.  Her mouth quivered.  She was getting
ready for feeding.

He sat on the stool, said, "I'm sending you to the South's best baby
specialist.  Dr. Floyd Basket."  His eyes finally met ours full on,
and for a moment I wasn't ready for them, blinked and swallowed.  This
was the news, what mattered enough to sit down, look us in the eye.

"He's down in New Orleans, and he's a very busy man."  He laced his
fingers together in front of him again.  "My telephone call to him was
to set up a day for you.  I took the liberty of going ahead and
confirming a date."

He paused, looked at Leston now.  "He's the very best there is."

I swallowed again, whispered, "Best at what?  " He glanced at me, and
looked back to his hands.  Whatever power, whatever strength he'd
started with a moment ago was gone now.  He took a breath.

"I don't want you to think I'm ducking your question.  I'm not.  But I
don't want to say.  I don't want to guess at it, so " "Then guess at
it, " Leston said.  "Sir."

I looked at him.  His jaw was still tight, eyes square on the doctor,
but behind those eyes was that same look I'd seen before, that look I
didn't know.

"I will not, " Dr. Beaudry said a moment later, and sat up straight,
tall, his hands on his thighs now.  "My job here is to give you the
best advice possible.  This is a small town, and I am a small-town
doctor.  I will not guess at something I am not genuinely prepared to
understand."

He stared at Leston, who stared back at him, as if this were some sort
of contest.  "This is why I have set up an appointment with Dr. Basket,
in New Orleans.  Because he is prepared to say what is wrong here, and
I am not."

He stopped, the two of them in whatever man's game staring at each
other entailed, and I whispered the only words in my head, the only
thing that mattered in this world, "Will she die?  " Jt.  WL uj His
shoulders held up for a moment, but then fell, his head down again.  He
was silent, we were all of us silent, the only sound I could hear the
steady breaths in and out of Brenda Kay sleeping.  I looked at her, saw
no movement in her, bundled so tight.

"I'm not sending you out of here, " he said, and stopped.  "I'm not
sending you out of here, " he started again, "thinking your little girl
is going to die.  I won't.  She's not.  But she's got to see someone
Dr. Basket soon as she can, see someone best qualified to tell exactly
what is the problem with your daughter."

Her mouth quivered again, and she turned her head an inch or so,
readying.

"When?  " I whispered.

I could see from the corner of my eye him look at the paper again.  "A
week and a half.  Ten-thirty Thursday after next."

He folded the paper in half, held it out to Leston, who took it only
after letting him hold it there in the silence of the room for what
seemed a full minute.  Then Leston lifted his own hand, that hand
shaking, I could see, and took the piece of paper.

"On that, " Dr. Beaudry went on as though Leston hadn't made him wait
an instant, as though Leston's hand had been sturdy and still, "is Dr.
Basket's address, the date, the time.  All the necessary
information."

Leston stood, and I looked up at him.  He put the paper into his coat
pocket without looking at it, said, "How much do we owe you?  " His
eyes were on the wall behind the doctor.

"Nothing, " Dr. Beaudry said, and waved away the question with one
hand.

He stood.  "You don't owe me a penny."

Leston, eyes still on the wall, nodded.  He said nothing, then turned,
went for the door, stood with it open before I was even up from the
chair.

Then I was at the door, the cold air outside already surrounding me and
Brenda Kay, and I turned back to the doctor, tried to smile, to say
Thank you out of whatever respect I had for him and the way he'd
touched my baby's forehead, traced the outline of her eyes.  I tried to
say those two small words, but nothing came.

The sky opened up, let fall cold rain before we could make it to the
truck, so that once inside it the smell was awful, wet wool and old
cigarette smoke.

Leston started up the truck, switched the heater on high, turned on the
wipers.  Then he pulled out papers from inside his coat, the bag of
tobacco from his shirt pocket, started rolling.  But when he got it to
his lips I said, "Don't."

He stopped, a match already out of the box, ready to strike.  His hands
were shaking even more now.  He looked at me, hands still in midair,
for the first time since I'd come out of the examination room.

I said, "The baby, " and turned from him to Brenda Kay.  Her eyes had
come open, her mouth moving quick now, ready.

Slowly I pulled open my coat, unbuttoned my blouse, brought my breast
to my baby's mouth.

Leston brought his hands down to his lap, and watched, on his face that
same look I didn't recognize, but then it came to me, it was fear in
him, dark and simple.  Fear, what I'd not thought possible in this man,
the same man who built homes for us with his own two hands, the one
who'd built shutters, and'd polished a bit of dogwood until it shone
with the love and power of those two hands.  Now his hands shook, and
shook with fear.

We'd hit something, I knew, something neither of us knew what to do
with, whatever hope I'd had now a distant, dead friend, my prayers only
words on a cold wind.

The cab was warming up, though the rain fell harder, the wipers barely
able to make clear the world outside the window.  .

CHAPTER 10.

SOLDIERS AND SAILORS.  THAT WAS WHAT I SAW IN NEW ORLEANS, FROM the
moment we made it on into the city, buildings, people, cars and colors
all over.  But it was the soldiers and sailors everywhere that struck
me, men in uniforms, everything khaki or white, everywhere twos and
threes and fours, laughing and slapping each other on their backs, or
stumbling blind drunk along sidewalks, an occasional woman in tow,
skirt hiked up above her knees and makeup smeared.

"Now where again did y'all want to be let out?  " the taxi driver
called over his shoulder to us in the back seat, a thin store-bought
cigarette wedged tight into the corner of his mouth, only one hand on
the wheel.

The other hung out the window, and he waved now and again at other
taxis, other cars, even some of those soldiers, as if he knew the whole
world here.

"The office of Dr. Floyd Basket, " Leston said.  "Twelve Beaufain
Court."

He'd memorized the address, most likely burned into his mind the first
moment he'd looked at the slip of paper Dr. Beaudry'd given us back in
Purvis.

Neither of us had ever even been to New Orleans before, though we'd
talked of it often enough once we were alone in bed, the children down
and the house silent, that the only time we ever had alone, when we
would whisper to each other of what'd happened that day.  When we got
around to talking about New Orleans, it was with some sort of glee, our
honeymoon had been only two nights up to Hattiesburg in a hotel looking
out on the town square and the statue to the Confederate dead, I'd had
to be back to teaching Monday morning, and ever since then we'd talked
of dinner at some fancy restaurant in the French Quarter, of walks
through Jackson Square, of sitting on the bank of the Mississippi with
oyster po'boys.  Of just being alone and able not to worry.

But we didn't speak of it after coming home from Dr. Beaudry's, hadn't
mentioned word one of the three-hour drive we knew was coming up,
didn't even wake the children at dawn this morning, Cathe ral showing
up at the doorstep with Nelson and the rest of the niggers and Toxie
and JE, Toxie now in charge for the day, I knew, Cathe ral just walking
in, starting up the bacon in the pan.  I hadn't even told her to come,
hadn't bothered, because I knew she'd be here.

Then we drove, down through Tolowa and Lumber ton, then through the two
stoplights in Poplarville, then through Derby and Carriere and Ozona,
all of them the small towns I'd ridden through in the back of a wagon
of a March day colder and darker than this, the next town Picayune,
Mississippi, home of the Mississippi Industrial School for Girls and
Pearl River Junior College, and the life I'd led before I met Leston.

But as we moved through Picayune, along the same green square all these
towns had, past cars and trucks parked on the main street, people all
walking on the sidewalks, people with lives to lead on a Thursday
morning in a town where I'd spent six years of my life and where no one
here would even recognize my name, I couldn't help but feel that this
life I knew, the comfortable one with five healthy children, food on
the table, clothing to wear, was coming to its own end, shuttering
quick to a stop, its dead end another hour or so away in New Orleans.

Then we were out of Picayune, back on the blacktop and headed next for
Nicholson, Slidell, then across Pontchartrain, the north shore as far
south as I'd ever been.  Picayune was gone, around us only more of the
same old trees, some of it giving way every so often to marsh and scrub
pine, more and more water.

I looked down at Brenda Kay, who hadn't come awake since her feeding
outside Lumber ton.  She was the reason we were here, the reason we
were going to head across that lake, do what we'd only imagined doing
before.

She was the reason this life I knew was about to end.

Brenda Kay only slept, and slept, and then my eyes became heavy, too,
and I lay my head against the window, held on tight to my baby, and
fell asleep.

I opened my eyes, and we were stopped.  I blinked, swallowed, squinted
out the glass beside me to see a street, sidewalk.  Not much different
than Picayune.  Not what I figured New Orleans to look like.

I turned to Leston.  He had both hands on the wheel, his eyes straight
ahead.  Slowly he turned to me.

"Where are we?  " I said, and let my eyes close a moment, opened
them.

"Outside town, " he said.  "I don't know.  Here, at this grocer's.

Ernest Tulley over to the plant said to park here."  He was looking at
Brenda Kay, still asleep.  "I am not driving in to that place.  Ernest
Tulley said a taxi can take us in easier than driving myself."

He let go the steering wheel with one hand, pointed at a wrought iron
gate a few yards ahead.  "Highway's behind us.  This is where Ernest
said to park.  Said we can get a taxi from here."

"Fine, " I said, and opened my door, climbed out.

I heard Leston's door slam behind me, and then he was beside me.  We
were both of us silent, our heads too full with what was coming,
whatever surprise God was ready to serve up to us under a blue morning
sky already going hot.  The breeze in off an ocean still miles away
made the air along this street of storefronts even wetter than home,
and I wondered what it had looked like, Lake Pontchartrain, as we
crossed it.

The driver stopped the taxi in what looked like an alley, said over his
shoulder, "This be the place, " and laughed, his shoulders shaking with
whatever joke he'd figured was in his words.

Leston already had two dollar bills out, held them over the top of the
front seat.  Without looking back, the driver reached up, took the
money, shook his head at something else I couldn't figure.  He reached
in his pocket, handed Leston back the change.

Leston looked at the money a quarter and a dime and picked out the
dime, held it out to the driver.

He took the dime, looked at it just as he had the bills, shook his head
again.  He said, "Gee, thanks, Pops, " but by then we were already
moving out of the taxi, and I couldn't see Leston's face, whatever red
anger or humiliation might be there at our being a small joke to that
driver.

The taxi pulled away, and we were left standing before a brick and
mortar wall a little taller than me, in the center of it a wrought-iron
gate.  A brass plate black with tarnish was mounted next to the gate,
on it the words Dr. Floyd E. Basket, M. D. I turned to Leston, looked
up at him, but his eyes were on the building behind the walls, sizing
up, I knew, what we were heading in to meet.

He looked down at me, gave a smile that meant nothing, only a movement
of muscles in his face.  He touched the gate, pushed it open for Brenda
Kay and me.

Here was a little courtyard, the ground old bricks covered in green
mold like a thin layer of velvet, in one corner a small fountain with
just a dribble of clouded water falling into a brick trough.  Along the
opposite wall were the skeletons of geraniums in a brick planter box.

I stopped a moment, looked at the courtyard, at the cracked white paint
of the door before us.  I turned, tried to smile up at Leston.

"New Orleans, " I said.

He looked at me, the same smile there on his face.  He said, "New
Orleans, " and leaned past me to the door, knocked hard three times.

We waited, and waited, certain, I figured, we couldn't just walk into
the man's house, if that's what it was.  Leston knocked again, harder,
but as soon as his hand was down the door opened, and an old woman not
much taller than Burton stood there, a white paper hat on her head,
white dress down to her ankles.  She smiled, held out a hand as if we
were neighbors she'd known for years.

"Come on in, " she said.  "There's no need to knock.  Just come in and
have a seat."

Her hand was wrapped around mine, her fingers longer, stronger than I
could have imagined.  She didn't let go, but gently pulled me into the
front room, a parlor of sorts with old oak chairs lined up against each
wall.  Oak paneling went waist-high on the walls, above it white and
green striped wallpaper.  A hallway right across from the door led back
into the house, back into examination rooms, I .. smagmec .

Five or six mothers each with a child were seated round the room, and
right then I knew who Leston and I were, knew we were foreigners in the
midst of people who probably figured us ignorant or halfaddled
crackers, the taxi driver's joke clear now, all the mothers had on
makeup, hair down and bobbed at the shoulder, atop their foreheads hair
curled up in furious heaps, and I couldn't help but think every one of
them subscribed to Billie Jean's Photoplay, had spent too many nights
in moviehouses.

My hair was just back in a bun, the same way I wore it every day, and I
wore no makeup, my dress down to just below my shins, almost
ankle-cut.

These women's knees were all but naked, every one of them with hose on,
shiny shoes.

They looked at me, sized up both me and my husband, him closing the
door behind us.  I didn't want to sit here, didn't want to be the
object of their attention, whatever ridicule they might want to hand
out.

But in only the passing of a moment each of them's eyes fell from mine
to my baby, then to their own baby.  Then my eyes, too, fell to the
baby I held in my arms.  We were all of us looking at our sick
children, all of us, I knew, wondering what would happen next.

One of the children sneezed, this one about a year old and propped on
its momma's lap, its nose crusted and red, eyes watery.  This child's
momma wiped its nose with a handleerchief, the movement quick and
simple, rote for her.  Then another baby, this one only a few months
old and wrapped in a thick, pink blanket, gave out a big whoop cough,
the mother blinking at the sound, touching the baby's cheek with the
back of her first finger.

"You must be the Hilburns, " the old nurse said.  I looked at her.  She
was smiling, trying to give me the comfort she must have thought it her
job to give.  "You go on right ahead and take a seat anywheres in here,
and the doctor will see you in just a few minutes."  She nodded once, a
quick and sharp move, as if we'd settled something between us.  She
turned to the room.  "Mrs. Darby?  " she said, and a woman with red
hair done up the same as the others stood, in her arms a baby that
hadn't made a sound since we'd been in here.  The nurse slowly moved
toward the hallway, mother and child behind her.

I sat at the chair nearest me, Leston next to me.  He was the only man
here, and I wondered what that might mean to him, wondered if it meant
he'd never come back here.

If we had to come back, I thought.

An hour later, we were the only ones left in the room.  Leston hadn't
spoken yet, but'd looked at his pocket watch and'd walked to one of the
windows that looked out onto the courtyard and stood with his hands in
his back pockets enough times for me to know how he felt, and for me to
worry what he might say about waiting this long.

But when the nurse came into the room, held out her hand and said, "The
doctor will see you now, " all I could see from Leston, what anger he
had in him, was a huge sigh he let out, then the deep breath back in.

He turned from the window, ran his hand back through his hair, picked
his hat up off the chair next to me.

I stood, moved toward her, took her hand.  She hadn't held the hand of
any of the others she'd led back here, and I wondered if that weren't
some measure of the situation, of how sick my baby really was.

"The doctor has surgery this afternoon, but he wanted to make certain
to see you, " the nurse said as we passed one door and then another.

She stopped at the third door, took my hand in both hers.  Then she let
go one hand, reached to touch Brenda Kay's face, her pale white fingers
even whiter against my baby's pink skin.

"There, there, little baby, " she said, and smiled.  "It's just fine,
it is."

She turned from us, opened the door.  "If there's anything I can get
you or do for you, please let the doctor know, and I'd be tickled to
take care of it."

"Thank you, " I said, and nodded.  The door was open, ready for us to
walk through, but I wanted to look at this woman, wanted to take in her
face.  I wanted to stay here and look at this lady, a nurse ready to
care for us no matter what.  That's what I wanted.

Leston nudged me from behind, whispered, "Let's go, " and I could only
smile at her, move on into the room.

Books lined the walls, at the center of the room a huge desk, the top
littered with papers and more books.  Behind it sat the doctor, an old
man, older than the nurse, white hair thick on his head, wire glasses
low on his nose.  He had a book open on his lap, and looked at us over
the rim of those glasses.

He snapped the book closed, lifted his head so that now he was looking
at us through the glasses.  He smiled.  Slowly he stood, as if the act
were some long journey, one hand with the book, the other holding hard
to the chair arm, him pushing himself up and up, until he was
standing.

He was taller than Leston, and finally let go the chair to put out his
hand, first to Leston, who shook it once, then to me.  His hand was
soft, a doctor's hand, the flesh of his palm thick and warm.

He motioned for us to sit in the two chairs in front of his desk.  I
glanced behind me as I took my seat, hoping for one more smile from the
old nurse, but the door was already closed.

"Now, " the doctor said, and sat back down.  He leaned forward, put his
elbows on the edge of the desk, laced his fingers together.  "Dr.
Beaudry tells me I need to have a look-see at this baby."  His eyes
were on Brenda Kay.

I tried again to smile, said, "Look-see must be one of these new doctor
terms.  That's the same thing Dr. Beaudry said he wanted to do."  They
were words of no use to any of us, spoken more to hear my own voice in
here than for anything else.

He laughed, leaned back in the chair at the same time, his hands still
laced together.  "Dr. Beaudry's an old student of mine.  I imagine
he's taken some of my own terminology with him."

"Doctor, " Leston said, and for a moment I wondered if, again, he would
try his best to take over here.  He hadn't even looked at me this time,
had even done away with the pretense of clearing his throat.  He said,
"We came all the way from Purvis this morning.  We waited more than an
hour in your office."  He paused.  "All due respect, sir, we want to
talk about Brenda Kay."

Dr. Basket looked at Leston, his smile there for a moment, but then
gone.

Leston said nothing else, but I was thankful for his words this time,
for his having spoken.  He'd given us entry into the terrible truth we
were facing right now.  His words had opened the door I wanted kept
closed, but knew needed opening all the same.

The doctor moved to the edge of the desk, his elbows there again.  He
said, "You'll have to let me examine her, of course.  Then we can
talk."

He stood again, held out his arms to me as he came slowly around the
edge of the desk, and without a thought I held up my baby to him,
Brenda Kay so much smaller in his arms than mine, a baby so small it
didn't seem possible that in her could be anything so awful I we had to
come to a city hours from home.  But still here she was, and I felt
myself standing, felt my legs carrying my body along behind the doctor
as we went in to another examination room, the same equipment hanging
from the wall and laid out in trays as in Dr. Beaudry's room, only
more of it in here, all of it glistening with what looked like some
clean idea of death, my naked baby on the table, white light pouring
down on all three of us.  Brenda Kay was awake this time, her arms and
legs moving like she was under water, slow and deliberate and without
effect.  She still couldn't yet roll over.

He gave her the same examination, but spent longer on each push of an
arm, each stretching out of fingers, each look in her eyes.  His
movement was slow, but perfect somehow, his long and thin fingers
holding out Brenda Kay's in a way that seemed softer than was possible,
the touch simple and distant and warm all at once.  I don't know how
long we were in there, didn't care.  Leston was back in the office,
readying himself in his silence, and I was readying myself in here,
just standing near, though the doctor didn't even look at me.  He
didn't ask a single question of me, didn't even ask for my help as he
finally pinned up the diaper, ran his fingertips across her forehead
one last time, traced her eyes just as Dr. Beaudry had.  He even
dressed her, slipped back on the green flannel gown I'd dressed her in
in the dark of a morning that seemed a thousand miles from here.

He handed her to me.  I was looking for him to hide his eyes from me,
too, just as Dr. Beaudry'd done, but he looked at me as he gave her
over, a small smile on his face, his head dipped down, his eyes taking
me in over the top of his glasses.  "Let's go and have a seat, " he
whispered, and pulled open the door into his office.  He let me go
first, and as I passed from the white light into the dark wood office,
I felt his hand on my shoulder, felt it pat me once, twice, then rest
there a moment as we came near his desk.

I felt my mouth go dry, felt my heart go to stone.  I didn't even look
at Leston, or if I had, didn't see him.  I only sat, Brenda Kay in my
arms.

The doctor sat back in the chair, his eyes on the desktop a moment.

But he gave up on that idea, and looked first to Leston, then to me.

He glanced at Brenda Kay, did his best to look at the two of us, tried
hard to hold us each for a second or two.

He said, "What I will tell you is not easy to hear.  But what I have to
tell you, these words, are necessary."  He paused.  His hands were flat
on the desk, and he lifted them, held them in front of him, looked at
them.

"Hands, " he said, and stopped.  He took a breath.  "Our hands tell us
much, " he said, "and Brenda Kay's hands tell us much, too.  They tell
us that she is a child given to us by powers none of us can
understand.

They tell us we can't always depend on nature.  That things go
wrong."

My arms were stiff with straining, locked into place around what I
carried, my child.

"Brenda Kay is a Mongolian Idiot, " he said.  He brought his hands
down, let them settle into his lap.  He was looking at me.

I swallowed, felt my palms sweating, clutched on the blanket my baby
was wrapped in.  I felt minutes pressing down on me, felt time and air
and everything pressing down.

I whispered, "What does that mean?  " the words ground glass in my
throat.

"It means, " he said, "she is mentally and physically retarded.  She
will never progress much more than this, than what she is right now."

He paused again.  He held up his hand, pointed to his palm, gently ran
his finger along the lines there.  "The evidence is in her hands, and
her feet.  Flat, broad hands, abnormally short fingers, little fingers
curved in as drastically as they are, and the two smaller toes as
well.

And an abnormal line pattern."  He stopped, adjusted his glasses.

"And there is her face as well.  Her eyes, their slanting upward, her
broad forehead, her features smaller than a normal child's."  He
stopped again, brought his hands together on the desktop.  "What I must
say is quite difficult, but as I said, I need to let you know."  He
folded his fingers together.

He said, "Because of this condition, chances are small that she will
live past two years."

I'd waited since Christmas to find why she slept as much as she did,
afraid all the while of an answer.  And I'd waited eleven days since
the doctor back in Purvis wouldn't tell us what was wrong.  I'd waited
for this moment.

Now here it was, and there was nothing in me.  I was hollow, dead
wood.

The only thing I saw in that moment, the doctor's own hands on the
desktop again, his mouth drawn closed, eyes fixed on me and the baby I
held a Mongolian Idiot, two words already weighing down my arms, my
chest heavy with them, my breath now short and as hollow as the rest of
me the only thing I saw in that moment was that I'd spent my whole life
waiting for news like this to come, not just the time since Christmas,
not even just since near a year ago when Cathe ral'd stood in light
from my kitchen and told me it was coming, all of it was coming, all of
it from God up in his heaven.

No.  I'd been waiting for this since the moment my Momma'd died in an
upstairs room in a mansion, because there'd been too much good come to
me since then, Leston, my children, food on the table, a roof above our
heads.

All this in a moment, before I even thought to look down at my baby in
my arms, her squirming, before I thought to look at Leston, .  see
where he was, see who he would be now.  All this even before I thought
to breathe again.

Then I remembered the birth, remembered the doctor pushing, pressing
down on me with all the might a small-town doctor like him could give,
but strength enough to hurt my baby.  It was blame I was after then,
blame and responsibility and someone to look at and spit in the face
of.

It was the doctor, him and his hospital, when I'd bore every one of my
children at home and'd done fine.

"It was the doctor, " I said.  "It was when Brenda Kay was born, and
how he pushed me, pushed my baby.  He pressed down on me to get her
out.

That's why her face is that way, why her hands are that way.  That's
why she's not right."  The words left me in one string, all of them
chained together and falling from me without any thought.  But it was
true, it was his fault, the blame square on him.  I knew that.

"Mrs.  Hilburn, " the doctor said.  He closed his eyes, opened them.

He let out a breath.  "This condition is present at conception.  That
much we know about it."

He bowed his head a moment, and suddenly I thought of him, of what it
must take for him to deliver news like this, saw, too, that Dr.
Beaudry'd known all along, knew she'd die in two years and'd told us
otherwise just so he could pass us on to his old teacher for the filthy
work this was.  I saw that there was pain in it for him, too, for Dr.
Basket.  But my heart didn't go out to him.  He hadn't borne my child,
or any of the others he'd ever given this speech to.  He could go home
from here, have his dinner, tend to surgery later today while we drove
on home, poor crackers he felt sorry for, a Mongolian Idiot there in
the front seat of an old pickup truck they'd left outside town, afraid
of driving in the big city.

He looked up.  He said, "The best thing for you, the best measure to be
taken, in my considered opinion, is to give her up to an institution.

There she will be cared for, tended to.  The burden she could be to you
for however long she lives is immeasurable.  Institutionalized, she
will be away from you and your household, and cared for."

"Institution, " Leston whispered, his first word.

I didn't look at him.  I only stared at the doctor, my eyes dry, no
tears for him or for Leston or for anyone, not even for me.

I stood.  I said, "Good-bye, Doctor, " and I turned, moved for the
door.

I heard from behind me the squeak of Doctor Basket's chair as he stood,
heard steps on the hardwood floor behind me.

The nurse opened the door before I was even there, light from the
hallway spilling onto me and my baby, the old woman standing to one
side, no smile anywhere, only her eyes on me, her forehead a field of
wrinkles, trying again for that comfort she wanted to give.

I didn't look at her, and turned, went down the hall into the front
room, headed for the door.

"Mr. Hilburn, " the doctor said, "we will need to meet again.  We will
need to talk together."  His words were calm, smooth.  There was care
in them, I knew.  But I didn't want his care right now.  I didn't want
him to be in on this, whatever it was.  I reached the door, pulled it
open to sunlight outside flooding the courtyard, no shadows anywhere.

The bricks, the mold, the dirty water in the trough and those dead
geraniums were washed out in white light, and I couldn't wait to get
past them and through that gate and into another taxi and out of this
place and home, where I might be able to make sense of how this world
was crashing to its end, me unable even to imagine there might be
another to come.

I heard Leston say, "Sir, " imagined him just touching the brim of his
hat, giving the smallest nod to the doctor, then turning, following me
out onto the street, where I was already waiting for a taxi.

Lake Pontchartrain was nothing, only a dull green body of water we
passed over, the bridge low and flat and gray.  Picayune was just
another town, and I didn't give a care as to whether I'd ever lived
there or not.  The soldiers and whores in New Orleans were long behind
us.  The only thing that mattered was the baby in my arms.

We passed through those towns again, the ones we passed through this
morning, no difference in them at all.  I'd expected something
different, expected people to walk slower, their faces to wear some
cold and clouded look after the news from New Orleans.  But there was
nothing different, people still smiled, talked, held their hats against
the afternoon breeze, bent down to tie shoes, double-parked outside the
drugstore.  The same pine and crepe myrtle and high thick roadside
weeds swallowed us up each time we left a town, broke up each time we
entered a new one.

But on that ride, certain things came to me, most clearly me and that
blanket and how I'd pulled it back to show my dead daddy.  I thought of
New Orleans, the city that'd existed in my head before this day, the
place my parents'd had their honeymoon, and I wondered, too, whatever
happened to the postcard of Jackson Square my momma had taken out of
the pillowcase the morning Benjamin brought over my daddy's
belongings.

I thought of my momma telling me her last stories so I'd know what I
could of who I was, and there was the picture in my head, too, of Molly
and Cathe ral and that chapter in Ezekiel.  These pictures came to me,
stories of my own life, and how I'd taken hold of it by the throat,
made it come around to what I could make it, how I'd fixed things on my
own.

I still had the picture of my grandfather, Jacob Chandler, Jacob
Chetauga, framed and in the front room of the house, Burton still
taking his leads on how to stand, how to act, how to take care of
himself from how his great-grandpa stood in that picture.

What all those pictures told me, what all the stories in my life said
to me there in the cab of a truck, my baby in my arms, was that I could
fix things, though the world was falling down on itself, crumbling
beneath us.

I could fix things.  I knew I could.  All the child in my arms, all
Brenda Kay I decided then, there, that no one would ever use those two
words, use Mongolian Idiot, to describe her in my presence, unless they
wanted my full wrath down on them needed was my love, not my
abandonment.  I had lived that loss myself, no matter my baby wasn't
normal as I'd been, was sick in some way I couldn't understand, no
matter, too, she was what the doctor figured on being only a burden.

No matter he was already figuring on her dying.  He didn't know me,
didn't know what I could live through.

I could do it.  I could fix things, my life, my children's lives, my
husband's life.  Brenda Kay's.

And so on that drive home, me losing track of what town was which as we
moved along the old road, Leston not having lit up a cigarette yet,
both hands tight on the steering wheel, his knuckles white as the skin
my dead daddy's'd been, I tried out my words, said to the cab, "We'll
keep her."  I said, "She'll be loved, no matter how long she lives."  I
said, "God will fix her, " though I knew I was putting faith into a god
I hadn't yet been able to count on for anything other than what I
didn't want.  But the words sounded right, seemed full of some promise
I was ready to grab hold of.  I said, "We can fix this, if everyone in
this household gives her the love they've got, and all of it."  I said,
"We can fix this.  We can."

Leston finally turned to me.  I hadn't been looking at him, but out the
front window to the blacktop cutting through the green.

I looked at him.  His eyes were wet, red, his mouth open, the hair on
this man, this man even older now, tousled by the wind from his open
window.  Fear was on him now, fear like an open wound, fresh and raw.

He swallowed, said, "Can we, Jewel?  " I nodded, quick and sharp, and
thought of the same move the old nurse had made before we'd entered the
doctor's office, only a few minutes before my last life ended, and this
new one'd begun.

I turned from him, my eyes back on the road.  I said, "You just get us
on home."  Il CHAPTER 11.

THE DAYS AFTER NEW ORLEANS WERE DAYS clouded OVER WITH GRIEF, the house
empty save for Brenda Kay and me, Annie out back and digging at sweet
potatoes, the chore I gave her so that I could sit in an empty house
with only my baby.  Each and every day I sat in my rocker before the
fireplace, holding tight to Brenda Kay, letting her nurse whenever she
wanted to, my breast about the only gift I could give her, the curtains
pulled closed since the afternoon we made it back from New Orleans.  I
wanted no light in here, wanted nothing, only the dark.  They were
terrible days, days filled with nothing other than the weight of the
baby in my arms, me waiting for her to die.

Not one of those days went by without the idea in me of putting her
away, of giving up whatever gift from God she was.  That thought was
with me every day, even after the resolve to face this new and ugly
world had come to me in the cab of the truck on the way home.  I
thought of giving her up each day, that word institation a curse and a
means of escape at once, so that those two notions the chains of a
blessing from God, and the means to escape that blessing were like two
huge and awful birds circling me, just waiting for my baby either to
live or to die.

And more times than I wanted during those days filled with the idea of
escape there came to me the memory of the one time I tried to leave the
world God'd deemed the just and correct one for me.  Too many times,
the house closed up around me, Brenda Kay asleep in my arms, there came
to me the one night in late fall, only a few months after Bessy
Swansea'd stolen away from me Cleopatra Sinclair, a night like any
other, me wide awake in my bed, wondering exactly what I was doing
there, which God Missy Cook's or my own whose plan for my life I was
wandering through.

We were in our courses then, taking arithmetic, Latin, grammar, music,
all of us in our uniforms and in our assigned chairs and calling out
"Present" to each teacher no matter if our minds were there or not.  So
far the only class I'd really cared for was Latin, in the maze of
conjugations and forms and history of the language some deep comfort,
refuge from what kept going on every day here, me not being in charge
of who I was and where I was going.  Suddenly I started in to missing
Missy Cook and how it'd really been me in charge there, and in charge
of Cathe ral, and in charge of Molly, too.  Now look where I was, at
any given moment a hall mistress could come in here and lift my
nightshirt up and beat whatever Hell out of me she felt certain was
there.

At that moment Cleopatra touched my shoulder, whispered close in my
ear, "Take what you want with you in your pillowcase, " and neither her
touch nor her words surprised me, all of it only the next logical thing
could happen in my life.  Here'd come another chance to take charge of
it, fix it, the notion big in me that I could grab my life and mend it
in ways unimaginable in other people's heads.

I sat straight up, quietly slipped off my pillowcase, pulled from
between the mattress and the springs my tablet and pencil and my
photograph, put them into the pillowcase, then reached under the bed
and, without thinking of it, picked up my Bible.  I hadn't cracked it
open in months, had given up reading every day along about the early
part of Daniel, when at Belshazzar's feast the handwriting appears on
the wall.  Last April that'd seemed as right a spot to stop as any, the
handwriting on the walls before me here at the school indicating that,
like King Belshazzar, I'd been weighed and balanced and'd been found by
God to be wanting.  Still, I didn't hesitate, only picked up the Bible,
dropped it in.  I eased out of bed and over to the pine dresser, pulled
out the dress I'd worn in here that day in March, put it in the
pillowcase, put on my jumper, then my coat.  I slipped on the shoes I
kept beneath the dresser, and a moment later stood at the door, just
behind the two of them.

Bessy was first, and opened the door, which gave a small creak that
seemed big as a boulder in the empty hall.  We tippy-toed out, and I
pulled the door to behind me without letting it click shut.  None of us
looked at each other, but instead at the darkened leaded glass window
at the end of the hall, where Mrs. Archibald and Mrs. Winthrop roomed
together.

We turned, headed off down the hall, and I saw that the girls didn't
have shoes on, and I worried a moment at what they knew and I didn't,
them having planned down to accounting for the sounds shoes made in an
empty hall, their shoes, I figured, hidden away in their pillowcases.

I stopped, leaned against the wall and, the pillowcase in one hand,
reached down with the other and worked off my shoes.

Cleopatra and Bessy were already at the end of the hall, stood at the
doorway into the stairwell.  Not five feet from them was another door
with a glass window, this the small anteroom, more a large .  closet,
where Tory slept, and as I pushed myself away from the wall, my shoes
in hand, a light came on inside.

Cleopatra saw it first, and turned to me.  Bessy shouldered into the
stairwell, left Cleopatra there and staring at me, but then she, too,
disappeared inside, and I was left running toward the stairwell door,
hoping to get there before it fell shut, and before Tory opened his
door to whatever he'd heard to set him off in the first place.

And I made it, planted my bare foot inside the doorjamb just as the
door came to.  If I hadn't been out of breath and scared and angry all
at the same time I would have hollered at the pain of the heavy door on
my foot, but I only leaned into it, pushed it open.

I turned.  Tory stood in his doorway, watching me.  His eyes were full
and wet, no white to be seen, and he reeked of whiskey.  He had on the
same clothes he wore every day, the overalls and red workshirt, the
workboots scuffed and muddy.

I froze, remembered him handing back and forth the belt, back and
forth, back and forth.

He did nothing, only met my eyes with his, slowly shook his head.  We
looked at each other that way for what seemed an hour, him and his face
and the gray flecks in the nappy hair.  And for a moment I pictured
what he must have seen, a scared white girl with her shoes in one hand,
everything she owned in a pillowcase in the other, in her eyes the
stunned fear every girl in here must have carried in her eyes, fear
he'd seen every day he'd worked here.

Then that moment was gone, and he stopped shaking his head, pushed
closed his door.  A few seconds later the light inside went out.

I breathe again, slipped into the stairwell, eased the door closed.

Bessy and Cleopatra were at the small service door at the bottom of the
stairs, Bessy working something in the keyhole.

Cleopatra turned to me, whispered, "What happened?  " "Nothing, " I
said, and found the lie easy, something in how Tory'd shook his head
and in how quick that light'd gone out that made me say it.  "Nothing
at all, " I said, and knew, too, that I wasn't a part of them, they'd
asked me along for pity's sake, perhaps, or because I could offer them
something they couldn't get on their own.

Bessy got the door unlocked, pulled it open, and October night air
filled the stairwell.  I shivered, pulled the coat closer to my neck,
and followed them out.

By daylight we were a few miles from Picayune, the two of them together
a few steps ahead of me, the sun coming up behind us.  Already my
shins'd started to hurting, the step onto hard ties awkward, every tie
too close together, ever other tie too far apart.

I was hungry, and my arm hurt from carrying the pillowcase, and my
heart hurt, too, for not being in the midst of the two of them up
there, in on whatever secrets they knew about the world and about each
other, until, finally, I just stopped, moved off to the gravel beside
the tracks, and sat down.

They kept on walking, kept on talking and giggling, the sun shining
brighter on us as it hit the tops of trees, spilled out over
everything.

I caught on the air the smell of bacon frying up somewhere, and my
stomach seemed to catch fire.

I hollered, "Hey, " waited for them to turn.

They didn't.

Then I hollered, "Why'd we escape in the first place?  " just loud
enough for them to be afraid I'd said it too loud.

Bessy was first to turn around.  She stared at me, pillowcase in hand,
and then Cleopatra turned.  Neither was smiling.  Cleopatra only looked
at me a moment or two before her eyes started scanning the woods that
tunneled us in here.

I looked down at the gravel, took a handful of it in my hand, felt how
cold it was, felt how hungry I was, felt how far we'd walked only to
end up here.  Nowhere I knew.

A minute later they stood next to me, their black leggings and shoes
right next to me, Cleopatra a few inches behind and to the side of
Bessy.

I said, "I'm hungry."  I let a few pieces of the gravel slip between my
fingers, disappear into all the rest of the gravel.  I said, "Or did
you forget about that part of things?  " "Didn't, " Bessy said, her
word dead, as though she wished, maybe, I was too.  "Not at all."

Cleopatra gave a little laugh.  With one foot she twisted a small
circle in the gravel.

Bessy didn't move.  I said, "And?  " "There's a house ahead, " she
said.  "Not more than a mile.  We'll eat there."

She turned, moved ahead.  Cleopatra stood next to me a moment more, her
toe twisting another quick circle in the gravel.  She whispered, "Come
on, girl, " and before I could look up to see whose side she may have
been on in all this, she'd turned, was already headed up the tracks.

And there was a house up the tracks, just as Bessy'd said there'd be,
we'd come around a wide bend, crossed a small trestle over a black
backwater creek, and'd come upon a small blue house, the roof all
battered tin, the chimney puffing out smoke thick as gray cotton.

As soon as we saw it, Bessy put up a hand to us, then turned, moved
right past Cleopatra and me and back along the tracks.  We looked at
each other.  Cleopatra said, "What's going on?  " Bessy said nothing,
only walked, and of course we followed.

When we got back to the trestle, only a hundred yards or so from where
we'd seen the house, Bessy stepped off the tracks and down the creek
bank.  She set down her pillowcase, reached in and brought out the blue
dress she'd worn her first day in at the school, and we knew what to
do.

Cleopatra and I moved down the bank, too, opened our pillowcases,
brought out our clothes.  By then Bessy'd already taken off her jumper
and underdrawers and leggings and blouse, so that she stood before us
naked.  I saw for the first time her breasts, how full and rounded they
were, the nipples up and hard in the cool morning, and I saw the dark
hair she had between her legs, the wisps of it thicker than mine.

Then my eyes went to her belly, and to two long scars there.  They ran
from just below her belly button up to her ribs, her skin all
goose-pimpled up, the two scars parallel to each other and purple and
the width of a fingernail, and I couldn't help but shiver at what I
saw, at what I didn't know.  She stood before us naked without a single
breath of embarrassment or humility, and I felt my breasts shrink into
themselves as I took off my blouse, my back to the two of them, felt,
too, a cold, sharp twist of pain across my own belly.

I dropped my jumper, quick put on my old dress, hurried into my coat.

I glanced over my shoulder once to see what Cleopatra was doing, saw
her there in just her underdrawers and leggings, her back to us, too,
as she shimmied into a dress I recognized from nowhere, then remembered
she'd been brought in before me.  When she turned around, she'd become
someone else altogether, the dress, a pink one with a white satin
ribbon round the waist tied off in a bow, was a little small on her,
but every inch beautiful, from the bit of lace at the neck to the pink
ribbon at the hem, and I imagined all the town fathers buying that
dress for her as some sort of farewell gift, feeling sorry and pitying
her and at the same time glad to rid their fair town of a hellion with
a brick.  She was beautiful in the dress.

Our eyes met a moment, then hers broke from mine to look down at the
dress.  She smiled, said, "I haven't had this on since the day I was
brought in, " words which didn't mean a thing, just the only ones she
could muster at this moment, the three of us suddenly who we were
before we'd been pushed into the Mississippi Industrial School for
Girls.  Just three girls, and I wondered if Cleopatra knew of the scar
on Bessy's belly, wondered if she'd heard Bessy's story about it,
envied her if she knew and at the same time wanted none of it.

Bessy was down on her knees now, and Cleopatra and I watched as she
stuffed into her pillowcase the blouse, then the jumper, leg i gings
and underdrawers.  She stood, went down to the water, brought back a
big rock, moss-covered on top and muddy on the bottom, and dropped it
into the pillowcase, then twisted the open end into a knot, lifted the
bundle.

She looked at us, and smiled.  There were her teeth, all perfect and
simple and white, and I thought again of what you could not see, the
scars, the deep purple and chill of them.

She laughed, the sound dry and hard in her throat.  She looked from me
to Cleopatra.  Then she turned, went down to the water.  She said,
"Won't ever be needing these again, that's for goddamned certain."  She
swung the bundle back, brought it forward, and let it sail out into the
middle of the creek, where it hit with a loud splash, and
disappeared.

She turned to us, still smiling, and walked right between us, up the
bank.  Then she was up on the tracks.

Cleopatra wouldn't look at me, and though she was first to follow
Bessy, this time she hung back a few extra feet, the three of us spread
out along the track, only two of us with pillowcases now, headed for
that blue house with the tin roof.

We squatted behind bushes next to the house.  Bessy reached into them
and pulled back a few branches, peered through.  From where I sat all I
could see was smoke lift into clear blue air, disappear with the wind
up there.

Bessy whispered, "Nothing to this one, " and let the branches fall back
into place.  She turned to me, no smile now.  She whispered, "Now you
find out why we took you on in this here little venture, " and she
reached a hand over near my face.

I flinched, pulled away quick, afraid she might lay fists on me for
whatever reason she had in mind.

But her hand reached my face all the same, and she touched my cheek
with the back of her fingers before I could do anything else.  The
touch was soft, and for a moment I wondered if she weren't thinking of
her own face, her own skin, her breasts.  Her face still bore the marks
of the fight she'd had with Cleopatra months ago, the split eyebrow, a
bruise high on her left cheekbone that'd never wholly disappeared, now
a red spot the size of a pea, a small scar at the base of her chin.

And as she touched her fingers to my cheek once again, reached up to my
hair, tucked a lock of it behind my ear, I wondered, too, how long
she'd been trading on her face, that skin, her breasts and the hair
between her legs.  Long enough, I realized, to let her stand as she had
with no clothes on, and long enough, too, to end up with scars like she
had.

"Yes ma'am, you little sugartit you, you're right along with us here
because you come from money, you do."  Her eyes met mine now, and she
brought her hand to my cheek again, let it rest there.  Then slowly she
took hold of my chin.  "You come from money, ain't nobody in that
shithole school don't know that."  She was smiling, and I cut my eyes
over at Cleopatra, squatting right next to us.  Her mouth was open, her
own eyes going from Bessy to me and back.

Bessy whispered, "Now you're going down round to the front door of that
shanty, and you going to knock on that door, and when whoever it is
lives there comes, you going to engage them in some sorrowful story."

She started holding tighter to my jaw, pressing hard on my chin, on my
teeth, my mouth.  "And they going to believe you, they are.  Because
you come from money, and folks with none, whether niggers or crackers,
can smell it on those that do, and they'll believe whatever it is you
have to say, because they can smell that money on you.  They always do,
and you telling your little story will divert their sorry-ass attention
for a while.  So you lie your sweet little virgin ass off at that door
to whoever it is comes."  She paused, held tight my chin a moment
longer, then let it go.  I took in a breath, looked at her.  She smiled
again, tucked a lock of hair behind my other ear.  "Now you go."

I did.  I didn't even look to Cleopatra again, didn't think of her,
only thought of those scars and the sound that rock and her clothes
made into the black water beneath the trestle, and before I knew what
was happening I was coming round the front of the house the blue
clapboards, I could see up close, were ancient, the paint blistered and
cracked and falling off and I was heading to the door, gray wood with
only a small hole where a knob should have been.

I knocked, and the door opened a moment later.  There stood an old
nigger woman, her hair white, skin black as any nigger's I'd ever seen
before, her eyes set deep in her head and even blacker than her skin.

She had on a filthy apron, was wiping her thin hands with it.

Before I could even open my mouth, she was smiling, and I knew what
Bessy'd said was true, people without money believed the ones who had
it, and I didn't even let her say one word to me as I started in on a
story about how I was a little girl whose mother had died recently, and
whose grandmama, who owned a mansion up in Purvis, had sent me down to
New Orleans for a new dress, and how a swindler, a good-looking young
man named Rutledge, had stolen all my money from me, and how I had no
other choice of getting back to Purvis than to walk.

The nigger woman frowned, drew her eyebrows up, gave her face a tilt to
one side, listening to it all, and when I got to the part about my
satchel and all my belongings in it being stolen by that swindler
Rutledge, the nigger woman reached out a hand and touched my cheek.

This time I didn't pull away, though, I only let her touch me, and for
a moment as I went on with my story about how I needed help back in the
right direction and how I would be able to give her a reward from my
grandmama's cashbox, I let my eyes close.  This nigger woman's hard and
callused fingers touched my cheek even more gently than Bessy'd done
when she'd started giving my instructions, and suddenly I fell back
into my own place in Purvis, pictured in my mind Molly touching me,
pictured the old kitchen, the walls, the cupboards, the butcherblock
stained black with years of blood.  I pictured all of that while I
heard myself tell the story of a girl's mother dying of a fever in an
upstairs bedroom, and I found myself telling her, too, of a father who
was a logger and who'd broken his neck, and heard, too, of the soft
memory of a brother, a small baby who'd died when the girl was only a
young child herself.  All this time my eyes were closed, the nigger
woman's hand on my cheek, and I felt tears coming, felt them spill out
my eyes and down the cheeks of a girl telling her story as a lie, none
of it the truth but the truth all the same, my story only to divert her
sorry-ass attention for a while, while Bessy and Cleopatra did whatever
it was they were going to do here.

That was when I opened my eyes, the story of my life cut short by the
sound of a pan knocked to the floor inside the shack, and the nigger
woman brought her hand down from my face, turned to the inside of her
house.

There stood Cleopatra, holding a skillet with the hem of her pink
dress, in the skillet bacon frying up, eggs in there with it.  Inside
the room was only a fireplace, a metal grate of some kind hooked in
there, on it a battered and steaming black kettle.  A busted-up chair
leaned against one wall, a quilt heaped in one corner.  The back door
of the place stood open behind Cleopatra, and the light silhouetted her
in a way that made her seem bigger than she already was.  I saw all
this in an instant, the time it took the nigger woman to turn from me
to her home.  She turned back to me, and I saw in her puzzlement at
what was going on here, her old eyes taking everything in and trying to
piece it all out.  Still Cleopatra only stood there, looking at the two
of us, her mouth still open.

From behind her stepped Bessy, who looked first at the woman, then at
me.  "For god's sakes, " she said, "this here's just some old nigger
shanty.  We didn't even have to send you out on your story, " and she
moved to the fireplace, with the hem of her own dress took hold of the
kettle.  "Grits, " she said, and looked at the nigger woman, smiled,
nodded.  "Much obliged, " she said.  She turned, was gone out the back
door.

Cleopatra backed toward the door, disappeared.

The nigger woman took a step toward the back door, but turned to me,
looked at me, her face no longer filled with the puzzle of this all,
but with the stunned and milky look of a dead animal's eyes.  She just
stood there, looked at me a long moment.

I ran, took off round the back of her house, saw a pillowcase up on the
rise where the tracks lay.  When I got to it, I caught sight of the
last bit of Cleopatra, saw her running into the woods on the other side
of the tracks, the pan in hand.  She'd already disappeared from the
waist down for the brush back there, Bessy, I figured, was already
buried.

Cleopatra stopped, turned.  She called out, "Come on, girl, " and
waited an instant before she turned back to the woods, started off
again.  The last thing I saw of her before she was swallowed up
entirely was the back of her head, the short growth of hair there, long
tendrils of hair on either side of it trailing back with what small
wind she made running.

I held my pillowcase with both hands, turned to the shanty.  The nigger
woman stood just inside the back door, her hands at her sides, dead,
useless.  Because what, I thought, could she do?  There was nothing,
three white girls'd swooped in like chicken hawks and'd taken what they
wanted at will.  There was nothing she could do, her life in our
hands.

But it was my own life in my hands, I saw, and I felt how sorrowful my
own story really was, not the story of my family all dying around me,
not the story of being sent here by a grandmother who didn't give a
damn about me.  No, the sorrowful story, I knew, was that this was
where I'd brought myself when I'd taken my own life into my hands.

Come here to this moment, robbing a nigger woman of her food, then
tearing off into woods.  Which seemed like no way to fix a life at
all.

So I ran.  I ran back in the direction we'd come, ran along the tracks
and over the trestle and the black creek where, at the bottom, lay
remnants of somebody else's life, a life, I knew, would end in
disaster, those scars on her belly a good head start on that road.  I
ran, and ran, and ran, all the while holding on to my pillowcase,
wanting to protect what was inside it my tablet and the photograph, my
Bible from whatever might come out of the woods to lay into me in
whatever way a man or a woman had done to Bessy.  I ran.

I made it to Picayune by noon, stopped and slipped back into my jumper
in somebody's privy not far from school.  I walked right on to campus,
walked right past the big live oak at the east end, strolled right into
the dining hall, took my place in line for the food we all were given
each day, the girls all around me silent, staring at me, at i the
pillowcase I carried, my mouth shut tight with what small piece I knew
now of the world.

Then came Mrs. Archibald's hand on my shoulder, fingers digging into
my skin like talons, and I knew it was over.

Mrs. Archibald, still behind me, pulled me out of line, pushed me
through the girls swarming now, their words quiet murmurs, each whisper
building one on another until the sound in the dining hall roared in my
ears.  She pushed me to the door onto the courtyard, and I reached to
the knob, opened it.  Then she pushed me on out to the courtyard,
across the lawn to the flagpole in front of the main building.

I let go the pillowcase, let it settle next to my feet, and I bent at
the waist.  I hugged the flagpole, felt the cold steel of it press into
my face, burn into my cheek.

Tory came from inside the main building and down the steps, in his hand
the belt, and when he came close enough I let my eyes look up at him.

He didn't look at me, but handed the belt to Mrs. Archibald.  I
couldn't see her take it, only saw Tory step behind me with the belt,
step back without it.  He put his hands together in front of him,
looked at the ground, him the last one here to see me before I'd tried
to escape my life.

Mrs. Archibald lifted my jumper over my hips, and I pictured each girl
at the school pressing her face to the glass windows of the dining
hall, imagined I could hear the talk they gave, though the only sound
was the fall wind in the tops of trees, the whirr and hiss of it.

My eyes went to the blue sky above me, a blue deep and still and
cutting.  I kept my eyes open as long as I could, focused on that
frightening cold blue, until they blinked shut of their own when the
belt finally came down on me.

The snap of it was louder than I could have imagined, the pain of it
shuddering up through the backs of my legs and into my stomach and my
lungs and on into my face and out to my fingertips.  But I kept my eyes
on that blue the whole time, through each shock of the belt, through
each wave of pain.

It was that memory in my head to come back and haunt me each day I
spent waiting, a haunting that kept me from the escape handing Brenda
Kay over to an institution would be, and I found myself whispering out
into the cold dark of the room, into the closed eyes of my baby
daughter, whispering to myself and to all the ghosts that seemed to
stay with me wherever this life led me words I'd heard most all my
life, yet'd never truly known until then precisely what they meant,
Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit?  I whispered, Or whither shall I
flee from Thy presence?

If I ascend up into Heaven, Thou art there, if I make my bed in Hell,
behold Thou art there.

There was more to that psalm, the words of David going on to praise his
God for that power, that presence.  But this was where my words
stopped, Behold, Thou art there and I saw only then that perhaps those
two great and ugly birds circling over us, those notions of escape and
no escape, might actually be one and the same, one great and
all-powerful being, my own God in Heaven, waiting up there on high.

But then one morning three weeks after we came home from New Orleans,
there came a knock on the door.  I did nothing, only opened my eyes.

I'd fallen near asleep in the rocker, and the sound of the first knock,
then the next, gave me a second's dream of my Uncle Benjamin, come to
knock on my door to take my baby away, so when there came still one
more knock I'd shot open my eyes, hollered, "No!  " Dr. Beaudry pushed
open the door, poked his head in.  He squinted into the darkened room,
smiled.  He said, "Mrs. Hilburn, you all right in there?  " I said
nothing, didn't even rock the chair.

"Mrs. Hilburn?  " he said again, and came in.  The door stood open
behind him, light falling in.

"Close the door, " I said.  "Just close it."

"Not too good for you, neither you nor your baby.  This dark."  He
turned, slowly pushed it closed.

"If you're here to try and take away my baby, " I said, "then you just
might as well head out right now."  I paused, gave myself a push in the
rocker, started us in motion again.  Brenda Kay stirred, reached up,
touched nothing.

He stood with his black bag in one hand, his jacket in the other.  He
had on a black vest and pants, the jacket the same color, and a white
shirt gone gray in the dark.  He looked at me a few moments, then
turned, looked for a place to sit.

Against the far wall we had an old divan, a quilt thrown over it, but
he didn't seem satisfied with that, only set his bag and jacket on it,
then looked past me toward the kitchen.  He walked in there, pulled out
one of the chairs from the table, set it in front of me, not three feet
away.

He sat, looked right at me.

He said, "We don't want you to give up your baby, not if you don't want
to."

"What do you mean we'?  " I whispered.  Brenda Kay's hand dropped, lay
flat on the blanket.

He looked down to the small patch of floor between us.  He had _L.  his
elbows on his knees, his fingers together in a fist in front of him.

He said, "I think you know."

"I do, " I gave right back to him.  "And you didn't have the guts to
tell us, neither."  I paused, let him have hold of that for a moment.

Then I said, "So why ought I believe you right now, that you don't want
me to commit my child?  " He looked a few moments longer at the floor,
then up to me.  In the darkness I could see him blink once, twice.

"You don't have any good reason to believe me, I guess.  And I'm sorry
about how you found out.

But I thought it best for Dr. Basket to make the diagnosis, the
evaluation."  He stopped, let out a sigh.  He sat up, his back to the
chair now, his hands loose in front of him.  His head was to one side,
his eyes on Brenda Kay.  "But the truth is " "That's all I'm after, " I
cut in on him.  "The truth."

He paused a moment, took in my words, measured them in some way that
made his shoulders seem to fall, as though he'd surrendered finally to
whatever it was in me that wanted him to squirm.

He said, "Dr. Basket and I both want you to know that if you want to
keep her, we will help in what ways we can."

I was quiet a while, the only sound my chair rocking on the hardwood
floor.  I said, "And what ways might those be?  " "For one, " he said
without a moment's pause, "I'd like to see her at least once a month.

And every three months Dr.  Basket wants to take a good look at her.

That's for starters."  He leaned forward again, the fist in front of
him.  He brought his hands up, let his chin rest on them.  "And there
is a form of medication.  Calcium glucanate, a bone strengthener.  One
of the problems with Mongolian Idiots " "Don't you ever say those words
in front of me again, " I said.  I'd stopped the rocker without knowing
I had, felt myself holding Brenda Kay even tighter to me.  I whispered,
"Don't you dare."

He stared at me, his chin still on his hands.  He nodded, let his eyes
fall from mine.  He whispered, "I understand, " then took a breath.

"The injections, " he went on, his eyes still away from us, "help
strengthen bones.  Soft bones are one of the problems with .. ."  He
paused, touched one ear with a hand, brought it back to his chin.

"With children of this special nature, " he said.

"Thank you, " I said, and I closed my eyes.

After a long moment, he said, "Soft bones can be helped along, we
believe, with calcium glucanate injections every six weeks.  That way
we can help her grow as well as she can.  It's quite a modern
process.

We're fortunate to have access to such a medication."

"Injections, " I whispered.

"Yes, " he said quietly.  "I wish they could be administered in some
other way, but that's all we can do.  Dr. Basket's already instructed
me on proper dosage, and precisely where the injections are to be
made.

And he's ready to send up the first prescription."

"Where?  " I said, my eyes still closed.  I wanted as much dark as I
could get hold of.

"Why, to my office, " he said.

"No, " I said, "where on my baby's body will she receive the shots?  "
I paused.  "You said there's a precise place."

"Oh, " he said, his voice, like his shoulders, fallen somehow.  "She
would receive two shots, one in each hip.  That's where the bones need
the most strength."  I said nothing, only pictured in my head that
great bird circling higher and higher, up and away from us,
disappearing high into a cold blue sky.

"We need to talk about how much this entire procedure will cost, " he
said, his voice almost a whisper.

I opened my eyes.  "No we do not, " I said.  . l .

CHAPTER 12.

LESTON SPENT HIS DAYS COMBING THE WOODS FOR LIGHTERED KNOTS from all
the splintered wood they'd blown up years ago, occasionally blowing up
a stump on his own with old sticks of dynamite he'd find somewhere in
the shed.  But even then it'd be only for the splinters that he'd light
fuses, that business of hauling stumps for turpentine down to
Pascagoula long dried up, the end of the war the end of our money.

Once the boys were home from school, the three of them Leston, Burton
and Wilman drove along dirt roads out to nigger shanties to sell them
bundles of the kindling, just trying to make enough money for us to get
by.  There was no way on this earth he'd be caught selling to the
whites in town.  Just no way.

Billie Jean, a year out of Purvis High, worked as a teller at First
Mississippi downtown, she hated the work, and there'd been days beyond
number over the last year when I'd had to roll her out of bed, feed her
biscuits and gravy in her sleep, plug her under the shower before she'd
awake.  Then she'd dog it while getting dressed and into the pickup,
where Leston waited, silent, eyes straight ahead, coffee and cigarette
in hand.  But she was faithful to give up her paycheck to us, save for
a dollar or two allowance we gave right back to her.

My job was in the cafeteria at Bailey Grammar School, where I served up
sweet potatoes and fried okra and on good days a thin sliver of ham to
all the children.  At the end of the day I was allowed to bring home a
few servings of what little food was left.  I was the only white woman
at work there in the cafeteria, but that didn't bother me.

It was the money we were after.

Billie Jean hadn't subscribed to her magazines in two years, the last
piece of new clothing I'd bought for myself was a scarf three years ago
for when we went into New Orleans, the wind down there whipping
sometimes too hard for me to stand.  Toxie and JE and Garland and all
the niggers were on their own now, playing pickup at whatever work they
could find.  Leston'd sold off the equipment four years ago.

But this morning, this May Saturday, we were headed for a picnic in
celebration.

Thursday night Brenda Kay took her first step.

She was five years, six months and four days old Thursday, and'd
finally taken her first step, my baby with the copper hair leaving
Billie Jean's arms and slowly doddering over the braided rug toward me
across the front room from her, her feet heavy in shiny white
orthopedic shoes laced up to her ankles.  The dress she had on, a faded
blue thing with embroidered yellow ducks around the hem and sleeves,
was one Anne'd worn when she was three, and as Brenda Kay came toward
me, my arms stretched out to reach her as soon as she came close, I
thought I could see in her face a trace of Annie, somewhere in her eyes
a hint of her sister, though the baby's eyes did slant up in a way at
times made her look like some of the children in the World Book
Encyclopedia.  It'd taken me three years to work up the nerve to search
out exactly what Mongolians looked like, and I remember swallowing
hard, taking in a deep breath at seeing the photographs there in the
library, women and children and men from the country called Mongolia,
with their fine straight hair and thick, heavy eyes and broad, flat
foreheads.

But then the trace of Annie was gone, and she was Brenda Kay again, my
baby, those green eyes wide open in surprise at being on her own as she
moved, her short arms out to either side, dimpled knees, pink skin, and
there was her smile, the one she held right then and that showed all
her teeth, small and thin and distanced one from another, her heavy
cheeks puffed out even more for that smile.

The night outside the open windows was filled with the whirr of
cicadas, treefrogs, all else that lived in the darkness and away from
what was happening inside.  The only other sound was the radio turned
low and playing some big band from the top of a hotel in New Orleans,
rich people dancing to music in clothes I could only imagine, colors
I'd never see in this life.  The boys were up in their room and, I
hoped, embarked on the nightly torture they believed homework only good
for.

Leston was at the kitchen table, quiet as always, hunched over a cup of
coffee I knew had long gone cold.  Anne lay before the empty fireplace
on her tummy like every night, she'd finished her homework hours before
dark, fed up with following her brothers around, the two of them still
fighting as much and as hard as always her legs crossed at the ankles,
feet up in the air and swinging away to the dance music.  In her hand
was a thick red pencil, on the floor in front of her a tablet of paper
so like the one I had when I was a child I'd thought for a moment that
indeed it was mine, misplaced ages ago and now miraculously appeared.

But the miracle here was Brenda Kay, and how she came toward me and
away from Billie Jean while all else in the world shuffled along, dead
to the six feet my daughter moved across.

Brenda Kay fell into my arms, and I held her to me, heard her say,
"Momma, Momma, " her only word so far, heard her say it again and
again.

Then other sounds came to me, Billie Jean, still seated on the floor on
the other side of the rug, was clapping, next came the rush and
pounding that could only be my boys on the stairs down.  "Momma, Momma,
" they shouted, and once they reached the bottom, Wilman said, "What's
going on?  " Anne was up and coming toward Brenda Kay and me, her arms
out, the red pencil still in one hand.  She hugged the two of us as
best she could, Annie growing up and eight now, older suddenly than I
wanted her to be.

"I saw it, " she said, "I saw it, " and I felt her hold us tighter,
Brenda Kay tucked between us.

"Momma?  " Burton said, still one step up, his hand on the railing,
Wilman in front of him.

Billie Jean turned to them.  "She walked, " she said, "she walked."

That was when I heard Leston's chair push back, heard his steps across
the floor and toward us all, the boys now down with the rest of us,
though they were too manly, I could see, to feel the need to hug as
Billie Jean and Anne did.  But they were with us, and I felt them pat
my shoulders, saw them touch Brenda Kay's head and arms and back.

"Good job, " Wilman said to Brenda Kay, whose eyes were on him now, her
mouth open in that smile, and Burton said, "Good job, Brenda Kay."

I looked behind me, saw Leston in the doorway, hands wrapped around the
coffee cup.

Finally, he smiled.  He nodded, the move slow and measured, his mouth
never opening.  Then he knelt next to me, and he kissed my cheek, moved
his face into my hair.

He said nothing, but what he'd given was more than he'd offered in
longer than I cared to recall, a kiss, his face close to mine.  Only
that, but I was happy with it.

I said, "Saturday we're going on a picnic, out to Ashe Lake."  I
paused, looked at my children's faces.  They'd gone quiet, mouths
open.

"A picnic.  Fried chicken?  Potato salad?  " I said.  "Any takers?  "
The boys and Annie started in to laughing, Wilman and Burton still
touching Brenda Kay.  Billie Jean started to give excuses why she
wanted to go to town, said something about having lunch with her friend
Ruby Sit well.  Then it must've come to her, a picnic, something I
couldn't remember our doing, not since before Brenda Kay, and Billie
Jean smiled again.

Leston stood.  I watched him move back to the doorway, where he
stopped, turned around, and leaned against the doorjamb, the coffee cup
still in his hands.  His eyes were on Brenda Kay.  He was smiling, and
brought the cup to his lips.

Brenda Kay started churning in my arms, excited at all these goings on,
walking, clapping, laughing.  Her mouth was open and taking in too many
breaths, and she tried to clap, her eyes on the children, her hands
came together twice, then missed, came together again.

Walking at five years and six months, her word Momma coming at four and
one month, out of diapers only five months ago.  She lifted her head at
one year, rolled over at two.

To say things were hard on us is to do us all wrong, and Leston's kiss
to me, his face in my hair, signaled to me what all we'd sacrificed so
that I could tend to my baby.  His heart'd been gone for some time now,
and I can't say as I blame him for it.  When the war was over,
Pascagoula seemed to shut down altogether, like there was a gate into
the place and nobody'd open it for him, and that good, clear money we'd
had for so long might as well have been only a dream we'd all carried
on for years.

Because we woke one morning in September of 1945, and looked at each
other while the sounds of the house started up like every morning.  But
the look we'd given each other wasn't anything like the one we'd had
the morning I told him I was pregnant with Brenda Kay.

This look was one of bewilderment, neither of us certain what was going
to happen to the baby in the cradle next to us.

That morning in September I was to bring Brenda Kay to Dr. Beaudry's
office for another set of shots, her needing them every six weeks, as
per Dr. Basket's direction.  The routine of each visit had been in
motion since April of the year before, when the war was in full swing,
and we were winning, and James' letters home were filled with more and
more good news of how they were all squashing the great Empire of the
Sun with each push of their bulldozers, each hammer driving home a
nail.

But that morning there was no money, and no prospect of it, other than
what Leston said to the empty room, to the air in there that seemed
suddenly too close, too thick, "We'll sell off two of the steers.  See
where that puts us."

"Leston, " I said.  I didn't move, didn't touch him.

He pushed back the sheets, got up.

The shots cost money twenty-three dollars each time and the doctor
visits cost money two dollars each time and the trips into New Orleans
every three months cost money.  And now we had no JF.  WFL l . 
money.

We had five steers and three cows by that time, what money we'd been
able to squirrel away and not put back into the stump business invested
in them.

"How much longer will she have to keep up with the shots?  " I said to
the room, to Leston's back, though I knew the answer to that better
than he did, for as long as she needed them, Dr. Basket'd said, which
I took to mean, For as long as she lives.  Back then she wasn't yet two
years old, the age Dr. Basket'd said she wouldn't live past, and I
couldn't help but imagine sometime the shots would stop, and we might
see ourselves clear of this.  But I'd hoped at the same time for a
trainload of shots for her, her visits every six weeks for the rest of
all time and eternity, for us marching up and down those stairs to
Beaudry's office above the hardware store until we were all so old we
had to be carried.  I'd only asked my question to hear it, as if with
my words Leston'd know I felt as scared as he did about what the future
would give.

But he was the one lost his job, the one who'd already let go
everybody.

In September of 1945, only Toxie and JE came over, where they would
stand outside in the early morning dark, lean against the truck and
smoke while I made breakfast, portions so much smaller then that I had
to remember how to cook little batches of grits, remember to crack open
only six or seven eggs and not three dozen.  They smoked and smoked,
and after breakfast the three of them would just drive off, Leston in
the lead in the pickup, JE and Toxie following in the flatbed.  They
showed up in the early afternoons, maybe only one stump on the flatbed
one day a week.

We sold off the two steers, then the rest of the cattle, one by one,
while nothing like a real job came close to Leston.  Finally JE and
Toxie stopped showing up, and I'd taken the job at the grammar school,
and the boys and Annie took to selling vegetables from our garden out
front of the house, all to pay for what I'd committed us to with my
words to Dr.  Beaudry on a morning what seemed decades ago.

It was Cathe ral to tell me of the job opening up over to the grammar
school, one of her cousins leaving, moving north to the city of
Detroit.

After supper the day she told me of it, the children all bathe and in
bed, I finally worked up the nerve to inform Leston of my plan to go
over to Bailey the next day, and ask for the work.

Leston was in the kitchen, leaned against the countertop, and I came up
next to him, put my hands together.  I said, "Leston, I'm going to ask
for work in the cafeteria at Bailey."  They were the words I'd
rehearsed all day on my own, and I thought my voice'd seemed honest
enough, sincere enough.  They'd come out as clear and strong as I'd
intended them to.

Because it was nigger work, serving up food at the cafeteria.  It was
nigger work, plain and simple, and I figured my words would need to be
as strong as I could make them for my husband.  I'd figured he'd rage
on at me and this news, my husband a man who'd been the boss over
nearly a dozen niggers himself at one time.  Now here was his wife,
readying herself to go join their ranks, serve up food to white kids
who, he and I both knew, would rush home to their own mommas with the
news of Mrs.  Hilburn ladling up food for them.

He turned to me, his mouth straight, eyes blank.  He said, "Guess you
figured there's no sense in asking me.  Figured you'd just tell me what
you were going to do, whether I wanted you to or not."

I looked away from him.  He was right, I hadn't asked him a question,
but'd only told him.  I'd already decided I was going down there to
Bailey bright and early tomorrow, whether he said yes or no.  I knew
I'd be down there at the cafeteria door, Brenda Kay in my arms.

Because it was a life we were saving.  It was Brenda Kay we were
saving, and it didn't matter where the money came from, because we were
saving our daughter's life.

He looked at me a long moment, opened his mouth and closed it like he
was gasping for air, or was drowning at the bottom of some deep well.

But he made no sound, until finally he whispered, "You do what you
think best."

He turned from me, dumped his cold coffee in the sink, then stepped out
the back door, where I knew he'd stay for a while, smoking away.

He left me there in the kitchen, alone with the decision I'd made, a
decision that was no decision.  I'd wanted him to approve, wanted him
to at least nod his head, or touch my cheek, or even put his arms
around me, something to let me see he knew what I had to do.  I needed
that touch from him.

But it was a life we were saving, I told myself enough nights after
that, when Leston started staying up with his coffee, just staring out
the window above the kitchen sink, where I found him every time I (,
came downstairs and begged him back to bed.  And it was a life we were
saving, I told myself enough days the children went on to school in
clothes mended and patched so many times there was no telling what was
the original material and what I'd been able to pick up at the piece
goods store.

It was a life we were after, I thought enough times we got checks from
James, me feeling guilty for the gift of the money from a son trying to
put himself through college, him a married man now.  Guilty, because
each time I got a check from him I felt relief, as though the only good
thing I felt for my firstborn and his wife was thanks for the money
they sent.

But it was a life we were after.

One morning in 1946 James'd simply showed up at the house with a girl
on his arm, a brassy blonde who chewed gum and wore high heels so tall
she staggered like she was blind drunk while walking up the ruts in our
dirt drive, the two of them dropped off like visiting dignitaries by
one of the three taxis Purvis had to offer.

We all smothered James, who looked as much like a man as I knew he ever
would, him in his uniform, and then we hugged him separately, first
Annie, then Wilman, Burton, and finally Billie Jean, the two of them
exchanging looks like they'd thought they'd never see each other
again.

Then I gave over Brenda Kay to James, his sister a little over two
years then and with the startled, dazed look her green eyes almost
always held, her small hand touching his chin, his nose, his cheek.

That was when he finally turned to the girl beside him, said, "Y'all,
this is Eudine, my wife."

She stopped chewing her gum, swallowed it, and put out her hand to
me.

"Eudine Hilburn, " she said, smiling and parting her red lips to show
big white teeth.  "Formerly Eudine Trahern, late of Dumas, Texas, " and
she laughed, put a hand up to her mouth to make like she was being
modest.  She had on a bright blue skirt that stopped right at her
knees, a jacket the same color, a white blouse with an open collar, and
just as much makeup as any one of those girls we'd seen in New
Orleans.

"I guess I'm just a ding-dong daddy from Dumas, Texas, " she said,
still laughing, her hand still out to me.

I paused a moment, looked at her, then at my oldest son.  Here was
another of those moments a mother doesn't want so much to see, evidence
of her children growing up and away, and I thought again of the dinner
when he'd been only sixteen and told us of his heading off to war.  I
hadn't thought heavily on what exactly I'd expected him to do once he
was out of the service, but nothing I ever imagine'd come even close to
this, a gum-swallowing Texas girl with hair no natural color on
earth.

I took her hand because it was the polite thing to do, and shook it.

As soon as we'd let go, she reached to James, took Brenda Kay out of
his arms, and held her.  "Now this here's the one I want to take a hold
of, " she said, and started to bobbing with Brenda Kay, jostling her
just the smallest way.  This Eudine took one of Brenda Kay's hands to
her lips, gave her the littlest kiss, said, "This here's the one I've
heard so much about, this here little baby-cake, " and she held Brenda
Kay close.

Eudine never looked at me to see if I was taking any of this in,
measuring her to see if she was worthy or not of my oldest boy.  She
was only holding Brenda Kay, and holding her close, not afraid at
all.

I looked to James, wanted to tell him with my eyes that she was welcome
here, that as far as I could see she would make him a good wife, all
this just from the touch she'd given his baby sister.

But he was looking toward the house behind me, his chin set and high.

I turned.

Leston stood on the porch.  His hands were on his hips, his feet spread
shoulder width.

"Leston, " I called, already trying to settle myself between the two of
them.  We'd seen James only twice since he'd joined up, both leaves
ending with Leston inside the house, me driving James back into town so
he could catch his bus.  Now James was out of the service altogether,
who knew what would come.

"Congratulations, " Leston said.  "I don't suppose you'll be moving
back in."

James took off his hat, held it in both hands.  Eudine, next to him,
whispered baby talk into Brenda Kay's ear.  Burton and Wilman and Annie
stood around James, and I watched my oldest son, looking for what he
would do to follow up taking off his hat, whether he'd put his arm
around his new wife, move toward his daddy, what.

But it was in his eyes I saw what he was up to, how he wasn't afraid to
let them meet Leston's any longer, how they'd seen enough of this world
and all it contained, had worked and sweat with enough men to make
certain this moment wouldn't be anything he couldn't handle.  I could
see in his eyes and how they just rested on his daddy's that he was
already gone from this place.

"Moving to Texas, Daddy, " he said.  "Going to college, Texas A&M."  He
paused, swallowed, though his eyes were steel, heavy on Leston.  "Not
sure what I'm going to study, but I'm going to study all the same."

Leston crossed his arms, seemed to stand even taller.  He said, "Don't
be expecting any money out of this household to be helping you on your
way."

"College, " Billie Jean whispered, and I turned, saw her standing next
to Eudine, Eudine smiling her big-teeth smile at her.

"Don't need any money, Daddy, " James went on.  "Uncle Sam's seeing to
that, for the most part."

He finally looked down, let his eyes fall on the hat in his hands, ran
the brim round once, twice.  In the move was so much of his daddy that
there shouldn't have been any doubt in anyone's mind, no sorrow lost,
no grief over his moving out.  James' leaving us now was the only real
thing that could take place.

We'd all gone silent for one long terrible moment, a silence that
seemed to shout out to us all that Leston, my children's father, my
husband, had nothing left to offer, no business his children could take
over, no money even to lend out.  The only thing left was wandering
through woods to old haunts, where stumps'd been exploded years before,
so he could pick up from the forest floor the remains of those days,
and sell them in bundles to niggers.  Only that.

Now James belonged to one Eudine Hilburn, late of Dumas, Texas, and so
the only thing I could do, the only thing anyone on the face of this
earth with any ability to see the obvious could do, was to go to James,
hold him as close as I could ever hope to hold my child, and with that
hold say good-bye the best way I knew to do.

It was a life we were saving, and with the checks James managed to
squeeze out to us, with the money from Billie Jean, with the money from
the kindling and the grammar school, even the change from the vegetable
stand outside, we'd managed to get here, to this day, a Saturday picnic
to celebrate Brenda Kay's first steps.  Five years, when they said
she'd live two.  Six feet across the front room floor, when they said
she'd never walk.

But there was something else I was looking for, too, something I wanted
to try out on Leston, and as I packed into the picnic hamper the fried
chicken I'd made up the night before, Sunday's dinner already cooked
and ready to eat, I couldn't help but feel myself a sinner at having on
my mind anything other than that picture of Brenda Kay walking across
the rug.  So we would have beans and rice for dinner tomorrow.  We were
celebrating, and I was ready to talk to Leston about something I
figured on changing our world all for the better.  I wanted to talk to
my husband, the man who, it seemed for all intents and purposes, had
pulled up stakes in this family, given up in the face of his baby
daughter and the fact of no jobs.

I stood in the quiet of a Saturday morning kitchen, watched through the
window Burton and Wilman throw into the pickup two old inner tubes,
patched and repatched, leftovers from when we had the big trucks, while
inside I folded cloth napkins so thin you could see right through them,
put them in the hamper.  Next I set in a jar of pickled okra I'd put up
late last year, then bowls filled with potato salad and black-eyed peas
and cold cheese grits, each of them covered with sheets of wax paper
I'd used at least a half-dozen times apiece and tied off with old bits
of twine.

I looked back out the window, the morning sun outside shining through
me, and I decided right then I'd try out the word I wanted to use on
Leston, even though we'd be out there to celebrate my baby's walking.

I'd offer him the word, one I hadn't yet uttered aloud, too afraid of
the sound it'd make, at maybe how far off and ridiculous the idea might
seem.  I decided I'd try the word out on him, because he was my
husband, no matter how deep that well he'd fallen into no matter how
hard he was gasping for air inside God's will for his life.  He was
still my husband, and I was still his wife.

"California, " I whispered, then tried it again, a little louder, but
still so quiet I knew I was the only one could hear, "California."

"Momma, " Brenda Kay cried, her voice coming to me from her bedroom
upstairs, the room Anne'd had to move from, the room that'd been James'
so long ago.  The word came out in the same taut, high pitch it did
every time, as though it might be lodged in her throat, her choking
every time on the only word she knew, my name.

Burton threw a coil of rope and an old wooden crate into the bed of the
pickup, for what I couldn't say, and Brenda Kay cried out again,
"Momma!

" "Jewel, " Leston said from somewhere in the house.  "She's
calling."

But I let myself say the word once more, felt it there in my mouth soft
and foreign and clear.

CHAPTER 13.

IT WAS IN THE READER'S DIGEST I FOUND OUT ABOUT IT.  THAT WAS THE only
magazine I let come into the house, and I'd kept it a secret, that
money I spent on it.  Cathe ral was the only one who knew about it, her
taking care of Brenda Kay when I was out to the grammar school, us
paying her a quarter a week to see after her, watch she didn't crawl
off somewhere we couldn't get her, spoon-feed her lunch.  Oatmeal was
Brenda Kay's favorite.

And there were weeks, too, especially around when we were getting ready
to take Brenda Kay for her shots, when we couldn't even pay her the
quarter.  But she didn't complain, never spoke one word out of line
about our situation.  She'd always quote the same verse to me when
those weeks came up, "And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to
receive, what thank have ye?  For sinners also lend to sinners, to
receive as much again, " she'd say to me, and smile.  "Luke chapter
six, verse thirty-four, " she'd say, "the words of our Lord Jesus
Christ, " and she'd turn, head off for home.

The mail came near one-thirty each day, and I was usually home by that
time to get it, Cathe ral my only witness as I tore off the crisp brown
wrapper, my Reader's Digest the highlight of the month.  Even James'
checks coming to us couldn't compare, because there was always
surrounding those bits of paper the feeling of dread at how hard it was
for them to give it, the obligation they had to feel to help save
James' little sister.  On occasion there'd be a letter with the check,
lways written by Eudine, whose handwriting was the fanciest I'd ever
seen, her capital letters big and swirly, her dots big circles floating
above the i or j. In the letter she would talk about James' grades,
about her job as a secretary for the athletic director and how her
typing capabilities fared, her word per minute rate creeping up slowly,
on into the fifties now.  But beyond that there was nothing in her
letters, just the simple everyday things Eudine must have thought might
comfort us.

Even more seldom came photographs, one was of James in his full
uniform, standing before a barracks of white corrugated metal.  The
photo was slightly blurred, and you couldn't quite make out the look on
his face, whether he were smiling or just squinting into the Texas sun
full in his face.  In another photo stood Eudine and another girl, the
two of them as good as twins, grinning at the camera and standing
before what seemed the same barracks building.  On the back Eudine had
written Clarenda and I, out front of the apartment.  It was in this way
I found out that they were living in a barracks.  She'd never made
mention of that before, and the check that accompanied it, ten dollars
made out to Mrs. Leston Hilburn, seemed even harder to surrender to
Billie Jean at the bank.

The Reader's Digest, though, took me elsewhere, let me think of myself
as someone still able to learn a thing or three about the world.  I
kept the newest issue between the mattresses in my bedroom, and when I
went to bed, Leston always staying downstairs to ponder over what all
it was we'd lost these few years, I pulled out my magazine, read it by
the lamplight, and went to Geneva, Switzerland, or into the childhood
of one of our Presidents, or onto the flight deck of an aircraft
carrier right before Guadalcanal.  When my eyes started to get heavier
than I could keep open, I'd tuck the magazine back where it belonged,
go downstairs, and touch Leston on the shoulder.

Every night he was at the kitchen sink, staring out the window at the
black out there, or at his own reflection cast by the light in the
kitchen, I was never able to tell which.  And every night he jumped at
my touch, whether I called out his name before I let my hand rest on
his shoulder or not.

When I was through with the magazines I gave them to Cathe ral, who
seemed genuinely to want them, her thin hands holding each issue as if
it were a precious photograph, only touching the edges, holding it back
and away from her, admiring the paintings on the back.

But the last two issues I hadn't given up to her, each of them
containing an article about what was called "Mongoloids, " and I was
thankful right from the start that someone somewhere'd finally taken
out the second word, that the word Idiot and all it carried'd been cut
off.

The first story was about an American woman who was born and raised in
China by her missionary parents, and how she ended up having a
Mongoloid child, and about her moving to the United States with this
child.  The upshot of the story was that she finally decided to give up
the child to a special home in a place called Vineland, New Jersey, and
how it was the hardest decision she ever made, but that it was all for
the best of the child.

I didn't much care for the article, because it went against everything
I'd tried to make for Brenda Kay a loving household, proper medical
treatment, good care while I was out of the house and making money for
that treatment.  And the woman's child didn't seem nearly as bad off as
Brenda Kay, nobody said her son would die at two, nobody said he'd
never walk.

What made me keep hold of that issue, though, was the note at the end
of the article, set off in a little box, "In the next issue, Reader's
Digest reports on a new miracle drug that helps increase IQ in Brain
Food for the Backward Child.  Don't miss it!  " I wouldn't.  I didn't
have an idea what made for a backward child, whether that was a
Mongoloid or simply a slow child, but I waited, read the article each
night, felt more and more apart from that mother while hoping more and
more for some deliverance with the next issue.  I read the box and its
message a hundred times, and when finally the 20th came around, the day
my magazine came each month, I made certain I was out of the cafeteria
by one, waiting by the mailbox in front of the house by one-twenty.

Mr. Boone, our mailman, drove up in his truck, leaned over and handed
me the only piece of mail we got that day, Reader's Digest.  I smiled
for him' nodded, and had the wrapper off even before he'd pulled
away.

I sat on the steps, Brenda Kay, I knew, already down for her nap she
still slept four or five hours a day when Cathe ral came out.

She stopped, said, "The new one here already, " but I said nothing, ran
my finger down the table of contents on the front, found the page,
turned to it.

She left, called out, "Good-bye, Miss Jewel, " and it was only then I
looked up, saw her already out on the road, the thin cotton dress she
had on wrinkling in the small spring breeze.  "Oh, " I said, then
called out, "Good-bye, Cathe ral."

She didn't turn, only lifted one hand above her head, waved, brought it
back down.

I looked back to the magazine, found right after an article about the
starving people in India what I'd waited for, "Brain Food for the
Backward Child."

I stood, turned to the house and went upstairs to Brenda Kay's room,
slowly opened the door, though I knew I wouldn't wake her, and closed
it behind me.  My rocker was in this room now, and I sat in it.  I read
the article, moving through it slowly, word for word, knowing that once
I'd ended it the wait for this news, whatever it was, would be over.

The article was a short one, and only ran onto two pages.  It was the
story of a Mongoloid boy named David who'd tested in with an IQ of 49,
but, after taking medicine from doctors at the Columbia School of
Medicine, had it shoot up to 61, and he was reading now, and he was
improving.

I had no idea what IQ Brenda Kay would have, didn't know anything about
the Columbia School of Medicine other than that it was in New York
City, didn't have any idea how much more than calcium glucanate shots
this whole procedure cost.  But what I knew was that something out
there was holding hope, and so when I got to the end of the article and
saw the boxed message there, I read it with a new and different kind of
hope.

Hope that maybe there was something out there could help me fix what
was going on in our lives, the burden here.

"Reader's Digest suggests, " the message read, "that if you would like
more information about care for the retarded child, clip out the coupon
below and mail it to, The National Association for Retarded Children,
P.

O. Box 1712, Los Angeles, California."

Below the box was a small form, lines for our address, the name of our
child, how old she was.

Of course I stood, left the room for Annie and Billie Jean's room, went
through the top drawer of their dresser, what Billie Jean called the
trash drawer, and got one of Annie's red pencils.  I sat on her bed,
filled out the form.  The next morning, as soon as Cathe ral got there,
I left, headed for the five and dime for an envelope, then to the post
office, had that coupon on its way to California and whoever it was
would have to hand out help from that far away.

Brenda now called out "Momma!  " one more time before I made it up to
her room, pushed open the door to see her sitting up in bed, still
trying to clap hands.

"My baby, " I said, and she turned to me, on her face nothing for a
moment, then the smile that always started these days out.  She was
happy, always happy, and for at least that much I was glad.  There'd
been more than enough ear infections, me pouring warm oil down into her
ear and trying my best to make her lie still for a while, this going on
every other month or so.  And there were the shots, and how since she
was seven months old she would let out a wail when the needle broke
skin, her voice thick and dark coming up from her throat, her eyes
squeezed shut in the pain of it.  There was no difference in how she
took them even to this day, always that cry, me having to turn my head,
unable to watch while Dr. Beaudry and I both held her down.  And there
were still plenty of mornings when I'd come in here to find she'd wet
or messed in the bed, and there'd be that extra chore to start out
with, the weight of having an infant these five years, what I'd never
counted on, feeding by hand, carrying her wherever we went, my baby
drooling for years on end.  But she was happy no matter what, it
seemed, once she'd been given the shots she seemed to forget they ever
existed, once the ear infections i were gone, she'd slowly crawl out
the door if we didn't stop her.  This morning she was dry.

"Now let's go on to the toilet, " I said, and I took her by the hands,
sort of half-lifted, half-dragged her to the edge of the bed.  She put
her bare feet down, toes still twisted up and bunched together in a way
Dr.  Basket'd informed us they'd be for the rest of her life.

But she was walking now, and with her holding tight to both my hands,
she stepped across the floor, me behind and above her, making certain
she didn't fall.

She knew the way to the toilet, out her bedroom door and to the left
and the end of the hall, though if I were to say to her Go left, or Go
to the end of the hall, it'd mean nothing.  She only knew where to go,
how to get there, fine enough with me.  "Momma, " she said as we went,
"Momma, Momma."

When we reached the door into the bathroom, Leston came out of our
bedroom.  He had on one of his old workshirts, a pair of blue jeans and
suspenders on, what he wore every day.  But he'd combed his hair wet,
slicked back on the top and sides.  He smelled of Old Spice, the bottle
he had in his dresser years old.  He hadn't opened it in maybe two or
three years, since back when he went to church with us all Sunday
mornings.

He smiled, bent down and touched Brenda Kay's head, then leaned and
kissed her forehead.

"My baby girl, " he said.  Without his eyes meeting mine, he stood,
leaned into my neck and kissed me.  Then he turned, headed off down the
stairs.

There was nothing to say, and I only stood there, watching him as he
took the stairs quicker than any morning in recent history.

I looked down at Brenda Kay.  She was half-turned to him, watching him,
too.  Her eyes were open wide, her mouth open, as if this person were a
stranger, someone she'd never seen before, even after five and a half
years inside this house.  And maybe, I thought, that's exactly what he
was to her, why she looked at him this way every time she saw him.

Then something came clear to me, and I knew what he'd already planned
for our outing.  And just as clear I knew, too, how I'd introduce him
to the notion of California.

We were on the road east toward Ashe Lake by nine-thirty, Leston,
Brenda Kay and me in the front seat, the children in the bed of the
pickup.  On occasion I'd glance back through the rears window to see
Billie Jean with one hand holding down her hair, the other on the edge
of the bed, her eyes always ahead of us, watching what was coming up
next, or Wilman reaching out a fist to Burton, Burton dodging, moving
just so, Wilman's swing lost to air.  Annie never moved, only huddled
next to Billie Jean, her legs pulled up close to her chin, her hands
holding on to her shins.

She only stared across the bed to the opposite wall, her red hair in
pigtails that bounced with each dip in the road.

Leston put his arm on top of the seat back, let his fingers just touch
my shoulder.  He tilted his head to one side, his eyes on the road,
said, "Figured we'd rent us a canoe.  From that old nigger up there,
Jason."  He paused.  "What do you think?  " Brenda Kay started rocking
forward and back right then, her hands tight together in her lap.  Her
mouth was open, her jaw pushed forward so that all you could see of her
mouth were her bottom teeth, her chin way out.

Then she started clicking her teeth together, her jaw just barely
moving, going to some rhythm only she knew about.

I touched a hand to her back, and she only kept with the slow, smooth
rocking.

I said, "What about money?  " He laughed, short and clean, like he was
tossing aside the whole idea of what things cost.

He said, "I got a few cents saved up."  He paused, looked at me for the
first time today.  "No big bankroll, " he said, smiling.  "But a few
cents."

I turned, looked to the road.  My hand was still on Brenda Kay's back,
making slow circles now, never certain what it was she thought me doing
by touching her, sometimes she'd be startled, turn quick as she could
to give me the cold-eyed and empty stare she gave Leston each time she
saw him, other times she'd turn, smile at me, her thin red lips nearly
gone for the smile, the row of bottom baby teeth right there.  This
time she did nothing, still rocked, as though I weren't even here.

"The children'd like that, " I said.  "We haven't done that since
before Brenda Kay was born."

I looked at him.  I wanted to see how he'd take that, my words right
out in the open.  We never spoke about Before, that word gone from the
ones we always used, ones that usually dealt with money.

But he didn't flinch, didn't even move.  His fingers still lay on my
shoulder.  His eyes were on the road, and he said, "Figured you " and
he stopped.  He looked at me, one hand on the steering wheel, his elbow
out his window, the air cool and dew-wet air out there.  "Figured you
and me, we could take a little ride ourselves."  He paused,
swallowed.

"You and me."

I took my eyes from his, looked back to Brenda Kay.  She'd started in
to rocking too far forward, too far back, the slow arc her body made
too big for the cab, her back hitting the seat a little harder each
time.

Leston took his arm from the seat top, put both hands on the wheel.  He
glanced at Brenda Kay, then to the road, then to her again.

I reached my other hand to Brenda Kay's chest, tried to hold her.  But
she was strong, and it took me a minute or so before I could get her to
stop, until she was sitting up straight again, breathing hard, cheeks
flushed, her small fingers still clasped in her lap.

"With Brenda Kay, of course, " I said then, one arm around her
shoulder.

With my other hand I touched her cheek, felt her smooth skin damp with
sweat.

"No, " he said.  He was smiling at me again.  "Just what I said.  You
and me.  Billie Jean can take care of her, does it often enough
already."

I knew what he wanted, there was no doubt.  And he was right, Brenda
Kay'd be fine with Billie Jean.  Still, I had to play this out the best
I could, wanted him to feel what was coming was all his idea.

I said.  "Leston, are you certain?  " I tilted my head, drew up my
eyebrows in a way I knew he'd believe the rest of his life.

He said, "Positive."  He let go the steering wheel with one hand,
placed that hand on Brenda Kay's head, patted it as though he'd never
had any children of his own, his fingers flat and stiff, afraid to
touch her.

"She'll be fine, " he said.

"I don't know, " I said, and crossed my arms to show him how worried I
was, then settled back in my seat, already figuring on what I'd say
once we were out on the water.

CHAPTER 14.

LESTON PARKED THE TRUCK OUT FRONT THE NIGGER JASON's SHANTY.  Not a
hundred yards behind the place was Ashe Lake, his shanty looking like
every other shanty I'd ever seen, clapboards weathered to nothing, a
huge flat stone for a front step, smoke from a chimney.

He and Leston stood out front, Jason's eyes on the ground before him,
Leston with his hands in his blue jeans pockets and rocking ever so
slowly forward and back on his heels.  He looked directly at Jason,
just talking to him.

I leaned out the window, hollered, "Leston, let's get going."

He only glanced at me, turned his head the smallest bit, then back to
Jason, who, suddenly, looked too much like Tory to me, hair the same
flecked gray, eyes down on the ground the same way, raggedy clothes.

The engine rumbled beneath me.  Brenda Kay'd started giving in to
rocking forward and back again, and the boys were standing in the bed
of the truck, chucking rocks they'd gotten from somewhere off into the
woods.

Then Leston pulled one hand out of a pocket, looked into his palm, held
it out to Jason.  Money for the canoe.

Jason lifted a hand, waved off Leston, shook his head.  Still he
wouldn't look up.

But Leston wouldn't let it pass at that, instead stood with his hand
and the money out.

"Momma!  " Brenda Kay screamed then, my name choked off in her throat,
high-pitched and piercing, making me jump at it.  She was going full
tilt again, her head almost smashing into the scratched green metal of
the dash as she swung forward, the back of her head hitting the seat as
she slammed backward.

I took hold of her, and for a few moments I, too, was swinging with
her, lost for an instant in the cold rhythm she carried through her
body, made her move as hard as she did, and I held her even tighter,
afraid I might lose control, though I already had.  Her getting to this
moment, this abandon, was my fault, me watching what was happening out
the window instead of what was going on in my child right next to me.

I .  w o Because that was what being her mother was about, watching,
every second, waiting and watching and waiting.  Every moment, every
breath of my life was taken up with care for her, and how best to keep
control of her life, then my children's lives, and, finally, my
husband's.  When Brenda Kay screamed, when she pulled a chair over on
herself, when she wet her underdrawers, when she crawled too close to
the fireplace, when she banged her chin on a kitchen drawer she pulled
out too fast, when she threw up, when she had a hair in her eye, when
she found a sharpened pencil, when she slept, when she ate, when she
drank and breathe and breathe , I was protecting her, stopping her,
carrying her, helping her.

That was who I was, and as I struggled yet again to slow her down, to
stop this wild movement she'd done this more and more of late, the
movement what Dr. Basket'd informed me was merely her own way of
learning to coordinate her muscles, her body trying to take charge over
itself as she grew older I wondered when this all would stop, or if it
would, or if I really hoped it would never stop at all.  This purpose,
this mission I had now was the giant center of everything I did, and I
thought again of what I was here to do, what that canoe meant to me and
what it meant to Leston, and how it was Brenda Kay and her welfare, her
life, I was after fixing.

I had her tight in my arms, had her stopped, finally, the both of us
breathing hard this time, my eyes closed with the effort.

When I opened them, there out front of the shanty stood Leston and
Jason, Leston's hand and the money still held out to him.  But Leston
was turned to us.  The morning light played across his face to make
even deeper the wrinkles of his forehead, even more severe the lines
beside his eyes as he strained to see what exactly was going on in the
cab of his truck.

I glanced over my shoulder and out the rear window.  Billie Jean was
staring in at us, Wilman standing up and with his arm cocked back and
ready to throw the rock in his hand, Burton standing with his hands in
his pockets.  Only Annie wasn't looking, simply stared off into the
woods.

I turned to the front window, hollered, "We're fine, Leston.  Let's
just get on."

He turned back to Jason, reached to Jason's shirt pocket, dropped the
few bits of change in.

Jason nodded a quick couple of times, pointed off to his left, all
without looking up.  Then Leston looked back to the truck, snapped his
fingers once and pointed to where Jason had.

The boys jumped out of the bed and disappeared around the back of the
shanty.  A minute later, here they came, the scarred and dull blue
canoe they carried hiding their heads.

I looked down at Brenda Kay, my arms still around her shoulders, and
marveled at how strong she could be, the power in her muscle and
bone.

And I wondered what she saw as the boys came nearer the truck, the
canoe upside down and on their heads.  But her eyes were filled with
the same empty thickness they always were, only staring, my baby quiet
and still.

Leston slowly drove the truck down a two-track dirt road, the center of
it high with weeds that disappeared from before the hood as we moved
over them, vines and branches off magnolias and low pines and water oak
all coming down from above.  I'd looked again out the rear window, saw
the boys, one on each side of the canoe and with a hand holding tight
to an edge, the other hand pushing back the branches.

We parked at the end of the road, and let the boys take the canoe out
first, watched from shore as they made like Red Indians, warwhooping
and screaming, the two of them working the paddles in good time,
disappearing to the north where the lake bent and wandered off.  The
only thing left of them was the slice of empty water where'd been a
thick carpet of lily pads before they'd launched, and the sound every
once in a while of their yells carried across the water to us.

They were getting on now, it hit me as the last of their hollering came
to me.  Burton was already fifteen, Wilman thirteen, though he had a
few pounds on his older brother, stood only an inch or so shorter.

Billie Jean was already nineteen, Annie nine, and as Billie Jean and I
spread out the old red wool blanket we'd always used just for picnics
like this one, these sorts of occasions commonplace before Brenda Kay'd
come along, I wondered what had happened to that time.  But I knew even
before my next breath that the answer was right in front of me, already
crawling across the blanket, bringing on the soles of her heavy white
shoes sand and grass and mud, my five and-a-half-year-old infant.

"Brenda Kay, " I said, and she looked up at me, first the empty eyes,
then the smile.  She was on her hands and knees, but lifted a hand up,
fingers spread wide.  I couldn't tell if she was trying to wave at me,
or if the move was something she'd had no choice over, only her body
doing more of what the doctor in New Orleans said she'd do.  There was
no way to tell.

Once I'd gotten her sitting up and brushed off as best I could, and
after I'd given Annie the job of going back to the truck for the food
and Billie Jean the task of seeing if she couldn't head up the lake
aways, call the boys back in, I sat on the blanket.  Brenda Kay was in
front of me, trying again to clap her hands.  She made sounds all the
while, the same sounds she always made, open-mouthe hums that wandered
all over, up and down, soft to loud to soft again.  I put my arms
around her from behind, pulled her close to me, and held her hands with
mine, clapped with her to my own rhythm, something we did every day.  I
thought there might be in the words I sang and in the feel of my arms
around her a healing power, love, like I'd said to Leston in the cab of
the truck on the way home from New Orleans that first time, was the
biggest power we could any of us give her.  I sang in her ear the first
verse to "Love Lifted Me, " a song that seemed to calm her down, and
that made her hum all the more.  I couldn't help but think of her
humming as her own trying to sing with me, more evidence we were on the
road to some recovery from the blow we'd been getting these five and a
half years.

"Listen, " I said out loud to Leston, who leaned back on his elbows
beneath the live oak we'd laid the blanket under.  He had his feet
crossed at the ankles, his eyes on the lake.  His eyes creased closed
with the smoke off the cigarette at his lips.  He reached up with one
hand, took out the cigarette, shot out smoke.  He looked at us.

"Love lifted me, " I sang quietly, clapping Brenda Kay's hands together
as I did, "love lifted me, when nothing else would help, love lifted
me."

Brenda Kay hummed and hummed along, now and again moving her mouth in
some way that changed the sounds she gave out, made them near-words,
all of them choked and stiff, but sounds all the same.

Leston smiled, looked back to the lake.  He put the cigarette to his
lips, leaned back on both elbows again.  He said, "Ought to put you
both in the church choir, " and looked at me.

I smiled at him, hoping he'd see the joy his baby daughter was capable
of, the happiness she held in her heart, the two of us clapping away to
words that meant nothing to her, me smiling away at her own words, ones
I knew I'd never understand, either.

But then Leston turned from us, his eyes back out to the water, and I
knew his mind was on the canoe, and what we'd do once we were out
there.

And though I was smiling at him, at his boyish try to keep hidden from
me precisely what he wanted to do, a piece of me kept tearing inside,
sharp with the knowledge that, of all my family, he might have been the
biggest casualty of all, the one most laden with the weight of what God
had dealt, no job, a retarded daughter, children growing up and away.

A wife working in a grammar school cafeteria.  His might've been the
biggest burden of all, though when I'd first met him he was
untouchable, a strong boy, me a brand-new school teacher in a
two-teacher school in East Columbia, him just moved from home with his
eyes on owning his own lumberyard.

Once I'd recovered from the whipping I'd received from Mrs. Archibald,
things around and in me started to changing, and I finally surrendered
myself to the work at hand, my classes.  I saw that there was no means
of escape except to take the years handed you, make them your own by
holding them tight, wringing from them all you could.

It'd worked, by the time I was to graduate, somewhere in my mind had
been planted the idea of college.  Though I cannot remember for certain
when it happened, I know the notion was put there by Mrs. Esther
Faulk, my Latin teacher, an aged woman with whom I'd met the last two
years.

The two of us and four other girls met in her classroom Tuesday and
Thursday afternoons to work not only on Latin, but on our other
coursework as well.  That room became a friend of mine, so much more
giving and filled with light than where I slept at night.

But there came a day a week or so before graduation when the topic came
up, the word "college" uttered by me for the first time, the two of us
there in her room and going over I can't remember what.  The other
girls'd already left.

"What is it you plan to do once you leave here?  " she'd said out of
nowhere, maybe in the middle of one last geometry problem, perhaps at
the end of a bit of Latin I'd done my best to translate on the spot for
her.  She was old, older even than Missy Cook, and wore her hair
wrapped tight in a bun that sat at the very top of her head.

"College, " was all I'd said, and suddenly the idea sounded ridiculous,
a place I'd never end up because I knew it cost money, something I had
none of at all, Missy Cook's house had burned down in March, and she'd
died not three weeks later, living in the Pastor and his wife's home.

I'd been told of the funeral by Mrs. Winthrop, informed by her I could
be brought there and back if I so desired.

But I hadn't desired that at all, not out of hate for Missy Cook that
was over, I knew, since I'd turned and run back to school on railroad
tracks two years before, over and done with in the whipping I'd gotten,
over and done with in the cold metal of the flagpole on my face.

Over, too, with each letter Missy Cook'd sent me starting some six
months after I'd been there.  The letters came like clockwork each
first Monday of the month, and were written on delicate, perfumed
stationery, her handwriting always elegant and billowing and
beautiful.

In each letter she suggested I come back home home her word, I l not
mine for a short visit, during which we could chat, that being her word
as well.

And at the end of each letter was written a Bible verse, divine signals
of how I was to act, her never wanting to surrender control over me,
"The Lord rewarded me according to my righteousness, according to the
cleanness of my hands hath he recompensed me.  Psalm 18, 20, " she once
wrote, another time, she wrote, "I have taught the in the way of
wisdom, I have led the in right paths.  Proverbs 4, 11."

But with each letter she sent I sent one back, mine written on the
coarse and heavy paper I received from Mrs. Winthrop, and in each
letter back I politely declined, citing any number of homework
assignments and class activities as my reason.  And I finished each
letter with a verse of my own, my own signals from the same book she
drew hers from, "For thou wilt save the afflicted people, but wilt
bring down high looks.

Psalm 18, 27, " I wrote, and, "A high look, and a proud heart, and the
plowing of the wicked, is sin.  Proverbs 21, 4."  And still her letters
had come.

No, I hadn't gone back for her funeral, because that part of me was
over, long dead, and the self-pity I knew Missy Cook had wanted me to
feel, pity for the sad and ugly life she knew I must be leading at this
girl's school, would only have been magnified were I ever to lay eyes
on her again.  What she didn't know, though, and what she'd never know
now, was that there'd been no room in my life for the kind of self-pity
I'd been stripped of there in front of all the girls, in front of the
hall mistresses, in front of Tory.  Just no more room for that luxury,
feeling sorry for myself.

I'd chosen not to go back because this was my home now, where I lived,
worked, ate and slept.  Here.

"College, " I said again, only this time in a whisper, a word to myself
I wasn't sure I wanted divulged even to Mrs.  Faulk.

"Then go, " she said, and I remember looking up at her from where I sat
in the front row desk, her eyes above her half-glasses right on mine.

"How?  " I said.  "I don't have any money."

"What if, " she started, and leaned back in her chair, a move she'd
never made in front of us before, her back always straight as a board,
her hands always holding her glasses or papers or both.  She took off
the glasses, and I watched as she placed them on her desk.  Then she
turned, looked out the window.  It was hot that day, June already and
all those windows open, air in the room warm and thick.  All you could
see out there was the green of trees, the haze-blue sky.

I looked at her, saw a drop of sweat slip down her cheek, disappear I
LL into the high collar of her dress, and I saw again my mother in a
fever, sheets soaked, her near on to death.

"What if, " she said again, "the school were to help you out in this
situation.  If the school were to contribute in its way to your
furthering your education?  " She hadn't taken her eyes off whatever
she saw out the window.  I said nothing.

"You have performed here exceptionally well, even in- the face of your,
shall we say, indiscretions early on."  She looked at me, smiled, but
not a smile that took glee in the memory of my being whipped.  Rather,
it was almost a conspiratorial grin, and I remember being startled at
that, at the warmth of a smile brought on by my sad attempt at
escape.

She looked back out the window, said, "We are prepared to pay for your
tuition at Pearl River Junior College, provided you do there the best
work you are capable of producing."

She turned her eyes to me again.  She smiled, said, "What is it you
wish to do as a career?  " I hadn't even the need to blink, to take in
a breath, before the old answer came to me, what had been with me even
before my daddy'd died.  I said, "A teacher."

I wrote her letters from school, made the hour walk to the Mississippi
Industrial School for Girls at least once a month, sat in on some of
her classes, even taught a few sessions myself over the two years I was
at Pearl River, furthering my education.  I took courses in literature,
courses in mathematics, courses in Latin, courses in drawing, courses
in physical education.  And, after two years of studying and listening
and talking and reading, I found myself with a job at a two-teacher
school in Columbia, Mississippi, the superintendent of schools for
Marion County a friend of Mrs.  Esther Faulk's.

My class was the first through fourth grade, and that first morning I
wore a new blue dress I'd paid for with money I'd earned over the
summer working as a typist for Pearl River, no lace on that dress
anywhere, no ribbons, only a blue dress that spoke nothing but
teacher.

I entered the room, saw before me the faces of thirty-three children,
all of them seated in desks, inkwells dry, desktops scarred and
carved.

Some of the bigger kids in the back rows wouldn't look my way, some
sneered at me.  A girl, red hair in pigtails, picked at her nose,
another girl, this one with fine blond hair and seated in the front
row, had her hands flat on the desktop, smiling, no front teeth.

Another student, this one a boy in the third row back, had a black eye,
a bruised chin, his hair filthy and mussed.

But how these children looked didn't matter, nor did the fact I'd I be
three weeks in getting ink, two more in getting pens, two months in
scraping together from castoffs at schools around the county enough
Mcguffey Readers to start in on.

None of that mattered, not even the fact I was making only twenty
dollars a month, because I was a teacher now.  Because I'd gotten here,
had survived and in fact had fixed in the best way I could everything
God'd seen fit to throw me for whatever reasons He'd had, reasons that
wouldn't come clear to me until years later, when I'd gotten from him
the giant blessing and curse of a retarded child, the one I held in my
arms right now, and to whom I sang hymns in His honor.  He, my God,
wanted to see how I could fix this huge piece of all our lives.

Billie Jean was coming back toward us now along the old trail that
circled the lake, a trail the children'd all explored at one time or
another before Brenda Kay was born, that word before pushing in on me
again.  She pushed back branches and vines as she came, waved a hand in
front of her face at the gnats that'd started in on us.

And I saw the boys coming round the cypress out to the end of the
point, the two of them still hollering, still paddling that canoe with
the same mighty grace only young men could have, each stroke of their
paddles reaching deep into the water and into themselves for whatever
new strength they could find.

Annie set the basket next to Brenda Kay and me, then sat down, held her
knees to her chest, stared out to the lake.  Somewhere, too, James was
breathing, taking in air and letting it out just as we all were here,
him in Texas, a place so foreign, so unimaginable all I could see of it
was a barracks painted white, two girls standing before it, one named
Eudine, the other Clarenda.

And I asked myself I had to what I had-done wrong, what I'd done to God
in heaven, to have been given these fine five other children, and my
good husband, each of them slipping out of my hands, it was simple to
see, the older the baby grew.  And I had no answer, no voice in me
like'd come to Cathe ral when she'd been hanging clothes, God's mystery
rising in her heart until those words burst in miraculous sounds from
her own mouth.  There was nothing, no word from Him up above.  Only me
here, and the knowledge that what I had to do today, here, on this
picnic, was my best chance to fix our lives.

CHAPTER 15.

, WILMAN AND BURTON GAVE THE CANOE A HARD PUSH, AND WE GLIDED out onto
the water.  I sat in the bow, facing Leston and the shore, watched
Wilman and Burton take a couple extra steps into the water, their blue
jeans wet up the knees now.  Then they stopped, the two of them hands
on hips, just watching.  Annie'd climbed up into the live oak, almost
hidden in the leaves, and watched us, too.  Billie Jean, on the wool
blanket with Brenda Kay in her lap, hollered out, "Y'all don't worry!

" She picked up one of Brenda Kay's hands, waved with it.  Brenda Kay's
mouth hung open, and even as we headed out onto the lake, my children
growing smaller with each stroke Leston made with the paddle, I could
see the neat white row of Brenda Kay's bottom teeth.  Then we were
alone.

We were silent a few minutes, the only sound the thin wash of water
against the canoe as we cut across the lake, Leston choosing to head us
south, I could see, away from that old trail, and the possibility of
the children following us.  I knew what he was after.

By this time lunch already over, the sun straight up so the only
shadows cast onto the lake were those where trees hung out over water
Leston's smoothe -back hair had started to loosen up, strands here and
there lifted on the small breeze, his forehead shiny wet with the work
of paddling us.  He had another cigarette in his mouth, his forehead
furrowed in concentration as he tried his best to dig the paddle into
the water with the same ease, the same abandon and grace the boys
had.

The cigarette was burned down near to nothing before he thought to
pause in the paddling, take it out, flick it with his thumb and first
finger.

In the quiet out there, my children already gone from view, I thought I
could hear the hiss of the butt as it hit water.

I looked away from him, there on the piece of gray wood that served as
a seat, the paddle flat in his lap.

The water was green, a thick green that wouldn't let you see more than
a foot or so into it.  I looked at the water for a long while, until
!

. l Leston put the paddle back in, started us on to wherever we were
going.

I said, "Mr. Hilburn, how've you been?  " I looked up from the
water.

"Just fine, " he said between strokes.

"Just fine, " I said.  "That's good."  I waited a few moments, said,
"But if you care at all to elaborate on that, I'd be glad to give a
listen."

"Elaborate, " he said.

"Talk more on it."

He stopped paddling, and smiled at me.  "I know what elaborate means,
Miss Jewel, " he said.  He ran his hand back through his hair, tried to
put it in some kind of order.

"Then go ahead, " I said.  I let a hand touch the water, watched my
fingers go into the green.

"No need, " he said, "no need at all."  He started paddling again, and
I could see we were heading back toward the marsh end of the lake, the
bulrushes and sawgrass it was easy to get lost in, to disappear
behind.

The first time I laid eyes on Leston I'd been unimpressed.

I'd just started at the school, had attended the East Columbia Church
there only two Sundays, my job as schoolteacher also to teach the same
grades in Sunday School.

That second Sunday one Mrs. Luvena Hilburn'd thought it her Christian
duty to introduce herself to me, and told me as we stood outside the
bright red door of the church that she should offer me an empty room in
her house, one that'd been recently vacated by her son, Leston, who'd
headed out to Mccomb to work in a lumber mill.

Mrs. Hilburn was a heavy woman, but kind all the same, her eyes a
beautiful, clear green, a green I couldn't know then would be a green I
would see the rest of my days.

Then a tall, thin young man a boy, were the first two words in my mind
that morning came up behind Mrs. Hilburn, touched her shoulder, and
nodded to me as she turned around.

"This here's Leston, my boy, " she said, "the one whose room's empty
and awaiting you to come and live in.  If you see that as being the
Lord's will."  She turned backlo me, and Leston put out his hand.

"Ma'am, " he said.  I hesitated, not certain what it would mean, a
brand-new schoolteacher shaking hands with an unmarried man, but I
shook it all the same, felt the calluses on his fingers, his palm.

There'd been no more thought of him than that, a green-eyed boy who
worked a lumber mill in Mccomb.  September heat banged down on us all,
my throat parched from talking all week in school, then all Sunday
morning to the same children, the same girl with red pigtails, the same
boy with the black-eye bruise gone to yellow now, the same fine-blond
girl with hands flat on her little white Bible instead of the
desktop.

I looked to Mrs. Hilburn, fanning herself now with a bamboo fan from
inside.  But unlike the fans of my childhood, the ones I remembered
from when I'd sat between my momma and daddy, there were no hymns
printed on these, no Psalm 23.  Only a gold cross on both sides, lines
of gold radiating out, so that, as the cross of Jesus fluttered before
me, I wondered how best to find out how much she wanted to rent the
room for, and how that amount would seal whether or not it was the
Lord's will for me to stay with her.

But I hadn't had to ask.  She said, "Two dollars a week is all."  I
looked up at her.  She smiled, said, "Is that the Lord's will?  " "It
is, " I said, and we laughed.

Her son was already gone.  I hadn't even seen him go.

I moved in that afternoon, left the Columbia Hotel, a two-story
building with eight rooms and two bathrooms, carrying the new satchel
Mrs. Faulk'd given me for graduating Pearl River, in it everything I
owned, which wasn't much, one other dress, brown and of the same design
as the blue, my underclothes, a few books, including my Mcguffey
Readers, the fountain pen I'd received from Mrs. Faulk upon graduating
from the Mississippi Industrial School for Girls.  Tablets of paper.  A
red pencil.

A photograph.

When I got there, her house only a mile or so outside town, I simply
knocked at the screen door, called out, "Mrs. Hilburn?  " and the door
pushed open.  This small, round lady with the green eyes and hair done
the same as Mrs. Faulk'd always worn hugged me, then pulled back, took
in my face, a hand still on my shoulder.

"We're so pleased you saw your way to doing God's will here, " she
said, laughed again.  I laughed, too.

She took the satchel from my hand, set it down next to an overstuffed
chair that seemed defeated, its seat flat, the back of it indented
where someone'd leaned for years on end.  I looked round the front
room, saw a fireplace, wood walls painted pale blue, two rockers, the
bottoms of the runners just bare wood.

I could live here.

She took my hand, led me back to the kitchen, where sat a table full of
people, food heaped and steaming in the middle of it, cheese grits,
chicken, red-eye gravy, snap beans and bacon, fried corn and red
peppers.  All of it hot, filling me up with the wonderful scent of so
much home-cooked food.  Everybody's plates were empty, all of them
about to dig in.

"You timed this just fine, you did, " Mrs. Hilburn said, and suddenly
I was aware of all five faces at the table turned to me, smiling.  .

Mrs. Hilburn, my hand still in hers, held her other hand out in a
gesture toward the older man who sat at the head.  "This here's my
husband, Mr.  James Baxter Hilburn."

He stood, as did the other two males at the table, the room suddenly
ciuttered with the sounds of chairs pushed back.  "Pleased, " Mr. James
Baxter Hilburn said, and nodded, smiling.  He was tall, taller even
than that Leston boy I'd met earlier, and had a thick head of white
hair, blue eyes, a white Sunday shirt buttoned up to his neck.

He held a hand out to the empty chair and table setting next to him.

"Have a seat?  " he said.

"I'd be honored, Mr. Hilburn, " I said.  I let go Mrs. Hilburn's
hand, made my way round the table, sidling past the other boy, this one
younger than Leston, only a few days into his teens, I figured.  Then I
was next to Mr.  Hilburn, and I sat.

The males all sat, and Mr. Hilburn quick closed his eyes, clasped his
hands together in a fierce grip I thought might break bones.  He closed
his eyes.  "Oh Father, " he started, all of it so quick my eyes were
still on him as he started into blessing the food, the day, the bounty
we all of us encountered every minute we walked God's green earth, and
giving thanks, too, for this new schoolteacher who'd be living with
them from here on out, Amen.

I'd gotten my eyes closed along about halfway through his prayer,
opened them only an instant past that last holy word, and saw everyone
at the table digging in, shoveling food onto plates like it'd be thrown
out in a minute if they didn't.

Then came the introductions, next to me, on my right, was the oldest
daughter, Mildred, hair blue-black, eyes the blue of her father's.  She
turned to me only a moment, smiled and nodded as she pulled a
chicken-back onto her plate with two fingers, next to her was the other
boy there, Toxie.  "The son of my first daughter, Brenda Kay, deceased,
may she rest in peace, " Mrs. Hilburn said all in a breath, and though
I'd felt the need somehow to say I was sorry at that, Toxie'd only
leaned forward in his chair so I could see him around his sister,
smiled wide, gave a small wave.  "Hey, " he said.

Next to Mrs. Hilburn, on her right, was Leston, "Who you already met,
" she said.  Leston was eating, his mouth full and chewing away.  He
nodded, smiled.  Next to him was the other black-haired girl, Martha,
eyes the same blue as her father's, too, and I started trying to piece
things out here, Mrs. Hilburn with a deceased daughter old enough to
have had a teenage son, two other daughters with no resemblance
whatsoever to the brother, Leston.

Before I could say a thing, not that I would have I'd have ended up
lying in the dark in my new room here in this house and eventually
figuring it all out Mrs. Hilburn said, "Mr. Hilburn's my second
husband.

My first was killed in a logging accident years ago.  Leston and me
took on Mr. Hilburn's name once I married him, " she said, "though
before that we were Scoggins."

No one at the table got teary, blinked, shrugged.  Not even Leston.

Nothing.  They only ate, and then Mr. Hilburn said, "These here is my
daughters, Mildred and Martha.  They momma's dead, too.  I got two
other daughters, they living in Biloxi, married."

"Oh, " I said, and looked down at my plate, still empty.  "Oh, " I said
again, and felt a blush coming up on me, as if I'd been the one to pry
into these affairs, dug them up like old bones from somewhere.

"Darling, don't you worry none, " Mrs. Hilburn said.  She smiled,
said, "Fill your plate or go hungry, child."

I filled it.

We were near on to the marsh now, and still Leston hadn't elaborated,
hadn't given up to me anything of what his mind was on, what he was
thinking.  Even though I knew.  But I wanted some of that thinking out
in the air here, out on this breeze.

I said, "Leston honey, you remember when we met?  " He was quiet, took
one stroke, then another.  He said, "I do."

"Tell me of it, " I said, and I put a hand up to my eyes, blocked the
light from above so I could see his face without squinting.

"You was there, " he said, still paddling.

"But I want to hear of it from you.  What you remember."

He paused, let the paddle hang in the water a few inches, and I could
see the eddy around and behind it, felt the canoe slow up.  "What do
you want to talk about this for?  " he said.  He let the paddle sit a
moment more, then picked it up, dug into water again.

A few moments later, I said, "Do you remember the watch?  " And just as
I'd figured on happening, he gave up with the paddling, his face
breaking into the grin I'd hoped would come along with the memories
long buried in him.

He shook his head, still smiling, and said, "Now, Jewel, you know I
do."

"So tell me, " I said.  I brought the hand down from my eyes, let it
trail in the water, saw the smallest eddies my fingers made of their
own.

He lay the paddle across his lap, leaned his forearms on it.  "This
paddling hurts like hell, " he said, and he laughed, the sound he made
so foreign, strange and familiar at once after years without it, and I
couldn't help but join him.

"You asked, " he said, the laugh falling away.  "And I can't figure for
what."  He paused, shook his head.  "But the watch, " he started, "the
l .

watch and sister Mildred and how I gave it to you each night to keep
under your pillow and think about me."

"And?  " I said.  There was no sound now, no water across the bow, no
children, no birds close enough to enter the quiet surrounding us.

He said, "I love you, Jewel, " and he looked up at me.  The words
nearly knocked my wind out, words that hadn't come from him in years,
not since, as best I could remember, when Brenda Kay was born, the two
of us alone in a hospital room.  They were words I hadn't heard from
him since Before, and all I could say, all I could offer him right
there on the water, were my own words, ones I couldn't remember
offering up to him myself since then, "I love you, Leston, " I said
almost in a whisper, and I made sure my eyes were square on his, that I
saw as deep into that deepwater green as I could.  I wanted him to know
I was here, with him, not back on shore and worried with our baby.

Finally that moment was gone, his eyes falling from mine in some
embarrassed boy's fall as he spoke, "Once I'd moved back into Daddy
Hilburn's house after the mill closed, you and I started to courting.

Every night I'd give you my Daddy Scoggins' watch."

He shook his head again, gave a quick snicker.  "Kids, " he said.  "We
was just kids, " he said.  "Silly."

"Not silly, not at all, " I said.

He glanced up at me, hands in front of him, forearms on the paddle.

"And you took to knocking on my room door each morning early, before
you left for school.  Before anybody else was up in the house because
that's the only place you could work, no quiet in the house with Toxie
there."  He stopped, shrugged.  "Toxie, " he said again.  "Those early
mornings Toxie'd never wake up, even when you came into the room after
you'd knocked real quiet, he'd be asleeping.  And you'd kiss me awake,
and you'd give me back my watch."

He looked up at me again, and he was blushing, the idea of that kiss
making my own heart speed up, the trouble and danger and wrath we were
asking for, all for me waking him up with a kiss.  Because I'd seen in
him, even before he'd moved back from the mill, that he was a good man,
a good son who loved his mother and stepfather both, who took Toxie up
with him and fished with him, chopped wood with him, swam at the creek
with him.  And he loved his sisters, too, though stepsisters they were,
gave them while he was working at the mill a piece of his wages in
addition to that he gave his momma and stepdaddy, sometimes bought the
girls rosewater and ribbons whenever the crew'd made a trip to
Pascagoula, brought back to Toxie tiny carved wood animals he'd made
the long nights spent at the camp.  He was a good man, true-hearted,
and as he sat there before me, I saw I'd been right about him, saw the
care with which he'd taken showing James how to tie his shoes one
winter morning, James on his lap, Leston's arms round him and holding
him close and warm, whispering in his firstborn's ear which string to
hold where, saw the houses he'd built for us out of wooded land and
with those arms that'd seemed so thin when I'd first met him, houses
built callus upon callus, thousands of layers of him wearing away with
all the trees he'd cut down, all the stumps he'd blasted and hauled,
saw the niggers we'd fed and employed for years.  Those hands had been
through all with him, and now they were almost useless, only good for
holding a mug of cold coffee of an evening.

He took in a breath, kept on with what I'd led him into telling.  "Then
sister Mildred sees you one morning coming out the room, and she comes
up behind you, sweeps you out the house and onto the porch outside, and
tears into you, tells you you ought to be ashamed of your hussy
behavior, sleeping overnight with her stepbrother, the two of you not
even betrothe ."

He stopped again, laughed again, shook his head again.  And I laughed,
too, because of what was coming, the end of the story.

"And you says to her, " Leston said, ""Why, Sister Mildred, I only
stopped in to say good-bye to him for the day.  And, you says, we are
betrothe .  And I'm listening through the wall to all this, you two out
on the porch, my heart about to bust out my chest because, I guessed,
that was it.  Done and done.  I didn't ask you to marry me yet, though
you knew darn well it was back there in my head somewheres.  But that
morning it was done and done.  No going back."

"No going back, " I said, and I scooted forward, rocked the canoe on my
way toward one of those hands.  I got near to them, took first one,
then the other, held them hard.

Leston was looking at me now, the smile gone from his face, just those
eyes and his wild hair, the growing-old man who was this growing-old
woman's husband, and I leaned to that face, kissed him long and strong
and soft, a kiss like none I'd given him in years, not since Before.  A
kiss like a few whispered words of the lost language we'd once known.

I pulled away.  I let go his hands, scooted back to the bow, sat there
as before.  I smiled, said, "Don't you have some more paddling to do?

" "Yes ma'am, " he said, and started toward the bulrushes.

CHAPTER 16.

WE MADE LOVE THERE IN THE CANOE, THE WHOLE OF IT HIDDEN AWAY in the
bulrushes, Leston having maneuvered us in here, weaving along back
channels, the bulrushes and sawgrass rising up round us like a curtain
grown only for this.

Though I'd feigned ignorance the whole time he was taking us in here,
him smiling back without a word, I'd known since he'd come out of our
room this morning with his hair slicked back, the Old Spice on, that
this was where we'd been headed.

Even up to when he jammed the canoe into the thick growth, even until
the moment he placed the paddle behind him and started moving up to me,
I'd still gone on along with him, let him think he was the one whose
idea this all was, who'd forged our opportunity to make love, all this
planned because of whatever small relief had come with Brenda Kay
taking her first steps, steps a sign something might be headed for the
better.

But once I'd gotten him to speak out on the open water, once I'd heard
our story in his words, there'd been in me my own desire for this, so
that as I lifted my skirts to him, helped him myself with his jeans
buttons and gently lifted the suspenders off his shoulders, then felt
him inside me for the first time in all that while, there rose in me
the low moans, the sounds I'd heard our first night together in a hotel
in Hattiesburg.  There rose up around us the ghosts of my momma and
daddy, the sounds they two made, and I couldn't help but remember our
wedding night, couldn't help but recall the fear I'd felt, the
trembling I'd made at his touch, the two of us finally alone.  He'd
been seated on the edge of the bed, me standing before him, and he
undressed me with careful hands, my dress taking months to find its way
free of buttons and clasps, his big hands fumbling, trembling of their
own.  He was young then, only a boy, me only a girl, our bodies new and
unexplained, and when finally my dress fell away from around me, and
then my petticoats and slip and underclothes, he'd leaned back, taking
me in with his eyes.

And then I undressed him, and we started in on the long and beautiful
task of learning each other.

The love we made on this day, in a canoe on Ashe Lake, seemed as close
to that first time as I could imagine, yet it was different, changed in
that I found comfort in the ghosts my sounds brought forth, sounds that
now, too, Leston gave out, we two in our forties and making love like
the children we were that first night, the canoe rocking, water
sloshing beneath us.  There was comfort in the ghosts of my parents,
some sort of reconciliation, peace in the unformed words Leston and I
made, me understanding suddenly what it must have been like for my own
mother to make love each Saturday night to a man who'd already left
her, a man she might never get back, and I wondered if my being here,
now, him deep inside me, my arms around his shoulders, my mouth kissing
his forehead, I might bring Leston back from across the deep chasm
that'd formed since Brenda Kay'd been born, from the dark world he
lived nights, sullen with the knowledge he had no work, that his
children were growing up and away, his wife's life filled with a
retarded child, and the cold knowledge the daughter he'd fathered would
never be right, never be just a girl, a beautiful, normal girl named
for Leston's beautiful sister.

But then the other purpose took shape in me, twisted itself into form
and being, and I remembered California, remembered the truth and
promise that seemed to shine from that word.  Leston could find work
there, I knew, Billie Jean'd go with no more than the clothes on her
back.  Burton and Wilman and Annie were too young yet to disapprove.

And there was the care out there being offered for Brenda Kay, just
waiting for us, waiting.

I opened my eyes then, saw cut across the blue above us a single lonely
crow, crying out loud and fierce.  Just a single crow across sky, and
for a moment I couldn't but feel myself somehow like Bessy, trading on
my body and what it could do for whatever needs presented themselves,
and I remembered her scars, long and cold and purple, and wondered,
too, what sort of scars my plan to leave this place, to escape
Mississippi like it was a nigger shanty about to collapse, would leave
on me, and would leave on Leston.

Shadows of bulrushes started to fall across us, and I held Leston even
tighter, closed my eyes.

Later, heading back, I said, "Leston, we can do better by our
family."

They were the only words came to me for all the thinking I'd done on
how to tell him.

"How so, " he said, and pulled the paddle through another stroke.  The
sun was still high, a little behind me, and shone on him, gave even
more color to his face.  He was on his third cigarette since we'd
finished in the bulrushes.  This was the first we'd spoken.  l l

"I have an idea, " I said, and stopped.  This was it, where all I'd
thought over was going to come out.

"I have an idea, " I said, "that we ought to think on moving from
here."

He was quiet, pulled through another stroke.  He said, "From Purvis."

"From Purvis, " I said.  "From, maybe, Mississippi."

"You want to move to New Orleans, " he said, the cigarette at his lips
bobbing with his words.  It wasn't a question, but what he'd figured
the answer to all this.  "Or thereabouts, " he went on.  He stopped
paddling a moment, thought better of it, started in again.  "Driving in
to New Orleans every few weeks to see a doctor don't make it necessary
to move there."  He drew on the cigarette, the tip going bright.

"Not New Orleans, " I said, and swallowed hard.  I said, "Not New
Orleans.  But to a place where Brenda Kay can get what she needs, a
place where there's an opportunity for things."  I paused.  "Things for
all of us."

"Things, " he said.  "Things."

"Like good care.  Like something akin to a school.  Like maybe a school
or something for Brenda Kay."  I swallowed again.  "Jobs, too.  Good
jobs."

He brought the paddle from the water entirely, laid it in his lap
again.

He squinted at me, took the cigarette from his lips, shot out smoke.

"Who put these big ideas in your head?  " he said.  "One guess."

"No one, " I said, and then I said, "The Reader's Digest is where.

There's a place in California where " "California, " he said, and with
that he flicked the cigarette, this one not even halfway done, off into
the green water, picked up the paddle, and started in.

"California, " I said again, "is where there's a school for Mongoloids,
" and I stopped, my last word big and clumsy and strange out here on
water, beneath a spring sky, a word that cut off whatever others were
lined up in me, stopped them all.

"California, " he breathe , the word almost lost in the whisper he
gave.

He pulled the paddle out again, set it across his lap.  He sat up
straight, brought a hand to his forehead to block the sun.

He wasn't looking at me, but behind me and to my right.  I scooted
around in my seat, tried to see behind me.

We were out fifty yards or so from where we'd put in, afternoon shadows
darkening our picnic spot.  I couldn't see Annie anywhere, nor Burton
or Wilman.

But there lay Billie Jean on her back on the red wool blanket, Brenda
Kay straddling her, the two of them lost in whatever game they were up
to.

Billie Jean turned her head, saw us.  "Hey!  " she hollered from where
she lay, and waved.

Slowly Brenda Kay's head turned our way, and after a moment that seemed
to last longer than all the time Leston and I'd been away, her voice
came to me across that green water, traveled as slow and precise as the
sun across the sky.

"Momma!  " she cried.

CHAPTER 17.

ALL I COULD HEAR WAS THE RINGING IN MY EARS, THE LOUD RUSH OF blood
through me that choked out everything else, whatever sounds were around
me as I ran through the halls of the same hospital my baby Brenda Kay'd
been born in, just ahead of me Wilman, his strides long and easy, a man
now near on tall as Leston.  He was way ahead of me, and had to stop
now and again, in his eyes as he turned the fear and pain of what he
already knew, what he'd already seen.

Finally, somewhere in the middle of a hall on the second floor, he held
out a hand to me, and when I made it to him I took it, held it tight,
and we ran together.

He slowed down, pointed to an open door to our left, and I let go his
hand, went on into the room without waiting for breath, without waiting
for the ringing to stop.

Inside were doctors and nurses, all huddled round the bed.  But as I
came near they parted, stood aside for me.  I didn't even look at them,
only at the bed, and at Brenda Kay Lying there.

"My momma!  " she screamed, "My momma!  " and her arms went up to me,
arms, I thanked God, that hadn't been burned in the fire, and I saw
that her eyebrows, eyebrows that'd been the same fine auburn of her
hair, had been scorched off, me still knowing so little of what
happened, only the few words Wilman'd forced out to me on the ride from
the cafeteria here.

Only that there'd been a fire, and that Brenda Kay'd been burned.

"I'm here, honey, I'm here, " was all I could say, those the best words
I could offer.  "I'm here, my baby, I'm here.  I'm right here."

As I hugged her, held her tight to me, I listened to her crying, heard
her sob in a new way I'd never heard from her before, a cry too deep,
too strong.  And I thanked my God I could be here, and found myself
cursing Him in the very same breath.

I held her.

She feel asleep in my arms, her own arms gone limp as she gave in to
it, but I held her close in her sleep another ten or fifteen minutes,
just to let her know I was there.

Still, she whimpered in her sleep, and when I finally let her go, the
sound of her whimpering was thick in the air, the soft and quick moans
she gave out blasting to pieces, finally, that ringing in my ears.

Even as the doctors started in on telling me what'd happened, it seemed
their words were only being built around my Brenda Kay's pain.  Every
whimper she gave blotted out a phrase or two of what healing I could
hope for, what the chances of her legs being usable again were, how
long before skin might come back.

Her whimpering even whited out most of what I saw, so that none of the
doctors had faces, voices, just as the nurses hovering round me and
Brenda Kay were only women in white dresses, all their hair the same
color.

Not until one of those nurses took hold my hand and as one of the
doctors pulled back the sheet that lay across Brenda Kay did things
come alive for me.  It was as if I'd entered the room brand-new and
unafraid, my eyes cold as I looked at my baby daughter's legs, saw what
God'd deemed necessary at this point in her and my life both, a point
three years past when I'd started in on my husband to move us away from
this place.

What I saw, Her legs had been burned up to midthigh, her right worse
than the left.  I took in without blinking, without swallowing, the
image of blackened skin on her right leg from her ankle on up, skin
rumpled and bunched and black, burned on the top and sides, the little
I could see of the backs of her legs pale pink where the fire hadn't
found her out.  Her left leg wasn't as badly burned, but the skin
there, too, was bunched and blistered where the fire had crept, from
midshin to just above her knee, skin gray and red and mottled, already
oozing.

Then her smell came to me, the smell of burnt flesh, the sour
smoldering and stink of her Lying there.

I closed my eyes, closed them, and felt the air in the room rush past
me, as though the roof were lifting off, me with it, and I
disappeared.

Wilman squatted before me.  I was in a chair, I knew, in a hospital
hallway, and this was my son, Wilman, his face close to mine, his
forehead wrinkled, mouth pursed, eyes searching for something.

Me, I saw.  He was looking for me, and I blinked a few times, took in a
breath.

"I fainted, " I said, and I tried to stand, felt my legs do nothing,
gone to sleep of their own.  I pushed on the arms of the chair, tried
to get my legs to work, to move me.

"Momma, " he said, and placed his big hands on my shoulders, held me
down.  "Momma, " he said again, "you need to have a seat here.  You
need to sit here for a while.  That's what the doctor said."

I'm right here, I thought, right here, and still his eyes were looking
for me, searching my face for some sign of recognition, as though it'd
been me who'd been burned, my face consumed by flame, and for a long
moment, and then for many days and weeks and months and years I wished
it'd been me in there on the hospital bed, and I asked myself again,
because it seemed there would never be anyone else I could ask this,
not even my God Himself, Is this how He smites on us?

Cathe raltd been the one to blame, because blame was what I was after,
blame the only thing I had the right to here.  My baby'd been burned to
where every waking moment she spent for the first two weeks in that
hospital were taken up with her crying, holding on to me fierce and
hard, leaving bruises on my shoulders I could see in the hospital
bathroom mirror when I washed myself at night.

She'd been watching over Brenda Kay like every day I worked at the
cafeteria, and the story I'd been handed by Billie Jean and Wilman and
even Annie was the same, but it was the story handed them by Cathe ral,
my children'd all been at school or work themselves, Cathe ral was
sweeping up in the boys' old bedroom, Wilman the only one living there
now.

Burton'd moved out to California five months before to find whatever
fortune he thought was there, that idea of California planted by me
through all the quiet conversations I'd had with Leston on the subject,
me talking at him from across the kitchen table in the middle of the
night for the last three years.  I'd talked about and showed him and
read to him the literature I'd received, brochures shiny and crisp that
outlined what the National Association for Retarded Children could do
for Brenda Kay out there in Los Angeles.  And Burton'd overheard, and
Burton graduated from Purvis High and worked a summer at the ice cream
plant in Columbia and took in enough money to buy a run-down pickup
truck and move.  Nothing to it, Just pure and cold resolve in my son,
and as he'd driven off, waved back at us through the small window of
the cab, I couldn't help but envy him and at the same time feel glad
I'd handed him on something I could lay claim to, that resolve.  He'd
gotten a job out there right off, working at a muffler shop welding
mufflers onto cars, all the thousands and thousands of bright and new
and perfect cars he saw out there every day.  Now and again he sent a
dress to Billie Jean or Annie or Brenda Kay, and postcards once a week
of piers and seagulls and violet mountains and short green trees
clustered with bright oranges.  And I'd gotten a hat, burgundy with a
tiny veil across the front brim.  I hadn't yet had enough nerve to wear
it into our church, .  L where I could just imagine the words that'd
pass between women, The mother of a retarded child strutting in with a
hat like that!

I swar!

And, too, he'd sent his daddy a lighter, a brass and stainless steel
lighter Leston carried with him everywhere he went, even in the pocket
of his pale green coveralls, his uniform for work at the ice cream
plant.  He worked piling fifty-pound sacks of sugar onto pallets five
days a week now, the job his son had left behind.

Though Leston hadn't approved of Burton's moving, still deep in my
husband the clouded and hopeless dream of his sons following him into a
lumberyard of his own someday, Leston carried that lighter with him to
work every day, filled it every morning whether it needed it or not
with lighter fluid from the thin blue and yellow can he kept on the
mantel.

It was a beautiful lighter, and I wondered often enough how much money
Burton really made out there in all that sun and in amongst all those
cars.  But mostly I wondered when my husband was going to roll over and
give in to what was so clearly best for my family, so clearly best for
Brenda Kay.  That lighter, I figured, was a fine start, a piece of
California in his coveralls every day, there in his hand with every
cigarette he lit.

That same resolve in Burton was what made James a good example of what
you could do when you took hold of your life, made it do what you
wanted of it, he was in veterinarian school at A&M now, would be out
next summer, practicing on his own.  And I had a grandchild, too, baby
Judy, after Eudine's mother.  A baby girl with fiery red hair and green
eyes yet again, and who I hadn't yet held.  It was a baby they'd
planned on having, Eudine'd told me when they'd first called to let us
know we'd be grandparents and aunts and uncles, and that notion made me
shine inside, the idea one could plan on a child and be smart enough to
determine what would happen to your future.

When we'd gotten the phone call near three A. M. one morning ten months
ago, James breathless on the other end, the line crackling with
interference at some point between here and Texas, I'd said right off
to him, "Count em up.  Count up her fingers and toes, make sure there's
ten of each, " but right then I'd felt the hollow promise that measure
really meant, my Brenda Kay'd had ten of each.

Every time I asked one of my children again how the burn had happened,
I could see Cathe ral giving out the story, saw her stone still except
for the small words she formed, eyes half-opened, her face all straight
as she gave to them what she reckoned was God's will in this situation,
she'd been sweeping, and heard Brenda Kay scream, dropped the broom
right there, ran downstairs to see Brenda Kay in her blue corduroy
overalls and white shoes and white blouse, standing in front of the
hearth with fire swarming up her legs.  Brenda Kay screamed and
screamed, then took to running.  Cathe ral chased her through the front
room and on into the kitchen, managed to pull her down from behind and
lay on her a moment until the flames'd gone out.

When the story came to this point I always closed my eyes, tried to
imagine the scene and what that warmth, that heat was like, Cathe ral
herself ended up with blistered skin on her right thigh, her thin
cotton dress scorched, her heavy leggings keeping her skin from burning
any worse.

But I couldn't imagine that heat, couldn't feel that pain.  I couldn't
feel what it was like for Cathe ral, because it was blame I was putting
on her how could she leave Brenda Kay untended at the hearth?  How
could she?  and I wanted no piece of me feeling sorry for her, feeling
there was any way she couldn't be the one to fault here.

Instead, all I could hear were the words Cathe ral told my children
Brenda Kay was screaming, "My momma!  My momma!  " even as she lay flat
on the floor, Cathe ral rising, finally, and going to the sink, filling
with water the first thing she could find, a pan I'd cooked that
morning's grits in, then rolling Brenda Kay over onto her back, her
calling out my name even louder, finding inside her own self that new
deeper and stronger sob and scream as Cathe ral poured cold January
water over my daughter's burned legs.

Then Cathe ral laid blankets over Brenda Kay, laid as many as she could
find, and ran out to the road, started to waving down any car passing
by out there.

At this point, too, I closed my eyes, imagined what it was somebody'd
see if they were driving by at that moment, a crazed nigger woman, arms
up in the air and hollering, that Cathe ral, the one we all knew spoke
in tongues and was given to holy fits for the Lord.  That's what they'd
think, I knew, and so it was God's blame, too, Him giving her that
reputation, and me the first to have seen it come upon her that day out
back of Missy Cook's mansion.  Now the end result, not one car stopped
for a half hour, seven cars passing her by as she screamed and hollered
and waved.

It was a nigger, finally, to stop for her, Eleazer Campbell the
insurance salesman, one of only three niggers in the county who had a
car to drive.  He'd been the one to pull over, follow her into the
house, lift up Brenda Kay and all the blankets heaped on her.  My
baby'd passed out by then from the shock and the pain, Eleazer Campbell
the one to drive her to this hospital, Cathe ral in the back seat with
Brenda Kay's head in her lap, stroking her hair, stroking it.

They got to the hospital, and when the nurse at the desk saw what was
on, she'd called two nigger orderlies, who took my baby daughter from
Eleazer Campbell's arms, him standing just outside the hospital doors,
knowing enough not to even try coming inside.  And Cathe ral behind
him, her own burns tended by somebody else later on.

But first she told the nurse who my daughter was, told her Wilman was a
junior at Purvis High, that he should be called first, that he could
handle it all from then.

She drove with Eleazer Campbell back to the house to clean things up.

To get ready, she told my children.  And the first thing she saw when
she came back in the house was that thin blue and yellow can of lighter
fluid, empty, scorched, the paint bubbled like the skin on my baby's
legs, around it scorched black bricks, the black leading a trail into
the fireplace, the fire now only embers.  Brenda Kay'd reached up to
the mantel, and'd pulled the lighter fluid down, and'd squirted it all
over everywhere, and'd been taken up by flames jumping out the
fireplace.  It was a wonder, "A blessing from God above " were the
words Cathe ral'd ended the story with each time she'd toid it to my
children, that our home didn't burn down to the ground.

Why didn't she call me?  I wondered every time I heard the story.  We
had a telephone there in the house, too, why didn't she call?

But I never asked that out loud, because I knew the answer, blame had
fallen square on her, and she'd known it.

Cathe ral hadn't tended properly to my child, hadn't kept her out of
reach of the lighter fluid.  Hadn't called me away from ladling out
dumplings and gravy to children at Bailey Grammar School while my own
retarded child burned at my home.  Blame was hers, hard and pure and
cold.

CHAPTER 18.

DOCTORS SPOKE AT ME, WHISPERED AT ME, WALKED THE HALLS WITH me, nurses
smothered me, hugged me, touched me, members of the congregation cried
on me, prayed for me, fed me and my family with an endless parade of
covered dishes, my children held my hands, brought me flowers, brushed
my hair, my husband held the brim of his hat in his hand, and turned
it.

I stayed in that hospital room with Brenda Kay for a month, through all
the changing of the dressings on her legs, through all the whimpering
and crying, through the stench rotten skin gave off.  I stayed for a
month in the hospital room, doctors saying she'd take pneumonia, that
she'd not walk again, that she'd be lucky if gangrene didn't settle
in.

Dr. Beaudry came in to check on her every other day or so, and each
time Brenda Kay let out a scream, her eyes gone open wide, her red
mouth a perfect O as she turned her head from him, the memory of his
face and the shots still heavy with her, though Dr. Basket'd stopped
prescribing them a year and a half before, when it'd come clear to him
her bones were as strong as she needed.

Because Brenda Kay had walked everywhere, fearless, it would seem, but
not that.  She just knew no better, she'd left the house on more than
one occasion without any of us knowing, just'd walked.  She never got
far, always to the edge of the woods out the back door, or a few yards
from the road out the front before one or another of us would holler
out, take off through the door and turn her back inside.

But we'd been thankful for the walking, because it meant no more
carrying her, no more toppling of chairs as she tried to pull herself
up, no more climbing of the stairs up to Dr. Beaudry's office, where
we still went once a month for him to have a look at her.  The pall of
carrying her everywhere had become so a part of our lives that when
suddenly she'd took to walking and that gray shroud'd been lifted, I'd
seemed to see more daylight, find better colors in the sunset, hear
rain outside where I'd heard nothing before.  Brenda Kay was growing
up, and it seemed there might be some sort of light at the end of this
long tunnel.

One morning late last August, not long before Burton moved out and long
enough after she'd learned to walk she was eight now, eight years old
she'd simply left the breakfast table and her plate of eggs and bacon,
and gone to the back door.  Every one was out the house except Burton
and me, Billie Jean already to work at the bank, Leston in the woods,
Annie already done with the morning chores and now in town with her
girlfriends, Wilman to summer football practice at Purvis.  Burton was
at the table, shoveling in his food like always.

Brenda Kay had on denim overalls and a pale blue blouse with a little
lace collar, these as everything else she wore old clothes from Annie,
who'd now started in to wearing some of Billie Jean's old things,
except that she'd get out the scissors and sewing basket and make her
own changes to those clothes.  She'd sheer off a few inches from an old
skirt, fuss up the shoulder seams of a blouse so the sleeves looked
fuller, puffier, all of this without a word to me.  She was learning on
her own, me thankful for that, though sorrowed at it, too.  Every day I
felt there'd been years lost to my children growing up, there were
things I'd have loved to teach Annie, even if it was just the trick of
cherry Lifesavers and lips I'd shown Billie Jean a Christmas morning
too long ago.

Burton had on only a T-shirt and blue jeans, his face puffed and tired
and needing a shave.  He worked the four to midnight shift over to the
ice cream plant, and so I never rousted him out of bed, only let him
come on down when he'd finished his sleep.  The three of us here in the
kitchen was no different than any other morning spent in our house.

The radio was on, too, like every morning, turned to my favorite
program, "Sunrise Serenade" out of New Orleans.  It was a program I'd
listened to for years, had even on occasion danced a little to in the
kitchen with Annie when she was smaller, Brenda Kay in her high chair
and watching, mouth open for a while before she'd smile at us, wave her
arms.  Every care of a day fell away when I'd listen to that program
and the gospel songs by the The Stamps Quartet and Mother Maybell
Carter, everything from instrumentals of "Amazing Grace, " violins
thick and sweet filling the air, on down to "Jesus Loves Me" on a
simple, lonesome guitar.

Maybe it was because for a moment or two on that morning it'd seemed
somehow that things were on the mend, that the world and this child
we'd been given weren't so very heavy a load.  Maybe it was the music,
or the good knowledge my children even my Brenda Kay were healthy, as
far as I knew happy, and that I had a grandchild.  There was one more
life on the face of this earth that I could lay claim to, and I knew
I'd never be a grandmother like the only grandmother I ever knew.  And
maybe, just maybe, the good feeling was because my second son was here
at the table, his plans to move to California already laid clear to us
all.  He was our foot in the door, even though Leston still sat across
from me late nights, his face blank while I still tried to persuade him
we had to move to California.  For the good of us all.

Maybe it was all that together the music, my children, the prospect of
California suddenly shinier than it'd been in a long time that made me
let Brenda Kay walk out the back door.  I just watched her from the
kitchen window as she made for the woods, her arms loose at her sides,
her steps careful and precise in a delicate way, strange steps that
involved her lifting one foot, placing it flat on the ground before
her, then lifting the next foot and doing the same, steps so gentle I
couldn't imagine she'd break eggs walking like that.  I let her walk.

"Momma?  " Burton said behind me, and I heard his chair scrape against
the floor.  It was still August, the morning air heavy and thick, edged
already with a piece of the heat that would descend on us later in the
day.  But it didn't matter.  What mattered was seeing my baby daughter,
Brenda Kay, making for the woods in her awkward orthopedic shoes, shoes
that cost twice as much as the shots had, shoes she grew out of every
few months.

She was on her own out there.  Brenda Kay was outside, surrounded by
that green, that sweet smell, that heavy air.  Walking on her own.

"Momma?  " Burton said again, and stood next to me at the sink,
watching.

From the corner of my eye I saw him turn to me once, then look back out
at his sister.

I said, "You do me a favor, honey, and you go out there and follow
her."

I smiled, but didn't turn to him, didn't want to take my eyes off what
I saw.  "You hang back aways, " I said, "and you just watch her.  See
where she goes.  Watch out she don't tangle up in any poison ivy."  I
paused.  "I just want to see where she goes, is all."

He didn't move for a moment, and I saw him turn to me again.  Then he
kissed my cheek, a small little peck, but enough.

He went to the back door, quick put on his workboots without even tying
the laces, and he was out the door.

I watched them both now, two of my children, one about to take out to
California and a new world out there, the other into a world just as
new for her, just as strange and different.  Burton did as I said, hung
back ten yards or so from her, and as a huge pipe organ played through
"Onward Christian Soldiers" on the radio behind me, I smiled.  Burton
was walking slow, looking down at the ground, hands in his pockets, his
steps easy.  Brenda Kay was at the edge of the woods on the old trail
now, her arms still at her sides, still with her gentle steps.  Then
she disappeared.

Burton made it to the edge, and stopped.  He tapped his toe to the
ground, turned to the house.  He waved at me.  I waved back, and he was
gone.

A half hour later here they came, hand in hand, Burton huge and strong,
his black hair still tossled with sleep, his face still in need of a
shave, but his eyes suddenly brighter than I'd seen them before.  And
for all the size Burton'd seemed to take on in those thirty minutes,
Brenda Kay'd seemed to grow as well, suddenly a little girl and no more
the baby I'd had here for eight years.  She was smiling the biggest
smile I'd seen on her, her top two front teeth missing, most every
other tooth showing.

I'd missed that face the last half hour, my morning routine of care so
deep in me that I'd gotten absolutely nothing done in the silence of
those last thirty minutes.  Because that was what stopped me,
silence.

The silence an empty house makes, even with a radio going.  There was
nowhere in my house a single person other than me, and while I'd stood
at the kitchen window wringing out a cold dishrag again and again,
searching out the trees for signs of my two children returning, I
thought I knew something of how Leston could stand here at night, stare
out at darkness.  I thought maybe there was some comfort he found here
in the dark of a house asleep, as close to quiet and empty as he could
get.

Maybe that silence was what he needed to help him solve what was
crushing in on him from out in the dark.

California was what would solve his life, I knew, California was what
would change things for Leston.  But he'd still have none of it, fresh
in my head even two and a half years later the image of his half-smoked
cigarette shot out into the water, his whispering "California" with all
the disgust he could muster.

Brenda Kay's hand was tight in Burton's as they came toward the house,
and I turned from the window and went to the table, picked up as many
plates as I could and brought them to the sink.

I went to the back door, stepped out, my hands in fists at my side.

"You two, " I said, and shook my head, made like I was all bent out of
shape over them.  "You two."

"Momma!  " Brenda Kay said, still smiling, and with her free hand she
pointed a thick white finger at her brother.  "Burton, " she said,
"Burton!  " His name came out more like Button than anything else,
every word she spoke choked off as they were in her throat, each
utterance forced and quick.  She could say all our names now, could ask
for water or milk or more food, could tell me when I needed to take her
to the bathroom, tell me if she was cold or too hot, "Momma, cold!  "
she'd say, or holler out, "Momma, potty!  " "Momma, food!  " For l some
reason her mouth couldn't form the sound of anor an R, and her words
came so fast they seemed fallen in on themselves, shrunken up and
urgent no matter what, so that the children's names became Nee, Wimn,
Button, Bijen, James still no one she knew yet.  Sometimes during the
day she'd holler out "Miss Wimn" or "Miss Bijen" to let me know she
might be feeling lonely, and I'd have to go to her, pick her up, hold
her.  She hadn't yet attempted Cathe ral's name, and only called out
"Daddy!  " now and again on those few nights he'd pick her up in his
arms, walk through the house with her, set her back down, his touch
with her always out of duty, I thought, the father's task.

"That's right, " I said there on the porch, still shaking my head.

"Burton came and got you, now didn't he?  I sent him out to get you,
and you two take off who knows where.  What am I supposed to do with
you two?

" Burton squatted, picked her up, settled this suddenly big girl on his
hip, and I could see the mud on her white shoes, grass stains at the
toe.

"This here's my sister, " Burton said, "and she went on an adventure,
and I had to save her before she crossed the raging river."  Brenda
Kay's eyes were on his mouth as he spoke.  The words meant nothing to
her, I knew, but it was the speaking of them that mattered, just for
her to be in his arms and listening.  She lifted a hand to his mouth,
touched his lips as if they were ice, just tapped them as he spoke, and
when he stopped she left her fingers at his lips.  Then he snarled a
little, his eyes on her, and barked, made like he was going to bite her
fingers.

"Huh!  Huh!  " she laughed, and hit his nose.  "Huh, Momma!  " she
said, and turned to me, then to Burton.  "Huh!  Huh!  " "Now you two, "
I said.

Inside, Burton set her down on the kitchen floor.  She got on her
knees, crawled beneath the table, picked up one of the boys' old
baseballs I hadn't even known was there.  She crawled out, went to the
larder door, leaned her back against it.  She held the ball with both
hands, her fingers so short and thick they hardly seemed big enough to
hold it at all.

Burton and I'd watched every move, me at the sink, eyes on her, Burton
leaning his back against the counter, his hands on the edge.  We hadn't
said anything, only watched as she set the ball on the floor, put a
hand on top of it, trapped it.

"There's a bit more coffee, " I said, and lifted out of the dishwater
the first fork, wiped at it with the same rag I'd twisted to death.

"Just heat it up a little."

I was waiting for him to talk, waiting for his report.  I wanted his
words on where she'd gone, but he didn't seem to want to part with
them.

His eyes hadn't yet met mine since we'd come in here, and the place was
silent except for the radio again, "How Great Thou Art" on now, George
Beverly Shea's voice deep and warm through the kitchen.

We were watching her again, Burton now leaning against the counter as
before, when Brenda Kay started in to her singing.  There were no words
she sang, only her mouth open and moving, changing the pitch and shape
of those sounds so that what came was more a joining of moans up and
down, Brenda Kay oblivious of anyone around her.  And she sang.

"Tell me, " I said, and lifted out my own coffee cup, rinsed it, set it
on the drainboard.

"Momma, " he said, his head turned to his sister.  "Momma, " he said
again, "it's going to be hard to leave here."

"I know, " I said.  "But if it's something you have to do, then it's
something you have to do."  I paused, held the rinsed cup in my hand.

"And we'll be seeing you sooner than you think."

He turned to me.  There was my second son's face, and no matter how old
he would get there'd never disappear from that face the baby he'd once
been, the face I'd known at my breast, the face I'd known at his first
steps at ten months.  There were his dark brown eyes my eyes his fine
chin and jaw.  And there was the thin line of a scar back near his left
ear where Wilman'd hit him with a piece of wood from thirty feet, back
before Burton'd learned the trick of standing just out of Wilman's
range so that his little brother would be the one to lose.  That was
Burton.

Here.

He said, "I hope that ain't just a dream of yours, Momma."  He paused,
his eyes on me.  "You coming out to California."

"It's not, " I said.  "You just know it's not."  I lifted out a soapy
plate, ran a rag across it.  "Once you let it turn into a dream, " I
said, "then it won't ever happen on you.  I'm not letting it turn into
a dream."

He looked at me a few moments longer while I held the plate in my hand,
rinsed it, held it.

Brenda Kay hit a note high up, hit it hard and loud and long, and I
quick looked to her, surprised I wasn't yet able to hear the difference
between her singing and a wail of pain.  She still had the baseball
trapped beneath her hand, her eyes hard on it, and let her voice drop
down low and soft.

"She didn't look back or side to side or anywheres, " he finally
said.

He was staring out the window.  "I just followed her.  All the way back
to the pasture.  She just looked straight ahead and was walking."  He
stopped, and I said nothing to urge him on, knew he was build .  E
Jrdwll I, ) ing his words to something here.  It was in how he looked
out the window, how he stared as if there'd be some answer out there.

He said, "When we got to the pasture she just walked right out into the
middle of it, on across.  Her walking like she does, it's a wonder
grass even bent beneath her feet."  He gave a small laugh, shook his
head.  "I was only a few feet behind her.  I didn't want her coming up
on no snakes, you know."

"Good, " I said.  I rinsed my hands, done by this time with the dishes
except for the skillet.

"Then we were headed into the woods back of the pasture, off towards
Casey's place, the back end of his property."  He stopped again,
swallowed hard.  He took in a big breath, held it.

"Burton, " I whispered, "what is it?  " "It's nothing, " he said, too
quick, and let out the breath.  "That's it, " he said.  "She just
walked.  She was walking right on back into the woods, walking the
straightest line I ever saw.  She didn't look much at the ground, and
when she came up to a bush or old stump or tree or something she just
went on around it."  He paused.  "But then she'd get right back on
track, " he said.  "I finally stopped her when she hit the creek.  She
was going to walk right into it, shoes and overalls and all.

She would've gone right on in if I hadn't come up behind her, took a
hold of her hand.  That's when she turned to me.  She looked up at me,
and it took her a minute or so before she recognized me.  Before she
smiled."

He ran a hand back through his hair, in the move more of his daddy than
he'd ever recognize himself.  He turned to me.  "And while I was
following her back there, " he said, looking right into my eyes, "I got
this picture in my head of her walking for the rest of her life, right
on in a straight line, just walking as long as she lived.  And it give
me the shivers, Momma.  That picture."  He blinked, tried to give me a
smile, though I knew that wasn't what my boy really wanted to give
me.

I could see he wanted to cry, to give in to that, but him figuring he
was too much a man.

So I took him in my arms, held him close to me, my hands still wet with
dishwater, and I held him, and I said, "You just say what you have to
say, Burton."

"Momma, " he said, and he'd started to cry, my boy about to head out to
California and a life none of us could now imagine.  "Momma, there's
somebody going to be following her the rest of her days, Momma.  And I
feel like I'm leaving y'all to do that.  That's what I feel like."

"You just go on, " I said right away, "and you lead your life, and then
we're going to come on out there and you'll be serving as our welcoming
committee."

I pulled myself away from him, held him by the shoulders.  Tears had
fallen down his cheeks, and he cleared his throat, wiped at his eyes
with the back of his hand.

Already I was thanking God for him, and for every other of my children,
even the one singing there on the floor, and thanking God, too, for her
voice, the chance and confusing beauty of it.  I thanked God for this
all, even though I knew it was me would be following her all the way
through her time on this earth, unless I took to heart the task before
me, the one set up by the same God who'd given her to me, find a way to
fix this, not simply watch from behind as she walked straight across
the face of her days.  l BUT WHATEVER I D BEEN THANKING HIM FOR THAT
DAY SEEMED NOW A hundred years ago and lost to the smell of her dead
skin, lost to the prospect of Brenda Kay's not walking, lost to the
perfect O of her terrible screams.  Lost to the point I'd finally
turned my face from Him, and took things into my own hands.

The day she went home, Brenda Kay was lifted from her bed and eased
into a wheelchair by two nigger orderlies, boys who reminded me too
much of Cathe ral's own, Sepulcher and Temple, the two who'd carried me
only to deliver this child in this wretched hospital, and as Leston and
Wilman lifted her into the cab of the truck, settled her there, her
whimpering all the way through, I didn't even turn back to look at the
place, knew I didn't ever want to see it again.

Leston was even more the stranger now, even older the man, he said
nothing to Brenda Kay the entire ride home, knuckles white as they
gripped and regripped the steering wheel.  It was a Tuesday morning,
and he'd taken off from work for this, had on the green coveralls he
wore, Leston stitched in white thread above his shirt pocket, coveralls
a little too big on him so that he seemed that much smaller, that much
thinner.  He didn't have his hat on, and for some reason I was thankful
for that, glad at his not having the damned thing to turn in his hands
as he'd stood and done every time he'd come to the hospital.

He was a stricken man, dumbfounded by what'd been tossed at him yet
again, but that didn't give him any more reason than the next of us to
spend the rest of his days pondering the universe in a coffee cup, not
coming to our bed and to his wife.  We'd only made love a handful of
times since our time on the canoe, and each time I took him into my
arms he felt frailer, his skin a touch more toward paper.

But now there was no more time I could spend in persuading him, I saw
as we headed home, him slowing down at each bump, each twist in the
road.

He had a heart, had love for his daughter, had compassion on us all,
but I saw he'd let the grief and bewilderment he carried overwhelm him,
blind him to the truth that the world our world had to make sea changes
in order to get right again, or at least as close to right as we'd ever
get.

So that when we finally made it home, and when Wilman and Leston'd
finally gotten Brenda Kay into the bed I'd had them move down from her
room and set up in the front room, I went to my husband there in the
doorway, his hand on the knob and ready to pull it closed behind him as
he headed out first to drop Wilman off at school, then back to work
himself.  I went to him, and-I pulled him down to me, and I gave him a
kiss, gave it to him hard on the lips, and felt more than anything that
it may well have been my kiss good-bye.

Because now we were gone, headed to California, with or without him.

While Brenda Kay napped that afternoon I turned up one of Annie's
tablets from her room, and I sat in my rocker next to her, wrote out
what I would do.

I figured to start we had to get as much money together as possible,
and knew the only way that'd happen would be by selling things off, so
I started a list, quilts radio furniture pots and pans chickens boys'
old clothes As I wrote, the old familiarity came back into my hand, the
ease with which I'd worked a pencil on paper, the grading of
worksheets, and then came the old feeling of chalk in hand, and I
stopped, sat back, started in to thinking of when I'd been a teacher
and in charge of all those children and with none yet of my own.

But then Brenda Kay whimpered, and I turned to her, saw a dribble of
spit at the corner of her mouth, saw her eyes twitching with whatever
dream of fire must have been in her, and I resolved right then and
there to cut from my mind the luxury of remembering what'd been before
for the certain necessity of thinking ahead.  I knew it wouldn't be
tomorrow, but as soon as Brenda Kay was as better as she would get,
which meant I'd stay with her each minute I wasn't working to get us
away from here.  The sooner she got better, I knew, the sooner we would
leave for the next life we had coming to us.  It was the future my eye
had to be on.  No more of the past.

The less we brought with us the better, I thought, and I pictured , , l
i l us pulling into Los Angeles with nothing to our names, simply the
money in our pockets and prospects spilling all around us.  I saw
orange blossoms going strong, took in the warm sea air and the crystal
blue sky, and I saw a place where Brenda Kay would find friends,
teachers, and saw Leston at work somewhere, doing something, it didn't
matter what.  The doing of it was all that mattered.

I hesitated a long while before I put the next word on the list of
things to sell off, but then I wrote it, home Such a small word.  But
one that carried too much of what kept us here, and so I scribbled
through it, and in place beneath it wrote house I was upstairs going
through the boxes of the boys' clothing when I heard it, the knock at
the back door.

I went to the attic window, tried to see through the dirty glass who it
would be, though I already knew.

I folded the flannel shirt in my hands, tried to put away in my head
the fact it needed two new buttons before I could sell it, and I
climbed down the ladder, went slowly along the hall and down the stairs
to the kitchen.

I glanced first into the front room, saw Brenda Kay was coming around,
her mouth opening and closing like it does just before she lets out the
first yelp of pain she gave every time she awoke, the burn a surprise
to her, new every time she came up from sleep.

I had only a few minutes before the tending would start up in earnest,
had only a few minutes to deal with who was out there, the woman I'd
laid blame cold and simple on, the woman I'd sealed my heart against
all those nights on a cot in a hospital room that reeked of alcohol and
dead skin.

I reached for the door, saw Cathe ral's outline through the curtains,
and the flush of my own pain took me over, and I saw my hand shake at
the knob.

I opened the door.  There she stood, smiling, smiling and smiling,
though in her eyes was some piece of sorrow.  She had her hair covered
with a worn-out blue handleerchief, had a beat old yellow sweater over
her shoulders against the February cool out there, the only button left
on it the one at the neck.

I stood looking at her a long moment, felt her too familiar to me.  I
knew she'd be the one who'd somehow end up laying open to me the fact I
was forsaking the heart of my husband to further the good of my
retarded daughter, that knowledge coming to me in just that moment, in
no time, really, and then I realized that the sweater she wore was one
of my old ones, a sweater I'd given her years ago when the times were
good, and when we'd fed nigger after nigger at our back door, and when
they'd all followed my strong and handsome husband off into the woods
to help the United States win the war.  That was my sweater she had
on.

Still smiling, she shook her head, whispered, "The Lord trying His best
to smile down on you, child, but you not letting Him do that."

Before I could think of anything else I could do, any words or gestures
or silences, I drew back my hand and brought it full force across this
nigger woman's face, and in that moment all I'd ever fought against
exploded in me.  I saw Bessy and Cleopatra inside a nigger woman's
shanty stealing her food.  I saw Tory's face as I took my beating.  I
saw myself pulled up by Pastor from the Pearl River, wet and shaking
and miserable in the Lord, Missy Cook on the bank and crying tears
meant for nothing but effect, and I knew then I was no better than my
grandmother, knew no matter how hard you prayed, no matter how shiny
the stones in your pocket, no matter how far behind you you thought
your old lives were, they were never gone.  They were never more than
an inch from the surface, battling each moment you breathe , each and
every moment of every day fighting to rise up and take you over.  And
I'd lost, let those old lives win just now.

And at last, in the end of that motion, in the instant of pain in my
palm and the pain my palm gave out, I saw Missy Cook's own hand
speeding down onto my face.  Missy Cook was still a ghost inside me,
and I saw you never gave up who you were or where you'd been in your
life.  I'd refused to let Missy Cook try and reconcile herself to me,
just as right now I was refusing Cathe ral, and as I felt the pain in
my hand, suddenly Missy Cook was only a sad and lonely old woman
choking to death on the dry crust of her own history.  And now here was
my own history, the dry crust of blame I wanted forced from me in the
form of my hand slapping hard the black flesh of Cathe ral's cheek.

And then I remembered what I had done after Missy Cook'd hit me, how
I'd simply turned my other cheek to her, offered up myself to her,
daring her to strike me.

Which was the only thing Cathe ral did.  Once I'd struck her, she'd
closed her eyes, took in a quick breath between clenched teeth.  She
seemed to fill up her lungs with that breath, held it, then gave her
head a quick shake as if to rid herself of the pain I'd given her.

Then she opened her eyes, smiled again, and turned her other cheek to
me.

She looked at me out the corners of her eyes, and waited.  My hands
were at my sides, dead, useless, and I took my eyes from her.

"I sorry, Miss Jewel, " she whispered.  "But you got to think on Job.

You got to think on David and him fighting the anointed Saul."  She
paused.

"You got to think on Christ, " she said.

That was when I turned from her, stepped inside.  Without looking back
through the curtains, without looking at anything other than the
kitchen floor, I pushed the door closed, then twisted the knob until it
locked.

I leaned my back against the door, held my hands at my chest.  I looked
around at all we had in the kitchen, the plain white china and three
vases in the glass cupboards above the sink, spoils from those war
years, a fine oak table built by Leston, the wall clock that chimed on
the half hour, a wedding gift from Leston's mother and stepfather.  I
looked at everything we could sell and make money from, already trying
to gauge in my head how much closer each item might bring us to
California.

I heard behind me the slow steps of Cathe ral as she moved down the
steps, off of our property and toward her own, and though I hadn't
known it, I found myself crying, saw the room and its contents shimmer
in my eyes.

I pushed myself away from the door, went to the kitchen sink and looked
out the window to see Cathe ral leaving, heading for the same woods
Brenda Kay'd walked through.

I watched Cathe ral disappear into the woods, until the last thing I
could see was a glimpse here and there of my own yellow sweater deep in
the gray and brown of February trees, and then she was gone, and I knew
I'd never see her again, knew it just as certain as if I'd lowered her
into her grave myself, or just as certain as if she'd lowered me into
mine.

CHAPTER 20.

JEWEL, LESTON SAID, JEWEL, WAKE up.

I opened my eyes to the dark of the bedroom, to the cold and empty side
of the bed that had once been Leston's.  I ran my hand across the
sheets, felt nothing, wondered if I'd only dreamed his voice.

"Jewel, " he said again, and I saw his shadow standing next to my side
of the bed, at his face the bright ember of a cigarette, the only light
here.

He brought the cigarette down, shot out a breath, and I imagined the
smoke he let out falling down on me, burying me.

"Get up, " he said.  He turned, left the room.  A moment later I heard
his footsteps down the stairs.

I sat up.  "Brenda Kay, " I whispered, and wondered what was going
on.

It was May already, and there'd been a couple mornings so far when I'd
been able to get her to take a step or two away from the bed, though
the pain, it was easy to see, was still there in her legs, dressings
still tight on her thighs and on her one calf, us over to Dr. Beaudry's
more often than ever now to get those dressings changed.  But there'd
been no gangrene after all, no pneumonia to kill off my baby, so I
didn't know what was wrong.  I climbed out of bed, grabbed my robe from
the foot board, moved quick to the stairs and down.

Brenda Kay was asleep there in the front room, across her face and body
the long shadows cast by the light from the kitchen, her mouth partway
open like always as she took in deep and steady breaths.  I still
hadn't put on my robe, only stood over her, watching her, waiting for
whatever my husband'd thought deserved my attention.

"In here, " he called, and I turned, saw him sitting at the table,
hands around a coffee mug.

I swallowed, looked back at Brenda Kay, then at him.  Slowly I shrugged
on my robe, left it untied.  I backed away from her toward the kitchen,
certain there was something about her Leston wanted me to see.  But
once I was in the kitchen he wouldn't look at me or toward L the front
room.

Instead, his eyes were fixed high on the wall opposite him.  At first I
thought he was only staring, lost in whatever thoughts he had, thoughts
I'd long given up on trying to understand.  I blinked at the light in
here, tried hard to focus on him.  He had on one of his old white
undershirts, his tired green and white striped pajama bottoms.  Before
him sat his ashtray, heaped with the ends of dead cigarettes.  Next to
the ashtray lay a new cigarette, already rolled and ready to smoke.  I
said, "What is it?  " I paused.  "She all right?  " He nodded at the
wall, and only then did I see what he was on to.  I turned, looked, saw
the empty space where until yesterday had hung the wall clock.

He said, "My momma and stepdaddy give that to us, " his eyes hard.

"They're both dead now."

I'd known this moment was heading at me, but'd only put away any
thoughts on it, certain I'd be able to piece my way through no matter
what.  I was certain, too, that with each penny I'd brought in so far,
I was bringing us a mile or so closer to California, but at the same
time bringing me a minute or so closer to the conversation we were
about to have right here, right now.

I'd hoped the words would come to me, in the back of my head somewhere
a prayer to God He'd serve me this time, though in everything else I
was operating on my own will, on my own cold resolve.

I tied my robe, my eyes on my hands and the impossible task this was,
working my fingers to tie a simple knot.

His eyes were on me.  He said, "You think I don't see what's going on
in my own house, do you?  " and he paused.  His hands fell away from
round the cup, lay flat on the table.  A cigarette stub was jammed
between two fingers of his left hand, and he brought it to his lips,
pulled hard on it.

I said nothing, looked from him to my own hands flat on the table.  I
opened my mouth, heavy in my head that same prayer for words that would
work.  And like always, my God either didn't hear them, or chose to let
me tread water on my own.  I opened my mouth again, closed it again.

"At least tell me, " he said, "what you got for it."  I opened my mouth
again.  I said, "I don't want you to think " "Just how much?  " he
said, his voice low and steeled, his jaws clenched.

I wouldn't take my eyes from the cigarette.  I said, "I got twelve
dollars."

He laughed, a quick shrug of his shoulders and a shake of his head.

He said, "Let's see.  The clock.  Four quilts, all the boys' old
things.

Most all the tomatoes and raspberries and okra and pickles and corn you
put up last year.  And there's the two vases gone.  The two dresses
Burton sent Brenda Kay."  He stopped, suddenly sat up, leaned across
the table.

He looked at me, his eyes open wide now.  He whispered, "Anything I
missed?  " I pulled back from him, afraid.  He wasn't anyone I knew,
these the most words in years from him, the laugh, the whisper, the
eyes someone else in here with me.

"Or is there more I couldn't come up with?  " he whispered, smiling
again.  "What is it you figure I do down here?  You think I sit here,
my ass tied tight to a chair?  You don't think I walk through my house
at night, find my way through the dark to closets and cupboards?  " He
paused, swallowed air in big gulps, trying to keep up with himself,
while all around me the kitchen seemed to grow smaller, hotter.  "You
figure I can't see what the hell's going on all around me?  How you're
selling us out piece by piece to some goddamned dream of moving to
California?  " His teeth were clenched again, and I could see the faint
sheen of sweat on his forehead, veins in his neck straining, sweat
coming through his undershirt.

I said, "It's not a dream, " though I'd intended no words, hadn't
formed or planned on them.  They'd only come in a whisper so low I
wasn't even certain I'd heard them.

"What?  " he said, and leaned even closer, turned an ear toward me.

"I said it's not a dream, " and felt my hands begin to shake, my face
and neck and back and stomach begin to burn with the effort of only
breathing.  "It's going to happen, whether you want it to or not."  I
closed my eyes, felt them begin to smolder.

"So how much you get so far?  All sales put together, how much you get
for your little jaunt out to sunny California?  " Though I knew the
number by heart, kept the tab running with each item that left our
house, I was quiet, the only sound my heart pounding in me, and the
silence left by the wall clock, the ticking my husband must have
counted on every night, his only company here, now lost.

I said, "Seventy-three dollars and thirty-seven cents."

He was quiet, then said, "More than I figured on.  I had it about
sixty-five or so."

I looked up at him, saw him lean back again, arms still crossed.  He
was smiling.  "Must be holding out on me, " he said.  He picked up the
single cigarette, held it in the palm of his hand, stared at it.

I said, "I sold the hat Burton gave me.  For six dollars."  He laughed
again, said, "Seems to me you think you can wrestle the world and
win.

Ain't so.  Simple as that."  He let the cigarette roll back and forth
in his palm, gave it a small toss, watched it land back Jl in his
hand.

"Seems if you want to change the world, you might ought to get hold of
a few more dollars than that."

He gave the cigarette another quick toss, higher this time, and grabbed
it in midair, held it tight in his fist.

"So I want you to see this, " he said, "wanted you to come on
downstairs here and watch your husband do what he's about to do, so's
you'll be able to go at this California whole hog, even with my
blessing.  My blessing in a big way."

His blessing, he'd said.  His blessing.  I took in a quick breath, my
heart and its pounding making me feel my chest might explode with each
next beat.

He said, "Way I figure it, the only true way out of here is through
raising big dollars, not nickel and diming your way there.  Luck you're
having, you should arrive in glory land the year 1975."  Slowly he
brought the cigarette to his lips, creased his eyes closed,
anticipating the smoke about to come.

He was staring at me, and I could feel my own forehead perspiring, my
stomach and eyes and tongue all burned red.  I wanted him to talk more,
to say what his blessing was going to be, and I wanted him never to
speak again, to leave me alone and let me go on with getting us where I
knew we had to be.

Brenda Kay let out a yelp from behind me, and I turned around to her,
saw she was only rolling over in her sleep.

"Oh Brenda Kay, oh Brenda Kay, " he said, and now he had out the brass
lighter Burton'd given him, brought from somewhere when I'd been turned
to my baby.  He started flicking the lighter lid open and closed, open
and closed.  He flicked it open one last time, then clicked the flint,
shot up the flame, held it on.

He said, "Guess in your head I'm most to blame.  Me and my can of
lighter fluid's to blame for what's happened, for all the rotting
smells in this house and all the tears.  Because even though you struck
down Cathe ral " He stopped speaking, shifted his gaze from the flame
to me.  He wanted to prove he knew things about me I didn't want
known.

So I gave it to him.  I took my eyes from him, let my head drop.  I put
my hands together on the table, clasped them hard in an attitude I
figured might seem repentant.  But all I wanted was for him to be
through with this, to get out of his head what'd been festering there
for as long as Brenda Kay'd been Brenda Kay.

"Even though you struck down Cathe ral, " he went on, "I know you still
figure it's my fault.  The way I see it, if it hadn't been for that
can, we wouldn't be here right now having this little talk."

Though I wouldn't tell it to his face, he was wrong.  I hadn't put any
blame on him, no other blame than the fact he'd pulled out of this
family years ago.  The truth was we'd been on the road to this night
since we'd sat in the cab of the truck on a rainy day almost nine years
ago, just down the stairs from Dr. Beaudry's office and that first
examination.  We'd been on our way to this table since Leston'd flicked
on the wipers in a sad attempt to make clear the world we were
entering.

But I only nodded my head to his question, wanted him on with this.

"Look at me, " he whispered, and I lifted my head, felt my legs set to
trembling.

He brought the lighter to the cigarette, the flame twisted to high.  He
closed his eyes, drew in on the cigarette, let out a small puff of
smoke.  He brought down the lighter, left on the flame.

"You're selling everything off, " he said, his eyes back on the flame,
"everything we own.  But to my figuring, there's only two things we own
you can't sell off.  Only two things."  He paused, let out another puff
of smoke.  "Even the truck, I imagine, you could sell out from under
us.  You probably figure I wouldn't even notice it gone.  And all we'd
do would be walk everywhere we had to go.  Why not?  Niggers do it
every day, walk to the jobs they got, to school, everywhere.  Why not
us?  " Finally, he let go the flame, snapped the lid closed.  He held
the lighter with two fingers, turned it back and forth, just looking at
it.

I looked at it, too, saw how it shone in the light from the lamp above
us, saw how cold and shiny and beautiful it was.

"This is one of the two things, " he said.  "This lighter is one of the
two things you can't sell."

He gave it a quick toss, just as he'd done with the cigarette, and
caught it, closed his fist tight around it.  He looked at me again.

"The other's where we are right now, " he said, "where our retarded
child is sleeping, where our youngest son is sleeping and where our
other two daughters is sleeping, and all that's around us all.  Right
here."  He tapped hard the tabletop.  "This place, " he whispered, "is
what you can't sell.  And you and I both know that's the only hard
dollars you'll ever find.  Won't be by selling jar to jar your pickled
okra, or a raggedy-ass pair of bib overalls.  Not that way."

"Leston, " I said, my voice pitched way up high and out of control,
tears already coming because what he was saying was right.  There was
true sorry I was feeling, but a sorry colored with the fact I could see
no other way away from here than what I knew he was about to say.

"Leston, " I said again, and I reached a hand across the table toward
him.

"No tears, " he said.  "This is what you want to have happen, then this
is what we'll have happen."  He paused, and now it seemed some I of the
wind'd been knocked from him, that he had to try harder to keep from
blinking, to keep his hand steady as he held the cigarette.

He said, "Soon as Brenda Kay's set, soon as you're set, I'll put this
place .. ."  He paused, his words a whisper so low they'd have been
drowned out by the ticking of the clock his momma and stepdaddy'd given
us.  His eyes finally left me, seemed to wander round the room, finally
settling on the empty space on the wall opposite him.  "This place I
built for us, " he said, and tapped the tabletop again, "this place and
the land we live on, all of it.  I'll put it up for sale."

He stopped, held the lighter up to the light again.  "But this, " he
said, and twisted it in the light.  "This is something you're not ever
going to get.  It'd fetch a good few dollars.  And Lord knows there's
reason for getting rid of this thing."  He paused, still looking at it,
and I thought I could see his eyes glistening, ready to give way to
tears of his own.  "Lord knows that.  I been thinking on this
lighter.

And it occurs to me there's good reason to get the hell rid of it.

Because having this thing goes to remind me I couldn't even keep my
second son around me, couldn't keep him near to home to give us a hand
when we needed it.  And of course that leads right on in to my
firstborn, and how he wouldn't stay around neither."  He swallowed,
blinked.  "And of course every time I light up I am reminded of how my
baby daughter was near burned to death because of this little
machine."

He paused again, took a, drag from the cigarette.  He didn't inhale
this time, only let the smoke right out.  "Reason enough to get rid of
the thing, " he said.

He sat up straight in his chair, the move so sudden I nearly
flinched.

He stood, him in his undershirt and pajama bottoms.  He held the
lighter with two fingers, looked at me, said, "But you're never going
to get this.  Now you watch.  You come with me, and you watch."

"Leston, " I said again, but he only turned from the table, started
toward the kitchen door.

I got up, followed him to where he stood with the door open now, cool
May night air on my face, fresh and welcome in a room that'd seemed to
want to suffocate me.  Leston stepped onto the porch, and stopped.  I
stood just inside, saw past him into the dark nothing that surrounded
the house every night.

"You know, " he said, "all the nights I been walking around inside the
house, I never once set foot outside.  Something about how dark it is
out here that wouldn't let me."  He looked over his shoulder at me.  He
had the cigarette between his lips, and said, "But tonight.  You just
watch."

He stepped off the porch, and I went outside, looked out into the
darkness.  The only light out there was that cast from behind me, the
same as on the night Cathe ral'd come to warn me about this life I was
leading right now, to warn me about the hardship having Brenda Kay
would be.  True to her word, and true to God's promise, here I was, and
here were our lives.  And still I couldn't see how this was Him
smiling.

Leston turned round at the bottom of the steps, held up the lighter,
though I could barely make it out.  He said, "You saw me light the last
cigarette this lighter will ever light, " his voice too huge out here
in the dark, and I wondered if Wilman or Billie Jean or Annie'd wake up
to all this goings on, and wondered what they would think tomorrow when
they came downstairs, how they would see the two of us differently.

"You saw me light the last cigarette with this, " he said, "but you're
not getting it.  You won't sell this.  It will always be mine, Jewel.

Miss Jewel Hilburn, this'll always be mine."

He held the lighter in his hand like a stone, like he was about to skip
it across water, and then he cocked back that arm, and with everything
this fifty-year-old man had he threw it hard and clean out into the
dark, his body swinging around with the momentum he'd made.  He threw
the lighter farther, I was certain, than anything he'd ever thrown.

And with it went the burning in me, and the weight on me.  Even the
smells in the house seemed suddenly gone, gone with the strongarm throw
of my husband, and I saw the perfect sense in him, saw the clear-eyed
wisdom of his throw, the lighter lost now to the darkness of the woods
out there and to everything we'd ever been.  Lost, too, to everything
ahead of us.

Leston stared out into the dark for a long while, bent over with his
hands on his knees, his chest heaving with the effort.  Then I saw the
cigarette drop to the ground beneath him, thought I could see the small
ribbon of smoke snaking up from it.

I went down the steps, took hold of one of his arms, then halfpulled,
half-pushed him inside and up the stairs and on into bed, where we
slept as though we had died, passed on from this world and into the
next.  l .

CHAPTER 21.

THE NEXT DAY, AND ALL THE DAYS AFTER THAT UNTIL WE MOVED TO California,
Leston was a new and different man.  Suddenly he was in charge of our
moving, him all movement and smiles about the prospect of heading away
from the old place, the scene of our lives' miseries for so long.  That
morning he'd gotten up, shaved, even whistled as he slapped on Old
Spice and put on his uniform, then drove Wilman and Annie to school,
Billie Jean downtown to the bank.  I'd spent the rest of the morning
singing along with Brenda Kay, the two of us at the tops of our lungs
as "Sunrise Serenade" went on and on, Brenda Kay's words to the songs
still all made up.  She even took four steps that morning, just after
she'd had breakfast in the bed in the front room.  "Momma, potty!  "
she'd hollered out while I was in the kitchen rinsing her dishes, and
I'd wiped my hands on a dishtowel, turned, saw her moving all by
herself, stiff-legged and slow for the bandages, but moving by herself
for the bathroom.

When Leston made it home that night, he was still whistling, ate dinner
with a smile to his face.  Once we finished, he lit up his after supper
cigarette with a wooden match from a box he had in his front shirt
pocket.  His eyes wouldn't meet mine as he pulled out the match, struck
it on the box, but that was fine with me.  Then I looked round the
table at my children to see if their faces might betray that they'd
heard us up last night.  But my children showed nothing, Annie only
cleared the dishes like every night, Billie Jean started running water
in the sink, Wilman got out the broom and started to sweeping.  Brenda
Kay sat in her chair next to Leston, watching everything.

"Brenda Kay, oh Brenda Kay, " Leston said then, and everyone stopped,
turned to him.

He was sitting in his chair, and had a hand up to Brenda Kay's cheek,
touched it.  Water still ran into the sink, Billie Jean staring at him
but with a hand in the stream, waiting for hot, Annie stood between the
table and sink, in one hand an empty platter shiny with grease from the
fried steak, in the other a half-empty bowl of gravy.  Wilman held the
broom with both hands, still.

"I think it best we all know right now, " Leston said, his eyes on
Brenda Kay, who smiled at him, finally.  "Daddy!  " she shouted, only
now fitting that face and the word together.  "Daddy!  " she shouted
again.

"Miss Daddy!  " He glanced away from her, gave a smile that seemed
awkward and real at once.  He cleared his throat, said, "We all ought
to know right now that as soon as this here child's ready to go, we're
moving to California."

"Daddy!  " Annie said, quick placed the dirty plates on the counter,
then went to Leston, put her arm round his neck, kissed his cheek.

Wilman set the broom in the corner, went to his daddy's chair, put his
hand to Leston's back a moment, the closest to a hug or anything else
I'd seen him give his daddy since he was three or four.  Wilman was
smiling, though at the same time I knew there'd be things to worry over
for him, starting his last year of school at a new place, leaving not
just his friends here but his football he'd been starting linebacker
for two years now on the varsity team.  And there was Babs Julien, his
girlfriend.

As for Annie, it seemed more than clear there'd be no problems in her
coming round to the idea, she'd since taken over Billie Jean's movie
magazine pile, knew everyone in Hollywood's birthdate and real hair
color by heart, even if it was old information, passed down from
ancient Photoplays.  The skirts shorter than her sister's had been, the
jaunty sleeves of her dresses, the makeup and curled red hair and the
smiles I'd seen her practicing in the mirror on more than one occasion
gave me to know I had nothing to worry over.

But Billie Jean only held her hand at the water.  It was her I watched,
because she gave nothing out, only turned to the sink, dropped the plug
in, swished up the soap with her hand.

I finished with the dishrag and the table, while Annie and Wilman stood
over Leston, Brenda Kay right in the middle of it all and slapping her
hands together.  "Miss Wimn!  " she said, then, "Miss Daddy, Miss
Nee!

" all of it shouted out at the same pitch as always.

I smiled, went to the sink, shook out the crumbs in the garbage can
beneath it.

Billie Jean dipped in the first glass, said, "This is fine news, Momma,
" and smiled.

"You can't fool me, my daughter."  I looked at her, dropped the rag
into the suds.

"I've got friends, is all, " she said.  She wouldn't look at me.

"We all do, " I said, but there was something in how she tipped her
head to my answer, in how she shrugged just then and worked hard to
keep her eyes from mine that showed me there were other worries headed
for us.

Most all the days after that seemed to come and go quicker than we
could know, as though each week were nothing more than a hail and
farewell, the idea of California looming bright and glorious on a
horizon closer than ever.

In June we sold off the chickens, in July, the furniture.  We took our
leads from the progress Brenda Kay made, slow progress, but progress
just the same, her walking from the bed to the bathroom in June, in
July Leston and Wilman moving the bed back upstairs, her able to move
downstairs with the help of one of us.

But even in the face of the fact we were moving, there were still days
that seemed like years, and I remember one afternoon in particular when
Leston hadn't been able to make it off from the plant, and it'd been
Wilman to come with me to Dr. Beaudry's to have the dressings on
Brenda Kay's legs changed.  Wilman had a job working after school at
the soda fountain at Miller's on Main in Purvis, and'd spend most
evenings there serving up ice cream to kids from all up and down the
county, giving extra heaps to Babs no doubt for nothing.  Then he and
his friends would drive the county back roads until all hours, and I
wouldn't see him until the next morning, dressed for school.  "I'm just
getting it out of my system, Momma, " he'd say whenever it seemed I
might be giving him an ugly eye, but truth was I didn't mind, didn't
mind at all.  He was good about putting his money away, about
contributing his time to helping sell off everything, right down to
standing by the bushel-barrels of sweet potatoes by the side of the
road Saturday mornings, those potatoes selling off for a penny and a
half a pound to whoever'd stop.  We were heading to California, better,
I figured, to get his system cleared here than there.

In late May the heat'd gone up into the nineties, and with the heat had
come more and more changes of the dressings, and I remember heading up
the stairs to the doctor's door.  Once I reached the landing I'd turned
to see my son Wilman with Brenda Kay in his arms, his face as stone as
he could make it at the stench that rose up off his sister, the smell
magnified by the wet heat as he carried her up the stairs.

Inside, Wilman carried Brenda Kay to the examination room, a room as
familiar to me as my larder, and set her down on the table.  Dr.
Beaudry started right in on the same old routine, unwrapping layer by
layer of gauze on down to the last lengths drenched in brown and dead
and pussy skin, the horror if it near nothing for me, Brenda Kay giving
out the same old heart-heavy whimpers, her face squeezed and pinched
shut with the pain, while the doctor's low, calm voice guided us
along.

That was when I turned to Wilman, saw him leaning back against the
white wall, his hands crossed on his chest.  His eyes were right on the
leg worst burned, the source of the smells, of the giant burden that'd
been rolled back on us like a rock we'd thought we'd gotten out from
under when she'd started to walking.

Wilman only stared at her legs, and I could see in his eyes tears
welling up.

Often enough I thought on my children and what they had to go through,
on all the long line of moments I'd lost of my life to Brenda Kay,
moments not spent on them.

This was one of those moments.  I figured maybe the best thing I could
ever do in his entire life would be to go to him right then, to hold
him close to me and tell him it was fine to cry, to let go whatever
notion he had of a man not crying.

But then Brenda Kay screamed out, and I turned to see Dr. Beaudry give
one more small tug with his tweezers at a piece of skin just below her
right knee, skin that had to come off before it got infected, and I
held tight to Brenda Kay's hand, rubbed her back, rubbed and rubbed, a
million gentle circles to get her through this.  Progress, I thought,
and I wondered what that really meant, and saw I'd only figured the
idea of progress into Brenda Kay's life, and on our progress toward her
walking, and on our progress toward getting to California.  I glanced
up to Wilman again, saw how the idea of progress with my own children
was something I hadn't figured on, how they'd been progressing on their
own, how I'd exited their lives for the most part in order to save this
one life.

Then Wilman pushed himself off the wall, left the room, and the moment
for him and me was gone.

On the first of August we sold the house, got $6, 700 for it and the
180 acres around it, more money than we'd seen come through our hands
in the last five years.  One of the owners of the ice cream plant
bought it all, a short fat man who'd never had a farm in his life, and
who said he admired the craftsmanship he found in Leston's work.  He'd
walked through our house touching doorjambs and switch plates, taking
off his spectacles now and again and peering into a cabinet, a
corner.

He'd given us the money within the week, told us we could move out any
time that month.

Then, two days before we were to move there was nothing to pack,
nothing for any of us to do but just wait until Leston's and Billie
Jean's last days to work Annie and Brenda Kay and me met Billie Jean at
the bank so we could spend her lunch hour shopping for new clothes for
us all.

Wilman dropped us off, him having driven his daddy into work that
morning.  He was headed over to Babs' house for one last dinner with
her family before leaving.

All we Hilburn girls walked down Juniper to Main and on into Bancroft's
Dress Shop, all of us sopping wet by that time from the heat, and' we
bought clothes.  We bought four outfits that matched from head to toe
for Brenda Kay, though I wouldn't permit, would never again permit,
anything other than pants for her, enough people ogled my child every
time we left the house, whether for Sunday Meeting or Wednesday night
supper or just to buy flour and coffee, I didn't need her scarred legs
adding to what they saw.

We bought three pairs of cotton slacks, pink and blue and yellow, and a
pair of navy blue cotton overalls with a winged dove applique at the
bib, two white blouses embroidered at the collar and along the front,
and two plain-front blouses, one pink, the other pale blue.  With each
pair of pants I held up to Brenda Kay, Myrtle Bancroft, proprietor,
stood back, put her hands on the hips of her green silk dress, and
said, "How wonderful, how becoming, " the words lost entirely on my
daughter.

Myrtle acted as though Brenda Kay were trying to win men, which just
showed me that, like everyone else, she had no idea what to do with a
retarded child, had no idea how to talk or act around her.  Finally,
after I'd had Brenda Kay try on the third pair of pants, Myrtle'd
pulled me aside, whispered in my ear, "Don't she like dresses?  " and
I'd whispered right back at her, "She doesn't think she has the ankles
for it, " my small joke lost on her.

Annie bought skirts, though, red and navy and white, even a seersucker
blue and white one, cut close to her hips and straight, something I
would've never dared dream of wearing or of letting Billie Jean wear.

But we were off to California now, where I figured most every girl had
skirts like that.

Billie Jean moved slowly through the racks of dresses in the shop,
touched things here and there, once in a while pulled something out and
held it to her.  But it wouldn't be more than a second before she'd
shrug and smile, file it back on the rack, take hold of her purse with
both hands again.

Then I pulled out a dress for her, a light summer dress with a full
skirt and short sleeves, the pattern on the material all kinds of pink
orchids.  I left Brenda Kay with Annie, went to Billie Jean across the
shop from us, and held it up to her.  I said, "You try this on."

"But Momma, " she said, and she smiled, dipped her head a little
again.

"This just isn't right."

"What do you mean?  " I said.  "What's wrong with this dress?  " I
pulled it away from her, made like I was examining the hem and sleeves
for flaws in the stitching.

"There's nothing wrong with the dress, " she said, and looked down at
it, smiled a smile that let me know she really wanted it, wanted plenty
of what she'd looked at so far.

"Then you get this dress, " I said, and pushed it at her, "and don't
you be worrying over whether or not this is right."

Slowly she lifted a hand from her purse, took the dress.  She nodded,
said, "Yes ma'am, " though there was no heart to those two words.  She
was twenty-two now, a woman with no need for a momma pressing clothes
to her body like she was ten, and suddenly the words I'd used on her
seemed top heavy and too loud in this small dress shop on the main
street of Purvis, and I'd had to swallow touch a hand to my chest, look
around to see who'd heard me.

But there was only Annie and Brenda Kay across the room from us, Annie
on tiptoe and pulling down a gray felt hat from the shelf above the
dresses, Brenda Kay next to her, hands loose at her sides white
high-top shoes on.

Billie Jean ended up buying only that dress, along with a slip and a
plain white blouse with pearl buttons.  I'd said nothing more to her on
it, finally figured she knew what she was up to.

That night Leston and Wilman and Billie Jean all came home from the
last day at their jobs in the Plymouth, a huge and fat and beautiful
car pulling up behind the house so that I thought it might have been
the man who'd bought the place, out here again to have a look in a
kitchen drawer.

By the time I made it out onto the porch, my Leston and Wilman were
already climbing out the car, and it took me a moment or two to see
exactly what was going on.  Wilman brought me down the steps, and I saw
early evening summer clouds reflect up off the hood saw on the other
side of it Leston smiling and smiling, Billie Jean leaning out the
back-seat window, smiling just as big, all of them looking at me.

Annie banged past me, placed both hands on the hood, pulled them back
at the heat.  "A brand-new car!  " she hollered out.  "I can't believe
it!

I can't believe it!  " "You best believe it, " Leston said, the
cigarette in his mouth bobbing with his words.  "No way in hell we're
heading cross-country in that junkheap truck we had."

"Leston, " I said, "watch your mouth, " though I was smiling at him,
smiling and moving toward the passenger-side door, Wilman standing
there and holding it open for me like a chauffeur.  Leston'd never said
word one about buying a car.  Not a word.  I'd figured we'd drive from
here through to California in the truck, just limping from service
station to service station.  But a new car.

"Pardon my language, ma'am, " he said, and nodded at me.  "Nineteen
Fifty-two Plymouth, " he said, and slapped the hood.  "Sixteen hundred
dollars cash money."

He grinned.  He took out the cigarette, held it away from the car,
flicked off the ashes.

I took a big breath, shook my head.  "That's a lot of money, " I
said.

"It's a lot of car, " he said.  We were all quiet a moment, the only
sound the start-up whirr of the cicadas in the trees.

Brenda Kay said, "Huh, huh, " her forced laugh as always pitched and
twisted in her throat, and suddenly we all laughed right along with
her, no matter none of us could know why she'd started.

"How does California sound?  " Wilman said.

I went to the car, touched the chrome handle, climbed in.  He pushed
the door to, clicked it closed.  The window was down, and he squatted
next to the car, looked in at me.

"Sounds fine, " I said.  "When do we go?  " "Not soon enough, " Leston
said from his side, and climbed in next to me.  He said, "Everybody
in."

We drove and drove the back roads that next-to-last evening in
Mississippi, drove and drove, Leston and me in front, Wilman and Annie
each at a window, Billie Jean in the middle with Brenda Kay on her
lap.

Wilman and Annie talked away, Wilman about which roads back here would
take us where, Annie about how fine the car would look rolling into Los
Angeles, about the clothes she'd bought, about anything else crossed
her mind.  Leston only smoked and drove, the smell of the new car mixed
with that smoke something magnificent.  Every now and again I'd feel a
touch at my hair, turn to see Brenda Kay's hand up, stubby fingers
spread, her eyes on my head.  "Momma, haah!  " she shouted every
time.

And there, behind her, sat Billie Jean, turned to a window and smiling,
just looking out at the countryside fast growing dark on us.

The next evening we were doing the last straightening up of the house,
me scouring the sink, Annie grabbing at whatever cobwebs she could find
with the broom, Wilman and Leston outside, the hood of the car up, the
two of them peering into the engine like it might speak.

Billie Jean'd been gone all afternoon, picked up at lunchtime by one of
her girlfriends at the bank, Ruby Sit well, who drove a pickup not much
different from the one we'd just gotten rid of the day before.  They
were giving her a farewell party, Billie Jean'd told me as she ran down
the front porch steps, her eyes, I'd seen, blinking and blinking at
tears coming up.  She climbed in the cab, the two of them giggling and
crying already.  Then Billie Jean'd leaned out the window, blew me a
kiss, and the two of them had headed off down the road.

Near sunset I finished scouring the kitchen sink, and turned to see I
I's l Billie Jean just inside the kitchen from the front room.  She
stood with her arm looped in the arm of a man we'd only met twice
before, one Gower Cross, a plump man whose face seemed too red, maybe
even flushed, whenever he talked.  He smiled what I figured was
entirely too much, but he was a salesman for a tractor-trailer
operation out of Jackson, was starting up an office here.  All that
smiling, I figured, just went right along with the job.  He'd been over
to dinner a month ago, the first time a month before that, but that was
it, and he and Billie Jean'd gone out a few times otherwise.  Nothing
serious, as far as I could see, she'd had boyfriends on and off, boys I
could only recall by how they'd acted around Brenda Kay, some wouldn't
come in the house, some smiled too much and patted her head like she
was a strange breed of dog, others stood with their hands behind their
backs, their eyes never falling on Brenda Kay.

Gower Cross'd been of the smiling variety, just smiling and smiling
those times he was over, hesitating with his fork between his plate and
mouth a moment or so when Brenda Kay'd smack her lips too loud, or when
she'd let fall from her mouth a piece of gristle she wanted rid of, all
of it her general manners at the table, no matter how hard I tried to
teach her different.

"Gower, " I said, and nodded.  "Here for dinner?  Because all we're
having is sandwiches.  Tomorrow's " "Momma, " Billie Jean said, and she
pulled him even closer.  She had on the orchid dress we'd bought the
day before, her eyes and lips and cheeks made up.  Then I saw Gower's
hair was greased and combed, and he had on a painted tie, his white
shirt crisp and starched and clean, nowhere near the rumpled and tired
it would've been had he worn it all day.  His face was more red than
I'd seen it either of the nights he'd been here.  Billie Jean glanced
up at him, then at me, grinning.

"You two are married, " I whispered.

"Oh, Momma, " Billie Jean whined out, "you spoiled it, " and she let go
his arm, came to me, held me and hugged me hard.

I hadn't even the time to react, only stood there with Billie Jean's
arms tight round me, my eyes wide open and on this Gower Cross, who
stood now with his hands together in front of him, smiling.

Then the force of what'd already happened without any bit of help or
hindrance from me took over, and I closed my eyes, held her myself, and
I started crying, crying at the shock of it, at the grief of it, at the
joy.  And I cried, I was surprised to find in myself, at the relief of
it.  Now I knew what'd been on her mind all this time, even since May
when she'd been rinsing dishes and giving what I saw now was a smile
she felt obliged to give, right on up to her not buying any clothes,
and last night sitting silent in the back seat of the car.  Another of
my children'd been taken away from me, three down now, the family
growing smaller, it seemed, with every day.

I opened my eyes, patted Billie Jean's back, heard her own crying.  She
pulled away from me, her hands on my shoulders, and we both looked at
each other, crying and laughing now, too.

Then she held up her left hand, wiggled her fingers to show me the thin
gold band on her finger.  She was married.

We turned back to Gower, who was rocking on his heels now.  Annie stood
back by the kitchen door, her mouth open wide as her eyes.  Brenda Kay,
oblivious, had gotten hold of an old piece of steel wool from the
garbage can, sat on the kitchen floor with it cupped in her hands,
looking at it.

"Oh, Brenda Kay, " I said, and laughed, went to her.

Gower cleared his throat, said, "I'll take good care of your daughter,
y'all can bet."

I squatted next to Brenda Kay, took the steel wool from her, and heard
steps up the porch.

Leston pulled back the screen door, stepped in, wiping his hands on one
of the old rags from the shed.  He looked at Gower as though he were
the only person could be in his kitchen right then.  He stopped, Wilman
just behind him and with a rag of his own.  Leston tucked his rag in
his back pocket.

Billie Jean had her arm looped in Gower's again.  She'd stopped crying,
but gave out a few quick huffs, getting back her breath.

"Won't be any bets about it, " Leston said.  "I heard from outside.

And you will take good care of her."

He put out his hand, his face straight and stone, held it out there in
the middle of the room.

Billie Jean gave Gower, who'd suddenly lost his smile, the smallest of
shoves.  "Oh, " he said.  "Oh.  Yes sir, " and the smile came back, and
he went to Leston, took his hand, shook it hard.

I waited for something else, some other words or movement, anything.

His words, the surprise of his blessing, had startled me, too, and I
wondered whether there would come from him any more words, or even a
hug for his daughter, my new husband, the one resolved to take charge
of this family, capable of anything now.

But he only stepped back, nodded again.  He reached into his front
pocket, pulled from it the roll of bills that was everything we had on
this earth, and I watched as he peeled off five twenty-dollar bills,
and handed them out to Gower.

"Mr. Hilburn " he said, and Billie Jean cut in, "Daddy " "You take it,
" he whispered, "and you do with it what y'all see fit.  No more
arguing over it."

"Take it, " I said, my eyes on Billie Jean's, hers brimming again.  She
looked at me, tried to smile, and I nodded.  This was the way, I saw,
my husband believed he could best bless his children, his loss of work,
his selling bundles of kindling for so long a humiliation only
overridden by money, and what it could promise.

Gower went to Leston, slowly brought up his hand.  He took the bills
without looking at them, put them in his pocket.  He shook Leston's
hand again, pumped it hard and hard, his face so red I thought it might
burst.

Wilman stood next to Leston, held out his hand to Gower, who quick
dropped Leston's, started in on Wilman's.  My second son only nodded at
Gower, Wilman's deep brown eyes never blinking, no smile coming across
his face.  He could have been Leston thirty years ago, I thought, his
face so straight and serious, the perfect mirror of his father's right
then.

Finally Gower let go his hand, and Billie Jean stepped in, hugged her
daddy, who hesitated a moment before he brought his own arms up,
wrapped them round his daughter, and smiled.  He smiled, his eyes
closed, and I could see inside him some same sense of relief I'd felt,
here was another one gone.

Then Billie Jean hugged Wilman, then Annie, whose mouth still hung
open, and then she squatted, hugged Brenda Kay, still on the floor,
legs spread.

Billie Jean pulled away a moment later, turned and pointed to Gower,
still smiling and with his hands in front of him.  She said, "Brenda
Kay, this is your brother-in-law, Gower."

Brenda Kay turned to the garbage can again, reached in, but Billie Jean
caught her hand, pulled it out.  "Gower's part of our family now, " she
said, looking into Brenda Kay's eyes.

"Bijen, " she shouted, and smiled.  Then she lost the smile, reached up
and touched at Billie Jean's eyes as though they'd been wounded, as
though maybe, I thought, she'd been burned too, her eyebrows knotted
up, and she made an O with her mouth.

"I'm okay, darling, " Billie Jean said, and sniffed.  "I'm fine.  I
just want you to say hello to your new brother, Gower."  She turned
from Brenda Kay, looked at her husband.

Brenda Kay followed her gaze, finally settled her eyes on Gower. 
"Gow?

" she shouted.

"Yes, " Gower said, and rocked on his heels again.  "Yes, hello, Miss
Brenda Kay."  He brought up a hand, gave a short wave, almost a
salute.

"Gow, " Brenda Kay shouted, "you fat!  " And the news and shock and
surprise of it all was over, none of us able to hold back.  The
laughing started right up, though I'd said "Brenda Kay" as stern as I
could, and though Gower Cross lost his own smile a few moments, a hand
going right to his stomach and touching it like he was trying to
hide.

Even Billie Jean was laughing, a hand covering her mouth as her
shoulders shook.  Then Gower took it up once he'd seen there was no
fighting it, and he laughed, laughed and laughed too loud and long, but
he laughed.

Above it I could hear Brenda Kay's "Huh huh huh!  " again and again,
tuneless and disconnected, but laughter all the same.

A few minutes later they drove off in Gower's truck, a black
company-issue Ford, Billie Jean's hand waving the hankie out her
window.

We were all on the front porch, and once they were gone we were
silent.

Annie and Wilman and Brenda Kay turned back to the house, went on
inside, leaving my husband and me out there in the growing dark.

"Well, " I said.  "Another one down."  I turned to Leston, saw him
staring off after the truck, though it'd already disappeared.  His
hands were in his back pockets.

He turned to me.  I could see only half his face in the light from
inside.  He was smiling.  He shrugged, then leaned over, kissed me on
the lips.  He hadn't even taken his hands out of his pockets.

He said, "Not much time to worry over them.  We got our own lives to
go."

He paused.  "We're going to California tomorrow."

I only looked up at him, surprised at his kiss, his smile, at his
saying in words we had a life to worry over.

He turned, went to the screen door, held it open.  "Miss Jewel, " he
said, "after you."

That night we slept on mattresses on the floor, and near morning a
storm rolled in, filled the house with low thunder and the soft call of
summer rain, chilling down the air round us all.  At five we got up,
washed our faces, ate cold biscuits and sausage I'd cooked the night
before, and we left.

The children'd barely woken up, were already on their way back asleep
as we backed away from the house, the front of it suddenly lit up
brighter than any day I'd ever known by the headlights of our new
car.

The house seemed almost to call out to me, to want me back in it, back
in the comfort of knowing what the life we were leaving was all about,
no money, Brenda Kay and healing her up and taking her to the bathroom
and washing her and wiping up after her, Wilman and Annie to school,
Leston and his uniform and cigarettes.  Then came Cathe ral and all the
children I'd served at the cafeteria, then all our days before, the
niggers out in the dark eating food I'd cooked, Leston and JE and Toxie
and Garland and the tips of their cigarettes waving round in the dark
mornings, the smell of pine tar and engine oil thick in the air all day
long.

I looked to Leston, his arm across the top of the seat, his head turned
as he backed out.

I looked again to the house, watched it go dark as we turned, the
headlights poking out at first the heavy green forest, then the road
before us, and I could feel my heart picking up, the fear in it and the
clear hope, and I looked at Leston again.

He stopped, shifted gears.  Before he gave it the gas, he turned to me,
smiled, though I could barely make out his face in the dark, could see
beneath the brim of his hat only the hint of his mouth, the corners
up.

He said, "Miss Jewel Hilburn."  I smiled, said, "Yes?  " He said, "Miss
Jewel Hilburn, we're taking care."

"Yes, " I said, and swallowed, my heart still going away.  "I guess we
are, " I said.

He nodded, gave the pedal a push, and we were off, headed for
California in our brand new 52 Plymouth, new clothes in old suitcases
in the trunk, my retarded daughter settled between my last two children
in the back seat.  I turned, saw all of them with their heads back,
mouths open in sleep.

And I saw beyond them, out the rear window and fast disappearing in the
distance we were putting behind us, the house.  No dust whirled up
behind us for the quiet rain we'd gotten, and I kept my eye on our old
home until I lost it for the trees and bushes and all else green there
in Mississippi.  i BOOK TWO CHAPTER 22.

THIS WAS A HEAT I D NEVER KNOWN.  THE SUN WASN'T EVEN UP YET, AND
already the small of my back was wet, my hair and eyes and hands hot.

But it was a dry heat, and as I watched the sun come up above the
jagged mountains to the east, mountains we'd cut through late yesterday
afternoon, mountains that let out into the miles and miles of sand
hills we'd passed through before finally hitting this town, Indio, I
took in that heat, decided I would want it with me the rest of my
days.

I stood in the motel parking lot, the rising sun turning mountains
that'd been gray in the twilight before sunrise suddenly black as it
rose above them.  I started in on my first day in California, and
wondered if that sun could possibly be the same one that'd seen over
every day of my life so far.

The sun was different, yes, and the air, and the light, and the shadows
cast once it'd gone down last night.  The mountain to the west what the
waitress at the diner last night had called Mount San Jacinto, spelled
with ainstead of a Y, like it sounded, her mouth working a piece of gum
all the while, her too-black hair whipped high up atop her head, her
makeup so thick I couldn't be certain how old she might've been that
mountain swallowed up the sun early, yet still the sunset oranges and
purples and reds all around lit up the desert so that it stayed light
and hot and dry long into the night, and made this an even stranger and
more beautiful place than I could have imagined.  This was California,
and last night had been our first night here.

"Momma, " Wilman said from behind me, and I turned, saw him loading one
of the suitcases into the trunk of our brand-new car.  Here we were, in
California, in summer heat and desert, Mount San Jacinto purple in the
light from the new sun.

"Momma, get Annie out here to give me a hand, hey?  " Wilman said, and
lifted the suitcase in, a beat old cardboard thing tied with ropes, and
I was glad it'd be hidden away in the trunk when we finally arrived in
Los Angeles today.  The car was what I wanted seen of us, our brand-new
car.

We'd spent the first night in Natchitoches, the second just outside
Ft.

Worth, Leston letting Wilman take over the wheel for a half hour every
hundred miles or so, so he could nap.  The next night we spent in Big
Spring, where we met up with James and Eudine and Judy, who'd driven
down from Plainfield where James'd set up a- practice taking care of
livestock.

I'd called them from Ft.  Worth the night before, asked where we could
meet them, as Eudine had family down there to Big Spring.  We ended up
having to meet at the parking lot of the grocery store in the middle of
town, then following them to Eudine's Aunt Charity's trailer just west
of there.

I'd figured on the reunion in the parking lot being just as loud as any
meeting with Eudine could be, but when she stepped from their car, her
blonde hair stringy and wet, her face sweating at the heat, and'd stood
up to show she was wearing a maternity smock, her belly poking out near
to finished, I cried out even louder than she did, went to her, held
her.

Then baby Judy came out from the back seat, her eyes heavy with sleep,
perfect bangs cut across her forehead and plastered there with sweat,
her red pigtails dark and wet.  I leaned down, picked her up, though
she made to push me away for a moment or two before settling herself on
my hip, this feel of a baby in my arms as much a part of me as how I
made biscuits, as lacing my shoes.

"She's a sweet three-and-a-half-year-old, " Eudine said, holding her
hand as Judy yawned.  Eudine looked from Judy to me to Annie, half
whispered in the way she had so that everyone in attendance could hear,
"They say the worst is terrible twos, but I think this age ought to be
called throttle-'em threes, " and she laughed, showed she was chewing a
big piece of pink gum.  She hugged Annie, started in on how grown-up
she looked.

Meantime, James and Leston and Wilman were all shaking hands, eyes
meeting only a moment or so before darting out to the flat desert
prairie at the far end of town, to the horizon that might as well have
been a million miles away.

"Where's Billie Jean?  " I heard James ask, even though Eudine'd
already started in about the sheer hell of diapers, and how she and
James weren't willingly walking into having this next baby, if we knew
what she meant.

Leston smiled, shook his head at James' question.  He took off his hat,
swiped at his brow with the sleeve of his shirt.  "Damndest thing, " I
heard him say.  He looked at the oiled dirt of the parking lot, rubbed
a toe of his boot in it.  "Got married day before we took out.  Man
named Gower Cross."  He looked up at James, who still had his hands on
his hips.  Hot wind picked at all their hair, lifted it and settled it
again and again.  "You don't mean it, " James said.

"Don't mean what?  " Eudine cut in.  "What y'all keeping to yourselves
over there, huh?  " But she wasn't really interested, I could see, she
reached into the back seat of our car, took hold of Brenda Kay's
hand.

"Come on out here, baby-doll, " she said, and slowly Brenda Kay moved
toward her, a smile starting to come.

"How's them legs of yours?  " Eudine said, and knelt as best she could,
hugged Brenda Kay still sitting on the seat, her legs dangling out the
door.  "How you doing, baby?  " she said.

"You fat!  " she hollered, and Eudine laughed that loud laugh of
hers.

"You're telling me, sweetheart!  " Eudine laughed, then climbed into
the car next to Brenda Kay, pulling Annie on in with her, the three of
them taking up the back seat of the Plymouth.  "And y'all got
yourselves a brand-new car to boot, " she said, ran her hand along the
top of the seat in front of her.

I kept an eye on Brenda Kay to see how she'd be around Eudine.  But
instead her eyes were on me, and on the child in my arms, and I
realized it was Judy and me she was most interested in, my attention
and love suddenly given, she must've thought, to someone else.  Not to
her.

"Daddy!  " Judy cried out, and started to fidgeting in my arms, and I
let her go, watched as she ran to her daddy, my son James, who picked
her up and swung her round like a sack of flour, set her on top of his
shoulders.

I turned back to the car, saw Brenda Kay looking at me.  She eased back
in the seat, comforted, I was certain, by Judy being gone, and started
watching Eudine talk on and on at her about how much food was going to
be over to her Aunt Charity's, how she was barbequing up Texas steaks
and roast corn and cutting up fresh cantaloupe from down by the
Pecos.

Brenda Kay just kept blinking, not certain who this was, why she was
here.

Finally, the men came to the car, and James said, "Now y'all just
follow me.  Wilman and Judy'll go with me, and then we can visit for
real."

Judy, still on his shoulders, had hold a hank of his hair, pulled at it
like it was a set of reins in her hands.

Leston nodded, and James pulled Judy from her perch up there, set her
on the ground.  Then he put out his hand, held it for his father to
take.

Leston took it, and the two shook, but it was what happened after that
that made me swell and smile, made the dirt and travel and sweat so far
worthwhile, they finished shaking hands, but for a moment or two they
only stood there, looking at each other, holding hands firm and hard,
but holding hands.

A heavy gust of prairie wind barreled through the parking lot, shook
the car, the sound of grit against the side of the car the only sound
around us, even Eudine quiet for a second.

But then she broke it, yelled, "Now let's get on out of here.  There's
steaks the size of this car to be eaten, " and we were gone, headed for
a trailer somewhere in the town of Big Spring, Texas.

We ate too much, then spent the night in Aunt Charity's trailer, all
nine of us covering every bit of floor space she had and using up every
blanket and sheet and towel before we were out of there.  Our leaving
the next morning was filled with kisses and crying and fussing over
when we might see each other again, filled, too, with the deep and
shiny ache I carried in my heart when I'd had to surrender baby Judy
back to her own momma.  There was a certain wonder in the fact of a
normal child, I came to see with the weight of one back in my arms, a
wonder in all they could prove out to be, the world set before each and
every one of them like a fine table set for a feast.  And here was baby
Judy, ready and raring to go out into the world as she squirmed to get
free from her momma's arms once we were in our car and backing away
from the trailer.

Eudine finally let my first grandchild down, and no sooner than Judy's
feet touched dirt did she tear off around the side of the trailer, and
disappear.

Eudine shrugged and made a face at me, and I smiled, waved again, that
ache grown even bigger in just that moment, when I'd not been able to
wave good-bye to Judy.

Leston put the car in gear, and we were gone.

Before we were out of Big Spring and back on the desert, I made Leston
stop at a hardware store, had Wilman go in and buy a galvanized bucket,
then fill it with ice cubes at the service station we gassed up at.  I
sat with the bucket on the floorboard between my legs, passing out
cubes to whoever wanted one and soaking down one of Wilman's T-shirts
the last clean one he had and passing that around, too, each of us
given five minutes with it wrapped round our necks until I had to soak
it down again, pass it on to the next person.

The next night we'd stayed in El Paso, Wilman pestering us to head over
to Juarez for a bullfight, but James having warned us off that for fear
we'd end up knifed and robbed, the next night we'd spent in Demming,
New Mexico.  We hadn't got near as far as we'd intended for the car
overheating once we were up into the mountains and off the flat of
Texas.  But we'd managed to limp into Demming, Leston knowing even
before the Plymouth dealer in town did it was the thermostat needed
replacing.

We bought cowboy boots for Leston and Wilman and even Annie while we
waited, then found a motel and spent the night, got up early the next
morning and started across Arizona, made it to Phoenix by dark.  By
that time the hot, dry air had been with us for a few days, and I could
feel my lips going chapped, kept us all salved up with a tube of
Chapstick I','d bought back in El Paso.

Then had come the next to last leg, us crossing over the green Colorado
at midday, stopped at the California side for a fruit inspection, then
sent on to Blythe where we filled up the tank and the bucket both.

Then a hundred miles of nothing, only desert, then those mountains, the
sand hills, and the Desert Moon Inn.

Wilman settled the suitcase into the trunk, pushed it back aways to
make room for the other four, all the worldly goods we had left, but
there was joy I took in traveling this light, everything shucked for
now.

Wilman went back inside, the Plymouth parked right in front of our room
of the low, flat motel.  The sign for the place script letters way up
high spelling out Desert Moon Inn in flashing blue neon, a lit white
bulb the size of a basketball dotting the I was what brought us in from
Highway 10 yesterday evening, hot and tired and so worked up about
finally being in California we didn't notice how close the place was to
the train tracks.  After a supper that cost us twice what the same in
Mississippi would have, we drove back and forth on the main street, a
four-lane road lined with huge date palm trees that swayed in the late
evening breeze beneath a sky that seemed impossibly huge and littered
with brand-new stars, then pulled around to the back of a Texaco
station so that Wilman could throw up the date milkshake he'd finished
off his meal with Indio was the date capital of the world, our waitress
had told us.  Then we spent the night listening to freight trains, the
whole room trembling with the slow weight of the cars as they edged
through town, the whole room lit on and off with blue neon coming in
through the thin curtains.  None of us slept, except for Brenda Kay, no
bandages on her legs now, no wraps.  Only the red and scarred skin that
would always be red and scarred.  She was the only one to sleep, the
four of us Leston, me, Wilman and Annie only turning and turning.

Inside the room Leston was shaving at the sink.  Annie, in the
seersucker skirt, leaned at the mirror above the dresser, penciling at
her eyebrows, her hair still in the rag-curls she'd put in last night,
her cheeks rouged up, her eyelids a pale blue.  Brenda Kay was still
asleep on the bed, wrapped in the sheet and curled up tight.

"Annie, don't you think you're overdoing this a bit?  " I said, and
stood behind her, looked in the mirror at her.

She stopped with the pencil, glared up at me.

She said, "I guess you don't realize what we're doing today, do you?  "
She looked at me a moment longer, started up with the pencil again.

"I know, " I said, "that you're my daughter, always will be, and I know
that fact won't ever give you the right to talk to me that way, young
girl."  I tried to force my eyes to go hard on her, tried to grit my
teeth in a way she might fear and respect.  But that didn't happen, I
couldn't do anything other than smile at her, here in a cheap motel in
Indio, California, date capital of the world, my daughter getting
dolled up in the hopes some Hollywood director would spot her as we
rolled into town.

"Yes, Momma, " she sighed out, then put down the pencil, started taking
out the rags.  "I'm sorry, Momma, " she said in her teenage way, the
words only enough to get me off her back.  She wouldn't look at me,
only at the mirror, and suddenly she stopped, leaned even closer to the
glass.  "Look at the bags under my eyes!  " she yelled.

Leston said, "The last two suitcases are for you to put in the car,
Anne, " and tapped his razor.

We ate breakfast at the same diner we'd eaten at the night before,
served by a waitress might as well have been the same one we'd had last
night except for her too-blonde hair, then we gassed up at the Texaco
station Wilman'd thrown up at last night.  Before we headed out, Leston
asked the attendant if we could borrow the hose Lying next to the
restroom doors at the side of the place, and the man'd shrugged, said
okay.  Wilman got out, showered the car with water to wash off as much
road dirt as possible.  Brenda Kay clapped in the back seat as Wilman
sprayed the rear window, while Annie, her chin in hand, sat shaking her
head at all us white crackers.  By eightfifteen we were out on Highway
10, headed for Los Angeles in our clean and brand-new car.

Mountains surrounded us for a long while, rocky mountains that jutted
up on either side of the flat desert floor, nothing but brush and rock
leading away from the road and toward those peaks.  We drove past a
sign that said Palm Springs, and Annie near-pitched a fit in the back
seat, screaming on and on about how that town was Hollywood's desert
playground, where everybody came to sit in the sun after working hard
on their movies.  We passed through a couple Jr' WL of towns, Beaumont
and Banning, the reasons they even existed there in the desert I
couldn't see, after a while we started coming into farm country, on
either side of the road green rows of lettuce and tomatoes and summer
squash skimming past like spokes on a wheel as we drove.

Finally the mountains beside us seemed to part, those on our left
peeling back and south, those to the right retreating aways, and we
came to a rise in the road.

Leston slowed down on the highway, pulled to the shoulder, and we
stopped.

I leaned forward, a hand to the dashboard, and looked out the
windshield.

It was a flat valley we were heading into, huge and wide, but green as
far as you could see, a flat green with few trees.  This was
California, as much like glory land as anything I'd ever hope to see.

California.

Leston had a hand on the steering wheel, with the other took the
cigarette from his lips, hung it out the window.

"She's pretty, " he said, his eyes squinted at the light, at all the
light the sun above us gave off.  Though it was still in the nineties,
and though the bucket of ice on the floorboard was half-melted, sloshed
back and forth with each bump in the road, somehow the heat didn't
matter, and the struggle it was to keep my eyes from squinting closed
at the light didn't matter.  Nothing mattered, because here we were.

Cars shot past us, and I looked to the back seat, saw the faces of my
three children staring at the view, even Brenda Kay looking, taking it
in and making of it whatever her mind made of things brand-new and
foreign to her, her having no way to know she was gazing down on a
place where she'd be helped beyond measure, where we'd come closer, God
willing or not, to fixing this life.

Leston leaned his head out the window, looked behind him.  He gave it
the gas, and we were back on the blacktop, rolling down to our
salvation, and I got out the brochures I'd gotten from the National
Association for Retarded Children, unfolded them, careful not to rip
them, pieces of worn and soft paper three years old, and I read them
out loud again for the fiftieth time this trip.

An hour later we were still in farm country, only now there were more
cars, more intersections, more stoplights and stores and service
stations and homes coming in closer to the road.  Now and again, too,
we'd pass a dairy farm, the smell on this August afternoon swallowing
us up.  Then we'd be back in the middle of cabbage fields or more
tomatoes, the smell as welcome and comfortable as any Mississippi
afternoon, only better, the air still dry and hot.

We passed through towns with strange names, all the while making
certain to stay right on Highway 10, just as Burton'd instructed.  We
passed through a town called Redlands, then Bloomington, passed signs
pointing to places called Fontana and Rialto, Ontario and Montclair,
all of it farmland and farmland.

Then the road was bordered on both sides by rows of low, thick green
trees, branches heavy with pale green fruit.

"They look like limes, " Wilman said from the back seat, and I said,
"They're too big."

"Oranges, " Leston said.

"That's oranges?  " Annie said from behind me.  She sat up, her face
out the window.  "That's oranges?  " "Looks like, " Leston said.  "This
is California, you know."

"Oranges, " she said.

"Ohnge, " I heard from Brenda Kay, and I turned, saw her peering out
the window right alongside her sister.

"Y'all sit back, " I said, "just sit back and hold tight.  We'll be
there soon enough."

"Look at that, " Leston said, and I turned to see us pass a green sign,
ENTERING LOS ANGELES COUNTY in white letters across it, and I heard
Annie and Wilman holler and clap in the back seat, Brenda Kay starting
in with her Huh huhs, and I could do nothing but shake my head, call
out a time or two more for them to settle down, Leston grinning all the
while.

The farmland started giving out, fewer and fewer strawberry fields and
broccoli and lettuce, all of it turned over to houses, stores,
streetlights and more streetlights.  We were passing through more
towns, too, Covina, West Covina, Baldwin Park, low buildings coming up
now, cars swarming up round us when we came to intersections.  Yet
there wasn't anywheres on the map Burton'd sent us any indication we
were getting very close to where he would meet us, Bundy Mufflers at
the corner of Olympic Boulevard and Bundy Avenue.  Now and again, too,
we were getting honked at, cars pulling right up behind us and near
tapping the bumper back there, and suddenly I'd seen that our car
wasn't much to shout about in the middle of all these cars, we were
just another of a thousand brand-new 52 Plymouths on the road, only we
had Mississippi plates on.  There was nothing special about our car.

But I started over on that thought, tried to set in my mind the truth
of where we were, California, not some back road in Lamar County,
Mississippi.  Every one here drove new cars.  That was the plain and
simple truth of where we were.

Leston pulled into a Shell station.  As best as I could tell, we were
in a town the map called El Monte, still a ways from the area Burton'd
circled on the map for us to head to.  I could see on the map, too,
there was the Freeway coming up, Burton warning us in his last letter
about how all the cars went fast on it and how there were no stop signs
or lights anywheres, only Exits on certain streets.  He'd warned us of
it, but'd told us, too, there wasn't much to fear if you just stayed
the speed everyone else was going, and stayed on it until it ended on
Garvey, once we reached there we wouldn't be far at all from Bundy
Mufflers.

I glanced up from the map at Leston, who had both hands on the wheel,
holding it tight.  His jaw was set, and only then did I see he'd gone
through some middle place already, had lost something of all the light
we'd been feeling coming in, and I knew right away it had to do with
the cars, and the streets and the buildings and the driving.  All of
it.

The attendant came out.  Leston told him to fill it up, then climbed
out, quick walked away from the pumps and across the lot to a beat up
flatbed truck heaped with empty bushel baskets.

"Momma, what's wrong?  " Wilman said.

I put down the map, pulled my leg up over the bucket, climbed out.

"You just stay here, " I said to them, and went to my husband.

He was rolling a cigarette from the pouch he carried in his front shirt
pocket.  His hands shook with the effort, his eyebrows knotted with the
task at hand.

He finished, rolled the cigarette in his one hand while he stuffed the
pouch back in his pocket.  He licked it, put it to his lips, pulled
from the shirt pocket the matchbox.  His hands'd stopped shaking, but
I'd seen it, and he knew I had.

He lit the cigarette, took a long pull at it, then looked up to the
sky.

The air was filled with the sound of cars, somebody honking here and
there, cars speeding up and slowing down, speeding up and slowing
down.

"Getting tired, " he said to the air, let out the smoke.  He took off
his hat, waved it in front of him like he was cooling off.  "Driving in
this heat's tough."

"Yes, " I said, and I crossed my arms, pretended to see in the sky
whatever it was he was looking at.

I said, "Wilman can drive."

Leston nodded, took another pull.  He still hadn't looked at me, though
he and I both knew that same fear, the fear I'd thought beaten with the
toss of a lighter into woods, had just reared up in him in some small
way.  We were in new territory, new ground.  This was the new world, I
thought, and it was no wonder that fear could show up this quick.

So I played along with his bluff of a fresh cigarette, eyes to the
sky.

The traffic and sound and light and noise and sun were all things l he
somehow couldn't take this day, the day he arrived in a place I knew
he'd promised himself a million times he'd never come to.  Now we were
here, and I figured he had every right to bluff, every right to want me
to talk him into letting his youngest son and not himself end up being
the one to drive us on into Los Angeles.

"Leston, " I said, and I reached up to him, touched his collar.  "Think
how proud it'd make him.  You letting him drive in to his older
brother's shop.  Think of that."

He was quiet, took two more pulls, let out the smoke.  He looked at me,
said, "That'd be nice for him, wouldn't it."  I said, "Give you a rest,
too."  I touched the collar of his shirt again, then touched his
cheek.

"You can't help but be tired, " I said.

He nodded, dropped the cigarette to the asphalt, rubbed it out with his
toe.  He put a hand to my waist, then bent to me and gave me a small
peck at the cheek, and turned, went for the car.  The hood was up, the
attendant holding the dipstick, looking at it.

Leston came up to him, said, "Looks fine, " and handed him a couple
dollar bills for the gas.

The Freeway was just as fast and loud and frightening as Burton'd told
us, but Wilman took it all like he'd done all this before, he had both
hands on the steering wheel, his eyes on the car in front of him, yet
he was sitting back in the seat, an elbow hanging out the window, and
kept shouting at us to look at this building, look at that.  It was
near three-thirty, and we were headed due west, the sun about to slip
down beneath the visor in front of him.  The Freeway was built up high
off the ground so that it was like we were floating above everything,
cars all cutting in one on another, brake lights rearing up red and
then moving right along.  Wilman was keeping up with it all, but stayed
in the right lane, and for that I was thankful.  I was in the back seat
and behind him, next to me Brenda Kay asleep, at the other window Annie
calling out street Exits while I read the map in my lap.  Leston was up
where I'd sat most of the trip, his hat in his lap, a hand on each
knee.

Then the Freeway ended, and we drove to the bottom of a ramp and back
down onto streets, around us now more buildings and more cars and more
stores and what-have-you than I'd seen my whole life.  New Orleans was
only a stick in the mud compared to this.

Everywhere were huge signs trying to sell Camel cigarettes and Beeman's
gum, Nehi and Firestone Tires, Chevrolets and Buicks, the buildings all
made out of concrete and stucco and circled with parking lots.

We stopped at the light at the bottom of the ramp, and Wilman said,
"Where to now?  " I i

"We're on Garvey?  " I said, trying to read both the map and Burton's
letter at once.

Out the corner of my eye I could see Leston's head bob a little,
looking for a street sign.  "Garvey, " he said.  "Looks like."

"Then we go to the right, and we start looking for Olympic Boulevard, "
I said, figuring from what all I had in front of me that was the best
way we'd ever find this Bundy Mufflers.  Already I held some kind of
awe for Burton's moving out here and finding a job in the middle of all
this noise and confusion.  My son, I thought, and reread the directions
yet again.

Wilman drove, and drove, and drove, dodging between cars while we all
read any street sign we could find, looking for Olympic Boulevard.  But
somehow we weren't coming up on it, and so Wilman drove, still around
us all the billboards and grocery stores and big intersections.

Near four o'clock we came up to the tallest of all the buildings we'd
seen so far, a white one poking up what looked a couple hundred feet in
the air.  Annie called out from her side that it was the Los Angeles
City Hall we were passing, and then Wilman tooted the horn, put a hand
out his window and waved, hollered, "Hello, Los Angeles City Hall!  "
"Wilman, " Annie whined, stretched his name all out in how embarrassed
she was, and shrank back away from the window.  Still Brenda Kay slept,
and still Leston sat stiff-in the front seat.

Finally I told Wilman to turn around, head back the way we came, and
once we did, it seemed only a minute or so before he hollered "Olympic
Boulevard!  " and stopped at the light.  He turned to me, said, "Now
which way?  " I turned the map round and round, then set it in my lap
what I thought might be the right way.

"Turn right?  " I said.

He shrugged, said, "Lucky we're in the right lane, " and turned to the
front.

I had no clear idea where we were any of the next ten minutes,
everything here looking so much like everything else, street signs
missing or twisted or hiding behind more street signs and telephone
poles so that I was just about to give up, drop the map out the window,
when Wilman said, "Well, will you looky here."  He clicked on the
blinker, turned left at the intersection, then made a quick right into
the parking lot of Bundy Mufflers at the corner of Bundy and Olympic.

It was a long, low building painted a light yellow not much different
from the color the sky had turned the last few minutes, a big yellow
billboard up on the roof with Bundy Mufflers spelled out in black
script letters.  Across the front of the building were five or six
garage doors standing open, in each a car high up on a lift, at the far
right of the building was a glass door into what I figured must be the
office.

Wilman pulled the car up to the first bay, shut off the engine.  The
man working beneath the car in front of us stopped only a second,
flipped up the visor he wore against the shine of his welding torch.

His face was black with grease and dirt, and he was squinting.  He had
no front teeth, and said nothing, only gave a quick nod of his head,
and the visor snapped into place.  He popped the torch to high, started
back in on the car.

I opened my door, climbed out, leaving Brenda Kay still asleep on the
seat.  There she lay, mouth open and hair matted down with sweat, the
front of her pale blue blouse sweat through.

My baby daughter had arrived, sweaty and hot and asleep, in the
promised land.

Leston and Annie and Wilman were already out, each of us just standing
next to our own door.  We were all looking around, just looking,
waiting for whatever was supposed to happen next.  Heat shimmered up
off the asphalt of the lot, and I took a step, felt the ground give
with my weight, smelled the black and sharp odor of it.

Then from the third bay down came Burton, walking at us and working off
his leather gloves, a smile on his face, that face just as dirty as the
man with no teeth.  He had on gray coveralls, Burt stitched in green
thread just below the words Bundy Mufflers above his chest pocket, and
though I felt like running to him, hugging him, the energy wasn't in
me.

We all just stood next to our own door, and smiled back at him as he
came to us.

He went to me first, and I held him, pulled him close and patted his
back, rocked a little with him in my arms.

"Momma, " he said, and pulled back, looked at me.  He was sweating even
more than us, of course, and wiped the back of his hand at his chin.

"You made it, " he said, "you made it."

"We made it, " I said, and looked into his eyes for some clue as to how
his life had been this last year.  I said, "I told you this wasn't
going to be any dream."

He looked puzzled a moment, a moment long enough for me to feel exactly
how tired I really was from the trip, from the heat, from the noise and
light.  Cars still honked, still slowed down and sped up, and suddenly
I could feel the weight of it all on me, on my legs and arms and eyes,
all of me just standing out here in the soft tar of the Bundy Mufflers
parking lot.

Then he realized what I meant, smiled and shook his head at the I
memory, I figured, of our talk after Brenda Kay'd walked off into the
woods.  He said, "Yep, I guess you're right, " and he let go of me,
moved back a little.  "And I'm your foot in the door."

He stood looking at me, at the car, at all of us, no one else having
yet said a word to him, all of us just as tired as me, and what I saw,
buried beneath the grime and sweat and the Bundy Muffflers uniform, was
a man.  He was older by only a year since I'd seen him drive away in
his pickup, but he was a man.  It was in how he stood, how he was
sizing up us all, and it was in his eyes and what I thought I'd seen
there, hard work and hard work, a big sun high up in the sky every day
shining down on him and his hard work in a way it never had in
Mississippi, because this was his own work, his own life.  He was
already burrowed into the real world, already dug in for the long fight
he had the rest of his life to try and win.

Wilman stood with one arm resting on top of his open door, the other at
his hip.  He said, "Drove us in here myself."

"Indeed I am impressed, little brother, " he said, and put out a
hand.

They shook hands like men do, no hint anywheres that it might mean
something, though when Burton let go and came around the back of the
car to where Annie stood, bent down and kissed her on the cheek, I
could see Wilman grinning a boy's grin, proud at himself and at his big
brother both, the two of them, I could already see in his smile, in
cahoots here in sunny California.

Annie said, "Billie Jean's married, got married the night before we
left."

Burton straightened up, put a hand to his neck.  He looked from her to
me, said, "No."

"Yep, " Annie said, and I nodded.  She said, "To Gower Cross of
Jackson.

You should have seen them when they came in.  She was all " "Gower
Cross?  " Burton said, and looked to Wilman, to Annie.  Then he looked
to Leston, who was leaning against the car, his arms crossed.  He said,
"Gower Cross, Daddy?  " Leston nodded, pushed himself off.  "Why?  " "I
know him, " Burton said.  He rubbed at his neck, looked at the car.

"Know of him.  Used to sell pallets over to the ice cream plant."  He
shrugged, looked up at me again, then to his daddy.  "Don't matter
though, " he said, and now he held his hand out to his daddy, smiled.

"What matters is y'all made it."

Leston took his hand, shook it, let it go.  He turned to the car,
slapped the roof.  "Brand-new, " he said.  "Sixteen hundred dollars
cash money."

Burton whistled, touched the top of the trunk with a hand, the took it
away.  "Don't want to dirty it up, " he said.  "We hosed her off in
Indio, " Wilman said.

"Hilburn!  " someone shouted from inside one of the bays, a huge and
deep voice that made Burton's eyes dart toward the building.

He started moving away from us.  He was putting on the gloves, walking
backwards and toward the bay he'd come from.  "I get off in an hour or
so, " he said.  "Y'all just do what you want until then."  He got on
the gloves, started to wave, then stopped.  He said, "Where's Brenda
Kay?  " "Asleep, " I hollered, and I moved aside from my open door,
pointed in to where she lay.

He smiled, shook his head.  "Asleep, " he said.  "Asleep upon her
arrival to California."  He laughed, then turned, ran back toward the
bay just as "Hilburn!  " thundered out again.

I turned, saw the rest of my family was still looking to where he'd
disappeared.  Then Leston leaned against the car again.  He brought out
the pouch, rolled another cigarette, lit it up.

He said, "Burt."  He'd said it to no one, just himself, but we all
heard it, and we looked at him.

Finally, Wilman said, "Daddy, what do you want to do?  " I looked from
him to Leston, watched him shoot out smoke.

He was quiet a while, long enough for Annie to look at me, plead with
her eyes for us to get out of here and back on those streets and back
to driving around Los Angeles, California.

He said, "Why don't we just wait here until Burt gets off."  He
paused.

"Looks like they got a soda pop machine inside this office here, " he
said, and nodded toward the glass door.  "Think I see one inside."

Then that door opened, and a man leaned out.  He was short and balding
but had thick, hairy arms.  He had on a white short-sleeve shirt and
thin black tie, black pants.

"Can I help you with something?  " he said.

"Nope, " Leston said.  He crossed his arms, left the cigarette in his
mouth.  "Just waiting on Burt to get off work."

"Oh, " the man said.  He paused a moment there in the door, then gave a
half-smile.  "Burt?  " he said.

"One of your mechanics, " Leston said, and gave a nod back toward the
bays.

"Oh, " the man said again, still with that smile.  He let go the door,
disappeared inside.

We were quiet, the four of us.  We stood there at our doors for a
while, and then Wilman said again, "Daddy?  " Finally Leston said, "How
about those soda pops while we wait for Burt?  " and turned to me,
looked at me across the roof of the car, across the glare of the sun on
cream-colored paint, and I could see his face shivering in the heat
waves up off the metal.

We'd made it into the new world, made it here on my own sheer
resolve.

I'd been handed the dream, my dream of California.

But something in my husband, in his shivering face across from me and
how he looked at me just then eyes squinted at the light, lips tight
around the cigarette made me remember being handed by God the answers
to my prayers for my own daddy, that he never come back.

Now we'd arrived, myself the one to have answered my own prayers, me
the agent to get us here, and for an instant as I took in that
shivering face, took in this heat, and the cars all around us, and this
yellow sky, I wondered what sort of curse and blessing I'd given myself
with this newly answered prayer.  Wondered, too, if God had abandoned
me now I was in a new world, or if at some point He might bring me back
into His fold, forgive me for whatever was about to happen.

I looked at Leston, looked at him for a moment that seemed longer than
the entire trip out here.  I looked at him, and felt a drop of sweat
roll down my temple and cheek, felt it hold on at my jaw.  I touched
it, rubbed it away.

I said, "Let me see if I got some change in my purse, " and I turned,
sat down in the car next to Brenda Kay, still asleep.  I touched her
forehead, felt her cheek.  Then I got my purse from the floorboard,
started digging for any change I could find in there.  , CHAPTER 23.

IT'S NOT THAT YOU DON'T HAVE THE MONEY FOR THE DOWN PAYMENT, the man
behind the desk said, him there in his brown pinstripe suit and vest,
clothes that made it ever so easy for him to say that to us.

Leston and I sat in two hard-backed chairs, me on the edge of mine.

Leston, in his white shirt and navy blue tie the only one he owned sat
leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, in his hands that hat, always
that hat.  His eyes were on the man telling us our money was no good.

"Not even with that new Plymouth out there as collateral, " Leston
said.

"I'm afraid not, " the banker said, his face straight, mouth all a thin
line.

"So what do you propose?  " Leston near whispered.  "You propose we
just sit in a motel for the rest of our lives, until such time as we
have years of gainful employment behind us?  " "Leston, " I said, and
did my wife's best to smile at the banker, apologize with my eyes, at
the same time reaching to touch Leston's back.

His eyes fell from the man to the hat, and suddenly what went through
my head was the whole idea of Leston's life falling in on itself again,
of those nights when he'd stared too long out the kitchen window.

Already, there in the motel, we were in separate rooms, Brenda Kay and
me huddled on the one single bed, Annie on the other, Leston and Wilman
with their own beds apiece.  We weren't together, and I wasn't there to
hold onto him through the nights, give to him whatever magic holding
him gave, let him live his days with his chin a little higher, him
standing a little taller.

The problem was that I only bussed tables.  Two weeks after we moved
into the motel on Pico, I'd gotten a job working at Hughes Cafeteria
over to the airport, bussing tables four hours a day, my days of being
a server at Bailey Grammar finally bearing fruit, I sometimes laughed
to Leston, though there'd been no reaction to that, only his stone
silence.  I Leston hadn't even found anything yet, though it was the
truth to say he hadn't yet started to look.  He just drove around each
day, I knew, smoking cigarettes, taking Annie and Brenda Kay Wilman
over to Bundy with his brother up and down the boulevards, just looking
at Los Angeles, and the sheer size of the place and the number of
people and all those cars pushing him into a corner, even if he was in
the process of making that corner himself.  And now here was the
corner, the bank, of course, not only wanted the two of us working, but
wanted us to have had those jobs for at least a year.

We wanted to put a down payment on a house with the money we'd brought
with us, it dying away each week we were parked there in the motel, us
renting two rooms, one for Leston and Wilman, the other for we girls.

In each room were two single beds, a hot plate on a nightstand between
them, on the walls paintings of big green ocean waves breaking on black
rocks, which was nothing of the beaches we'd seen so far, there was
only sand here, sand too hot to walk on, sand and sand and sand on out
to the blue-green sea almost invisible from the road.  After a month of
living in the motel, the car parked out front, school about to start
for both Wilman and Annie, we'd finally decided to commit to buying a
house.

The house we wanted was in an area of the town of Venice called Mar
Vista, though calling anything out here a town seemed ridiculous.  It
was all of it just one big city.  The house was a block off Bollona
Creek, and we'd heard stories from the real estate agent who'd shown us
the place, a man not twenty-five years old and already losing his hair,
dressed in a sharp black suit and driving a Plymouth even newer than
our own.  He told us of the great days of Venice in America, and how a
Mr. Kinney'd designed the whole thing to be a place where people'd
feel like they were in Italy and just naturally soak up the culture
such an atmosphere'd give off.  But the water we'd seen wasn't much
more than a dumping ground for the oil wells around.

The house itself was a three-room thing set on a parcel of ground so
little I heard food cooking in the kitchen next door when I stood in
the bathroom, the tiny window above the tub open.  It had stucco walls
outside and in, a front yard no bigger than our front porch back in
Mississippi, chain link fence round the back yard.  One thing was for
certain, we wouldn't have to worry about Brenda Kay wandering off into
any woods anymore.  And though what the agent was asking for the place
seemed a huge amount, he'd shown us how, if we got the right loan, we
could afford the $12, 000 he wanted.

I glanced away from the banker, who eased himself back in his
overstuffed chair.  Outside in the lobby people were bustling back and
forth, people with money to deposit in a bank, people who owned houses
and held jobs that didn't depend on the courtesy of customers eating in
a cafeteria to give you tips.  I looked to Leston's hands, and saw the
black grease beneath his nails, there no matter how hard he worked to
get it out, there every day I'd ever known him, there when he was
working the lumber mill the first day I met him after church, there
when he was out blasting up the woods for the Government there when he
was scratching at those same woods and selling lightered knots to
niggers.

This was his life, I thought in that- moment, grease beneath his nails,
always there, never leaving.

The banker said, "You could rent a house, at least until you've both
been working solid jobs long enough.  There is certainly a great deal
of economic growth going on right now in the Los Angeles area thereby
making solid jobs relatively easy to find."  He paused, glanced at
Leston to see, I figured, if he'd get any response out of him for that
remark.

But Leston didn't move, only looked at the hat, and the man went on.

"Or you could just sit on this down payment for a year or so, and
resubmit an application for a mortgage."  He tilted his head to one
side, reached with one hand to the desktop, straightened the thin pile
of papers there.  "Or you might go the easy route, deed this house you
want with a second party, have someone cosign this loan for you."  He
put a fist to his mouth, cleared his throat.  He looked up from the
papers, smiled, his eyes giving away nothing.  He said, "Do you know
anyone who might do that for you?  Someone, of course, who has been
working a job for a while."

Leston gave a quick laugh, shook his head.  He, too, was smiling, in
his smile the same nothing as the banker's.  This was all mere
pleasantry here, business hiding, I saw, in how we were all of us
supposed to act as human beings, courteous, smiling, as though owning a
home were not at stake at all, maybe all of this only over buying a
steer, a used sewing machine.

Leston said, "I sure do know that someone, " and he stood, his eyes
right on the banker, who was suddenly standing, too, Leston trying his
best to hold onto things, surprise us by standing, putting out his hand
to the banker.

The banker put out his hand, said, "Well, then, good.  Good."  He let
go Leston's hand, placed his fingers on the desktop.  He said, "That's
good."

Leston nodded, turned.  "We'll be back here.  You just hold on to them
papers."  He hadn't looked at me yet, was already pulling open the
glass door, was heading out into the lobby.

I quick turned to the banker, nodded at him, my purse tight in my
hands.

I smiled, and he nodded back.  I pulled the door to behind I me, had to
walk quick as I could to catch up with Leston, already pulling open the
green glass front door.

When I made it to him he stood facing the street, hands in his
pockets.

We were on Main Street, cars flying past, midday traffic here in
downtown Los Angeles, people moving past us as we stood there on the
sidewalk.  To the right, poking out above the buildings and above these
cars and above these people passing, was City Hall, that monstrous
white building too white, too tall, looking down on us and everyone
else.

Leston looked one way up the street, then the other, as if he were
waiting for some sign to give him direction.

I stood next to him, looked up at him.  Still he wouldn't look at me,
only squinted up the street, then down.  The air was hot, dry, the sun
too bright, I'd heard on the radio coming over here something called
the Santa Ana Winds were picking up, hot wind off the desert that, the
announcer'd said, always meant brushfires in the hills.

I said, "Who do you know?  " He looked down at me, finally.  His body
was still turned to the street, so that he was almost looking over his
shoulder at me.  For a moment or two the brim of his hat blocked out
the sun.

He said, "You don't know?  " "No, " I said.

"Well, " he said, and shook his head.  His face took on a dead smile.

He turned, looked up the street again, and the sun fell into my eyes,
burned into me for an instant before I closed them, turned from him.

He said, "Why, it's the famous Burt of Bundy Mufflers we'll get to deed
the house with us."  He paused, and I looked at him again, a hand up to
block that sun.

He was looking at the ground now.  He gave a small, dead laugh, as dead
as the smile he'd given a moment ago.  He took in a deep breath,
straightened his shoulders, looked to the street again.

"We'll get our son to deed the house with us.  He's been here long
enough."  He paused.  "Burton Hilburn, " he said.  "Our son'll have to
cosign for us so's we can own a house."

He stopped, shook his head, and I could see that same smile still on
him.  "Burt, " he said, just that one word, but I could hear on it,
even above all this commotion and noise out here on the street, the
certain dead sound of that old word he'd uttered on the canoe back on
Ashe Lake, the word he'd said just before he'd flicked away a brand-new
cigarette, California.

I swallowed, looked down at the sidewalk.  I blinked a couple times, in
my eyes still burnt-out purple circles of the sun.  But then they
slowly started to disappear, and I saw there on the sidewalk our
shadows, short, thick midday shadows of the two of us standing here on
Main Street.

Leston's shadow turned from mine, disappeared so that it was only my
shadow on the sidewalk now, and I turned, saw him moving down the
sidewalk toward the huge parking lot next to the bank, his hat on tight
in this wind, hands in his pockets.

CHAPTER 24.

BUT THE WORLD DIDN'T CRACK AROUND US BECAUSE OF THAT DEED, OUR son only
walked through the tinted glass doors of a bank with us, sat down with
his daddy and momma in front of the loan officer and anyone who wanted
to take a look through that office's glass walls at a young man with a
bright blue suit on, lapels wide as his shoulders, a tie round his neck
painted with a picture of a palm tree and a sunset too gloriously
bright for the real thing.  That was all, really, that happened, Burton
Hilburn got dressed up, took a morning off from the muffler shop, and
we picked him up from the apartment he shared with three other boys two
blocks from work.  Annie stayed home from school they were in their
second week already to take care of Brenda Kay while we were gone, and
we three went to the bank, where Burton signed his own good name
over.

No, the world didn't stop because of that humiliation I knew Leston was
savoring up, letting fester in him, and no matter how close Leston was
to the brink of whatever abyss he seemed to totter on, I wouldn't let
him fall in.  I had a hard hold of him those first days we were here,
sometimes felt like I had him by an ear and were leading him around
that way, once we'd signed on to the house, once we'd shaken hands all
around with the banker, once we were out of that ugly glass and brick
building and out on the street and in the Plymouth headed to Mar Vista
and the house we were about to own, I said from the back seat, "Leston,
let's stop over to the furniture place back by the motel.  That place,
remember?  " "Pico Furniture, " Burton said, and glanced back at me
from where he sat in the passenger seat, him still smiling, face all
light, fresh from the victory I knew it was for him at the bank.  He'd
grinned and grinned when he'd held that pen in his hand, grinned and
signed and grinned more.

"That where you're talking about, Momma?  " "Yes, " I said.  I leaned
forward, touched Leston's shoulder.  "You know where I mean?  " I
said.

"You want to buy furniture already, and we haven't yet bought the
house."  He wouldn't look back at me, wouldn't even glance at me in the
rearview mirror, only held tight to the steering wheel.  .

But I was bound and determined right then to touch what he'd started to
let sour in him, wanted to let him know that now we were here, now we
were going to own a house in California, now that his children were in
schools out here and his second oldest son in fact co-owned our house,
there was nothing he could do to drag us down with him.  I wasn't going
to sit in an empty bed for years waiting for him to come up from the
kitchen anymore.

I leaned back in the seat, looked out my window, and gave up a smile,
one that built in me some small beginning of relief, because our
family, no matter how broken it seemed now, no matter how scattershot
and tentative and cracker Mississippi we seemed, was coming to order.

I could see it taking shape now, saw it in the palm trees out there
that lined the street on this particular stretch of Washington
Boulevard and how tall they stood, how smooth the line they made from
the sidewalk to the tops of the fronds up there.  I could see the way
our life was taking shape, too, in how Burton sat up next to his daddy,
a boy who'd had enough resolve in him to make his way out here, set up
his life, sign that paper as a result of it.

Our family was taking shape before my eyes, taking on order, though
that order would never fall full into line, not until I'd finished the
last thing I had to do, the one thing that scared everything in me near
to pieces when I thought on it.  But once the papers would be signed on
the house, once we'd buy furniture and have it delivered, once I'd be
cooking on a stove in a kitchen in a stucco house I'd fry up thick
steaks, I decided at that moment, steaks with home fries and corn on
the cob for our first dinner in our new house there would be only that
last lone task before all would be straight.

I'd take Brenda Kay to the Exceptional Children's Foundation, a place
on Adams Avenue, off Western.

So far, those two street names meant nothing to me.  I'd been too
scared to look at a map, too scared even to ask Leston or Burton,
because what I'd found and I'd told no one yet, hadn't told Wilman or
Burton or Annie, and there'd be no way I would tell Leston this was
that the National Association for Retarded Children, those people I'd
dreamed on saving our lives for the past three years, was only an
office in a building somewhere in downtown Los Angeles, and that there
wasn't much they could do for me, other than point me to this other
organization, the Exceptional Children's Foundation.

I'd called them from a pay phone at a gas station near the motel one
afternoon the second week we were there, Leston gone job hunting,
Wilman over to Bundy Mufflers, where he sat sipping on a Nehi Orange
most afternoons and watched his brother work.  The boss there didn't
seem to mind, and I couldn't figure any better thing for him to do
while Leston was out with the car.

I left Annie with Brenda Kay in the room, Brenda Kay asleep on the far
bed.  Annie'd sighed and pouted and carried on about having to babysit
like every time I had an errand to run or work to go to, but then I
stood at the motel room door, and pulled from my purse the brochures
I'd carried with me these years, the ones on the National Association
for Retarded Children and all they could do for us.

"This is why we're here, " I whispered hard to her, and held them up,
the paper limp and tired in my hand.  "These are the people who're
going to help us, help your sister.  And you will watch over her, and
you will do as I say."

Annie crossed her arms, still held the pout.  She turned, went to the
bed, fell back on it.  She had on jeans and Wilman's white dress shirt,
the sleeves rolled up, her red hair spilled back behind her on the
motel's ugly yellow bedspread.

"Yes ma'am, " she said to the ceiling, and I tried and tried to see in
her the little girl who'd given up her nye-nye so many long years ago
to that sleeping sister in the next bed, but could not.

I left her, pulled the door shut behind me.  I still held the brochures
in my hand, crossed the motel parking lot to the Shell station right
there on the corner, and went to the phone booth.

I closed the glass door.  It was hot inside, afternoon sun in through
the glass, and I thought I smelled somebody's vomit.  I looked down at
my feet, pulled back the hem of my dress to see if I was standing in
it.  I couldn't see it anywheres, but I knew that's what it was.

Somebody'd thrown up in here.

But I still kept the door closed.  This was the phone call, the only
one that'd matter for the rest of our lives.  I didn't want the street
sounds out there cutting in on this moment, didn't want car horns and
brakes screaming out to destroy this.

I put in my nickel, dialed the operator, asked for information.  I told
the woman at the other end the address for the National Association for
Retarded Children, felt my eyes going hot as she gave me the number.

Then I called.

"N-A-R-C, " a woman answered, and I'd been only silent, not certain
what I needed to say, though I'd rehearsed it in my head enough times,
Hello, I have a daughter who's .. .

"Hello?  " the woman said again, and I finally managed to open my
mouth, said, "Hello?  " "Yes?  " she said.  "Can I help you?  " "I hope
so, " I'd said, and then, half-crying, half-laughing, I'd sputtered out
all it was I had to say, about how we'd moved here.  for them, how we'd
planned to get Brenda Kay there as soon as we could, how I'd read in
the Reader's Digest all about these medications and about "But Miss, "
the woman cut in, and suddenly I heard how long I'd been running, how
many words I'd let spill.  "I'm sorry, " I said.  "I'm so sorry I just
" "The service we provide, " she started in, me still with more words
lined up in me, three years' worth of words ready to go, "is as an
umbrella group of sorts.  We publish a newsletter bimonthly, work to
keep abreast of new research in the field of mental retardation, and
otherwise refer specific cases to specific groups.  We're not equipped
here to " I couldn't hear her words then, for a moment the notion in me
that the telephone connection'd gone bad, or that maybe I'd called the
wrong place altogether.  But just as quick it came to me, this was the
rush of blood through me, the sound three years of hope made leaving
me, Research.  Umbrella Group.  Not Equipped.

"Hello?  " the woman was saying, and I opened my eyes, though I hadn't
known they were closed.

I looked around, saw the cars on Pico, saw the Shell station with its
rows of bright cans of oil in the window, stacked so perfect it seemed
they might be the only thing in the world that meant anything, a
perfect row of cans, labels all facing out and straight.

"Hello?  " the woman said again.

"I'm here, " I said into the receiver, though I'd figured she'd see
through my words, see that, in fact, I was not here, was nowhere.

"I suggest you visit the people out at the Exceptional Children's
Foundation, located at two-one-five-one Adams Boulevard, just before
you hit Western, " the woman went on.  "Mr. Nathan White is his name,
" she said, "and after some preliminary testing, they might very well
enroll your child there."

I swallowed hard, closed my eyes again.  I tried hard to concentrate on
her words, on what she'd offered up to me, and only then did I take in
her word, Enroll.

I said, "Enroll?  " "Yes, " she said.

I said, "Mr.  White?  "

"Nathan White, " she said.

So I let myself smile as we drove away from the bank and all the papers
we'd had to sign, though my smile was just a small one.  I said to my
husband, "You know where I'm talking about.  Pico Furniture."

I turned a moment from the window to see what his reaction might be,
and caught him looking at me in the rearview mirror.  His eyes jumped
away as soon as he saw me looking.

I picked out two single beds for the girls' room, a fold-out sofa bed
Wilman'd sleep on in the living room, a double bed for our bedroom,
picked out, too, a big overstuffed chair for the living room, a dinette
set for the kitchen.

And then, once we were up and ordering our furniture, putting money
down on it, money perfectly fine with these people, perfectly
acceptable, the man at the counter tilted his head one way, looked at
Leston, and said, "You wouldn't be new to Los Angeles, would you?  "
Burton'd been leaning back in an easy chair a few feet away, and I
heard him say, "They've been here only a little more than a month so
far."

Leston, next to me, had his wallet out, in his hand the dollars that
would fill our house.  He blinked, his head bowed to the wallet.

Then Burton was next to him, put his arm round his daddy's shoulder.

The man at the counter said to Leston, "Would you be in need of a
job?

" He stopped, folded the wallet, held it in his hands.  Slowly he
raised his head, looked the man square on.  Burton'd let his arm drop,
had lost the smile he'd had, too.  We both knew what was going on here,
Burton and me, and he gave a glance over at me.  He took a small step
away from his daddy, who was putting the wallet back into his pants
pocket.

This was a moment could go either way, I knew.  Either Leston'd want to
leave California because of this moment, this humiliation unfolding
with no help from us at all, or we would stay in California because of
this job unfolding with no help from us at all.  This moment.

And in that moment I thought of those streets, Western and Adams,
thought of that row of oil cans, and of my son Burton and his tie and
jacket, and found in all those pictures in my head that it was me, too,
making a decision right here, right now.  I decided that, no matter how
much more humiliation my husband would feel, if he turned down this
job, I'd step in front of him, and tell that man behind the counter
Yes, indeed, he would take the job.  I'd make a fool out of my husband
and me both, I was bussing tables, making my piddly money each day
while he drove our new car back and forth through Los Angeles.  He'd
take this job, whether he wanted it or not.

Leston looked at him, took in a breath.  He said, "Depends, " and I
felt my hands clutching tight my purse, felt my heart go faster.

"Driving is what we need.  A driver, man who can handle big trucks.

Some lifting, too.  But it's a driver we need."  The man crossed his
arms, and smiled at Leston.  "There's just too much happening here
these days, too much the boom.  We need people."

"I know trucks, " he said, and smiled, still without looking at me or
his son.

I took a deep breath, felt how hot my neck and face had gone thankful I
didn't need to do what I'd resolved.  Thankful, too, for whatever slow
coming around my husband seemed to make here in the showroom of Pico
Furniture.

CHAPTER 25.

FRANK WAS THE NAME ON HIS KHAKI SHIRT, HIM LOCKING THE DOOR OF our
house in California behind him, then turning to Brenda Kay and me.  I'd
dressed Brenda Kay up in one of the outfits I'd bought back in Purvis,
and we'd gone out to the Plymouth parked there in the short driveway
the tail end of the car actually hung out over the sidewalk, the drive
was so short and waited for Leston to come out.

It'd taken me this long almost two months to get up the nerve to
finally take this step, to finally find in me the stone piece of
resolve I'd thought was so full in me all these years of persuading my
husband we needed to move here.

But for two months I'd found things to do, things to do, settling us
all in until there was no more settling to do, no more reason or time
to put off what it was we'd moved here to do.  Now here was the time,
the day.

Leston was going to drive us to Pico Furniture, then I was going to
take the Plymouth to Adams and Western and the Exceptional Children's
Foundation, a place I'd never been to, a place I'd never called, too
afraid of what they might say.

And there he was in his Pico Furniture uniform, somebody else's name
stitched in red thread above the front shirt pocket.  But it was a
clean shirt, pressed last night with the new iron I'd bought over to
the Sears Roebuck the week before, along with the ironing board and the
pots and pans and glasses and dishes and all else went into creating a
new life in a new world.  We'd started with the $6, 700, then'd bought
the car for $1, 600, given $100 to Gower and Billie Jean, spent $120 on
the trip out, paid $1, 200 down on the house, spent $230 on food and
the motel for that month and on gas and what have you while we were
trying to buy the house, then'd handed over another $1, 000 for the
furniture and everything that went into filling up an empty house, then
around $600 for a refrigerator and stove and washer and dryer, the
washer and dryer hooked up on the porch out back, Wilman and Leston
building a two-by-four and plywood roof to cover them both.

That'd left us with a little under $2, 000 to begin, but each week saw
bits of that money flaking away, what with food for us all and books
for Wilman and Annie, more clothes for Annie, who, it'd turned out,
decided she'd bought all the wrong things back in Purvis, where that
Myrtle Bancroft in the dress shop, in Annie's words, "wouldn't know
fashion if it ran over her on Sunset Boulevard."  And that word enroll
kept coming back to me, its weight and value solid and good in my
heart, but the idea of the cost that word carried right along with it
something I hadn't counted on.

A million things were going on then, our children's lives swirling up
and into movement, the first piece of mail we got at the new house had
been a letter from Billie Jean telling of how she'd already settled
herself into married life in Purvis, though Gower was on the road most
days of the week.  They were planning on having kids right away, which
made my heart fall and rise at the same time, who knew if they were
ready, but, once those kids were there, wouldn't that make them
ready?

We'd talked on the telephone to James and Eudine, got word Eudine was
farther along than they'd expected, that the next baby was due any day
rather than two weeks from now, like the doctor'd first said.  Burton
was dating five or six girls at once, had managed even to hook up with
one Julie Hesmer, daughter of the owner of Bundy Mufflers.

Wilman'd walked on to the field for football practice at Venice High
School the first day of school, and'd ended up being a starter at
fullback, Annie'd already ingratiated herself with a clutch of giggling
girls at the junior high, though I hadn't met any of them yet, only'd
answered the phone an endless number of times to have some little
chatty girl at the other end say, "Umm, is Annie they-err?  " and then
laugh, doing the best to imitate the drawl Annie'd brought with her
and, it seemed, was maybe even more pronounced now we were here.  Maybe
that was how she'd got in good with whoever these girls were, her
posing as a Southern Belle at school.  Who knew?

And there'd been the beach as often as possible for Burton and Wilman,
and a section of Venice Beach up almost to Ocean Park everybody called
Muscle Beach, where one Saturday Brenda Kay and Leston and I'd gone
down to see exactly what all the fuss was, why Burton and Wilman
insisted on spending every free minute they had there.

We parked right smack at the end of Venice Boulevard, lucky enough, I
figured, to get a spot in one of the slots in front of the row of shops
there, the sand starting only a block of storefronts down.  The
sidewalk was jammed with young people and older folks and all in
between, all of them hurrying to whatever it was one did at a beach.

We walked past a Woolworth's, next a little shop that sold only bathing
suits, mannequins in the window wearing next to nothing, two-piece
suits that showed your midriff out there for anybody to take a look at,
and I wondered how soon it'd be before Annie was asking for one of
those.  Next to that was a fish and tackle shop, and a lawyer's office
and then a store that sold liquor right off the shelves, right here at
the beach.  California, I thought, California and California and
California.  Two-piece swimsuits and liquor and lawyers.

Then the shops ended, and we came to a strip of concrete like a narrow
road that ran parallel to the ocean, still what looked a good quarter
mile away across the sand.  A short brick wall stood across the strip,
separating the sand and the street, these houses behind us, the shops
and cars and all of Venice and Los Angeles and the rest of the world.

This was where land stopped, where the beach started.

I looked to the left, wondered when we might find this Muscle Beach
Wilman'd given us the loosest directions to, "Just on down to the end
of Venice, Momma, " he'd said that morning, pushing the front screen
door open with one hand, his towel in the other.  Burton honked his
horn again, him out there in the ten- or twelve-year-old green pickup
he'd bought for fifty dollars from somebody at the shop.  "You'll see
us, " he'd said, and left.  He hadn't even had any breakfast.

I looked down the beach to the right, squinted, saw what looked like
steel pipes set up like a swing set way down there, people all standing
around, all of them Wilman's age, it looked like, girls with those
two-piece suits on, boys in black swimming trunks.  Beyond them I could
see a pier out into the ocean, on it a roller coaster and buildings and
flags and the like, Ocean Park, the place Wilman and Burton went, I'd
heard enough times from Annie, every time they left at night.

"Down there, " I'd said, and swallowed, closed my eyes a moment at the
idea of walking through all these people with Brenda Kay in tow.  It
wasn't shame, I knew, that made me feel this way, it was the looks we
all got, the looks we'd gotten all our lives, and how people didn't
even know how to look at us.  I held Brenda Kay's hand tighter in mine,
started off on that thin road, Leston right beside us.

Of course we got the looks from everyone, everything from the shocked,
mouth-drop-open look at Brenda Kay most of the kids gave as we moved
along, to the look that was no look, eyes darting away from Brenda
Kay.

And, too, there were the smilers, people who purposefully met our eyes
and smiled a smile full of pity, eyebrows knotted in the smallest way,
lips never parting.  All looks we'd lived with every time we ever left
the house, and it occurred to me for the first time since we'd been in
California that, in fact, these people weren't so different, weren't so
strange and new.  We'd gotten the same looks in Purvis.  Always.

We came to the knots of people I'd seen, only to find there.  were two
or three wooden platforms set up on this side of the steel bar
structure, platforms covered with canvas, dumbbells and bars and round
heavy weights laid out on them.  Boys and men I hadn't been able to see
from back where we'd started from were standing in the sun and lifting
the bars, holding them up above their heads.  Girls all ages and some
boys, too, stood round and watched, sometimes clapping when the bar had
a bigger number of round weights on them.  They were all tan and
grimacing, tough boys, I thought, waiting for the girls to see them.

On another platform a few feet up the beach was a man and woman.  They
were holding hands, and then the man picked up the girl, and the girl
arched her body up there in the air while the man lifted her above his
head, him grimacing and tan, too, the girl with a smile that looked
painted on, pretend.  She had on one of those two-piece bathing suits,
her midriff all tan, tan as her legs and arms and face.  He held her up
in the air a few seconds, and then he gave her a toss straight up, and
she twisted, turned, and fell back into his waiting arms, her own arm
out into the air all poised and graceful, her still with that smile.

Then he lifted her again, and this time she put her hands on his
shoulders, and pushed herself off his stomach, swung herself up somehow
until she was doing a handstand on his shoulders, and the grimacing tan
man put his hands on his hips, stared out into the crowd.  Every one
clapped at this, too.

California, I thought.

The bars I'd seen were at the far end of all this goings on, and we
stopped ourselves at the edge of the sand, the pipes about twenty yards
out.

There, each swinging from two metal rings they held tight in their
hands, rings that hung on chains attached to the steel crossbar,
swinging like monkeys there up above us all, only a handful of boys and
girls standing and watching them, were Wilman and Burton, my sons'
muscles taut across their chests and stomachs, their skin already a
deep and shining tan, so that at first I didn't recognize them as we
came up, and I thought for a moment these were just two strangers
putting on a show like everybody else.  They just weren't drawing the
crowds.

Burton pulled himself up until his hands in those rings were at his
hips, and he held himself there, Wilman next to him, just hanging.

They both had on black swim trunks, their chests just sprinkled with
the beginnings of dark hair.  Burton's face jittered with the strain of
holding himself above the sand, his eyes closed.  Wilman was smiling,
arms above him as he hung there, in his face some strain, but nothing
like in his brother's.

Someone in the crowd hollered out, "You do it, Bill!  Don't be a
weenie!

" and everybody laughed, started up chanting Wee-nee, wee-nee!  , ,
Wilman smiled even more, started laughing himself, and it was only then
I figured it out, this was his new name, just as Burton'd been cut down
to Burt.  Bill, I thought.  Bill.

I turned to Leston, Brenda Kay between the two of us, her just
watching, taking in all that lay before us, the sand, beyond it the
green smudge of sea, her brothers here and hanging on the rings.

But it was Leston I wanted to see, his reaction I wanted.

I'd thought he'd turn, want us to leave at this newest attack on him
and who he was, yet another of his children rechristened in the land of
plenty.

He was only watching them, in his eyes almost the same blank look as
Brenda Kay.  Then he glanced at me, and smiled.

"Them boys, " he said, and shook his head.  He had a cigarette at his
lips, took it out, let go the smoke, the wind out here making it
disappear as soon as he gave it up.  "Burt and Bill, " he said, and he
nodded at them.  "Already charming the girls."

I only looked at him, the surprise of his words like cool water, or
like the warm breeze that blew in off the ocean at us right then, right
there, a breeze sharp with the salt of it, strange and wonderful.

Welcome.

I turned, saw Wilman Bill was pulling himself up, the cries of Wee-nee,
wee-nee!  rising round him, the words, it seemed, lifting him up,
making him move.  Then his hands, too, were even with his hips, his
face as shaking as Burton's had.  He was up, and most everybody their
friends, I saw, their friends gave out a big groan.  Some girls clapped
and hollered out for him, and Wilman just smiled and smiled, at the
same time his face filled with the hurt of holding himself there.

Burton "Burt, " I whispered to myself still held his hands tight on
those rings, pressing down to hold himself up.

"Let's go, " Leston said, and I felt his hand at my elbow, turned and
saw him with Brenda Kay holding his other hand, the two of them already
headed for where we'd parked.

He smiled, the cigarette at his lips burned down near to nothing.  He
said, "They don't need us here, " and he winked.  "Burt and Bill, " he
said.  He took hold my hand, and we started back.

Now, today, the day I was to finally call to order our lives with
simply showing up to a place on Adams off Western, here came my
husband, the front door to our home in California closed behind him,
his furniture store uniform on, somebody else's name on his chest, and
I was filled with dread and fear and joy at once.  This was the day.

He came to the car, opened his door, and I said, "Morning, Frank, " to
which he'd only stared at me a moment.  I reached over, touched a
finger to the name on his shirt pocket, said, "Don't you know
anything?

In California, Burton turns to Burt, Wilman to Bill, Leston to
Frank."

I smiled again, and hoped he hadn't seen how my finger'd shaken as I'd
pointed.

"Fank?  " Brenda Kay shouted in the back seat, and leaned forward both
hands on top of the seat between us.

"You're nervous, " he said to me.  He smiled, started the engine, put a
hand on the top of the seat, backed us out.  He said to Brenda Kay
"Miss Jewel Hilburn's moved us all the way out here to Los Angeles to
meet with them folks at the Association of Retarded People, and now
she's afraid of why she did it."

"You are just too perceptive, " I said, and felt my hands holding too
tight to my purse once again.  "Just too, Mr. Leston Hilburn."  I
paused.

"And it's the National Association for Retarded Children."  I still
hadn't told him of the Umbrella Group, hadn't told him I was headed
somewhere else this morning, a place I knew nothing of.

He smiled again, fished in his shirt pocket for a cigarette he'd
already rolled, his fingers digging under Frank.  He pulled one out,
put it to his lips.  He looked at me, his eyes all squinted up as if it
were already lit.  He said, "You don't think I know the name of this
outfit?  " We were out on the street now, and he put the car into gear,
but didn't give it any gas.  We sat in the middle of the street a
moment and I said, "Shouldn't we get a move on?  " "Just don't you
worry now, " he said.  "You don't.  About today."

"Remember who you're talking to, " I said, and tried to give him a
smile might convince him just to drive us to Pico Furniture.  I just
wanted to get him out the car, leave me to find out what we'd come here
for.

CHAPTER 26.

I HAD NO PROBLEMS FINDING THE PLACE, JUST AS THE OFFICE GIRL AT N. A.

R.

C. had told me, it was off Western, which I'd taken down from Pico and
just followed light to light to light until I hit Adams, then turned
right.

They were nice homes set back farther on the lots than most houses I'd
seen since we'd moved here, houses with green lawns and flowerbeds and
bushes, honeysuckle and climbing roses and palm trees.  The houses were
older, you could tell by the gingerbread and touches they had, and'd
seen a better time than right now, some were clapboard with a little
chip here and there where the paint was bubbling up, some had that
white stucco, but with the faintest tinge of green to it where moss'd
started in, and some were brick, now and again the mortar loose and
crumbling.

But most all of them were in fine shape, positively better than the
house we lived in.  I wondered as I crawled the car along, looking for
2151, how pleasant it'd be to live here.

Then I spotted it, a gray house with white trim, a big porch out front
almost like what you might find back in one of the finer homes in
Purvis.  The second story had dormers poking out, and in the front yard
stood a magnolia.

A magnolia.

The first space I could find to park was four or five houses down,
where, I saw, I'd have to parallel park this monster of a car, and I
could just imagine what any passerby might think when he saw what was
going on, a woman with Mississippi tags on her car, a retarded girl in
the front seat, the woman trying to maneuver this car too big for her
into that tiny spot.  But it was the only spot I could see for the next
block or so, the street jammed with cars all sparkling and clean and
new.

I pulled up even with the car in front of my spot, then turned in the
seat, put my arm on top of it like I'd seen Leston do a million times
before, and I started backing up.

A little nigger boy stood on the sidewalk back there.  He was looking
at me, and waved a hand at me, motioned me to back up.

I smiled at him through the rear window, started back as he waved and
waved.  Then he put up his hand to stop me, made a whirling move with
his hand, what I took to mean Cut the wheel the other way, which I
did.

We went like this a minute or two, him motioning, me following, until
I'd finally got the car nestled into place, snug between two cars I
climbed out, came round to give him my proper thank you, but he was
already gone, moving up the sidewalk.  Though his back was to me, I
could see for the first time how well he was dressed, navy blue pants
with a sharp crease, a white short-sleeve dress shirt, shiny black
shoes.  Hung from his shoulder was a leather strap cinched round a pile
of books that bounced on his back as he walked away.

I called out, "Thank you!  " He turned, walked backwards a moment.  He
had on a thin, black tie, and he gave the smallest of nods, his chin
jutting up in the air only a moment.  He turned back, headed off.

I didn't know what to think, though he'd been the one to help me, done
me that favor, nigger children in Mississippi never just jutted their
chin when you spoke to them, but always gave answer.  And they didn't
couldn't dress like that, except on Sunday mornings.  But, as with
everything I'd discovered so far, this was a new world, one I had no
way to figure how it worked.

I turned back to the car, opened the door for Brenda Kay.  She stared
out the windshield a moment longer, as though she, too, were watching
the boy.

I said, "Let's come on now, Brenda Kay.  There's people to meet."  I
reached down, touched her hair.  I had it back in pretty red barrettes
today, had her dressed in pink slacks and a pink and white striped
blouse, her shoes all shined up pretty and white.  I reached to her
lap, took her hand.  "Come on now, Brenda Kay, " I said, and then, for
no other reason than that I'd never heard the words from me before, I
said, "There's a new world here and waiting for us."

There'd been no one to hear them, only my daughter.  But they were the
best words I knew I could speak right then, could pass on to my
daughter.  This was why we were here, Brenda Kay, and that gray house
with the white trim and big porch.

I held her hand tight, felt my palms begin to go wet, and I pulled her
up.  Brenda Kay turned in the seat and placed her white shoes out onto
the curb, and stood.

"There, " I said.  "There, " and I looked at her.  She still had no
look in her eyes, her mouth clamped shut for whatever reason.  I said,
"Now give us a smile here, " and reached to her hair again, tucked a
single thin strand of it back behind her ear.  JEW I, L "Let's see a
smile, " someone said from behind me, and I quick turned, startled at
the sound of a different voice out here.

A nigger woman stood there on the sidewalk, in front of her a baby
carriage.  She was looking at Brenda Kay, smiling, and I could feel my
own smile trying to come up on me, trying to make its way onto my
face.

I said, "Good morning, " and thought I'd said it maybe too quick.

She nodded, our eyes meeting and holding a moment.  She was a high
yellow, but it was her hair I saw and took in first, straight, bobbed
under at her shoulders, parted at the top in the middle.  Then I saw
what she had on, a pale lavender dress, pearl buttons up the front, a
lavender belt at her waist, the skirt of the dress all flounced out and
full.  And she had on lavender high heel shoes.

She said, "You of course are with the Foundation, " and, still smiling,
nodded toward Brenda Kay.  "We're happy you folks are here."

But her words weren't meaning much to me just then, I only watched her
lips moving, saw she wore deep red lipstick, saw, too, she had on
rouge, and that her eyebrows'd been penciled in.

"Yes, we are, " I struggled out, the words feeble and useless, I
knew.

"At least we're about to be, that is, " I said.  With the
Foundation."

"Mississippi, " she said, and leaned back a little, nodded to the rear
of the car.  "I saw your plates, " she said, and looked back at me.

"My grandfather was from Mississippi.  Up around Oxford, I think."

"Oh, " I said, then said, "We're from Purvis, down near to Hattiesburg,
" and found my breath was slow and shallow, me here on the street and
talking to a nigger woman I'd never seen before, just passing the time
of day.  And her wearing clothes I'd never imagined I might wear.

Lavender shoes.

"Momma!  " Brenda Kay said, and I felt like her word was some sort of
salvation, her demanding of me my attention, and I'd forced my smile
again.  "We've got to be getting to the Foundation, " I said, however
hollow I sounded.  They were only words.

"Nice to see you, " she said, and nodded.  She pushed the carriage
along again, a carriage shiny and new, the wheels as they turned making
no sound at all, and suddenly I saw a picture of Cathe ral barefoot on
the road out front the old house in Mississippi, one or another of her
boys when they were babies bundled up in an old quilt and tied off on
her back, a papoose there as she walked.

From across the street another woman's voice shouted, "Dorinda, how's
little Leon?  " I looked, saw on the porch of a red brick house another
nigger woman, this one in a bathrobe printed with all kinds of
flowers.

She had her arms crossed against her chest, her hair cut short and
curled.  Her skin was a little darker than the one with the carriage,
and I could see her smiling, her white teeth.

The one pushing the carriage, this Dorinda, called out, "He's doing
just fine.  A little of the croup, but nothing this fresh air won't
help."

"You call me, girl, " the other woman hollered, and I watched as she
went to the edge of the porch, stepped down to the concrete walk that
went up the middle of the lawn, and bent over, picked up the newspaper
Lying there.

"In a while, " Dorinda called out, still pushing the carriage, and the
woman with the robe waved, went back up on the porch, and disappeared
inside.

They lived here.

I took Brenda Kay's hand, my eyes looking everything over, wondering
what could go on in this neighborhood, what caused niggers to live this
way.  There were four houses we had to pass, and I found as we walked
along the sidewalk that the concrete suddenly seemed cracked and
cracked, narrow strips of grass growing up between those cracks to make
it look a little more shabby than when we'd driven up.  And the green
in the stucco of these homes seemed a shade heavier, the loose mortar
even looser, though I knew it was all in my head, all me and my making
up reasons why these niggers couldn't live in such fine houses, when we
ourselves lived in a house with a driveway not big enough to hold our
car.

Each step I took seemed filled with a new and uneasy feeling, as though
the world were breaking up beneath us as we moved.  My life was being
swallowed up more and more each day by this strange place, California,
liquor stores and lawyers, two-piece swimsuits and luxurious
niggertowns, at the center of it all my Brenda Kay and me, struggling
with each step we took just to stand in the middle of this brand-new
place.

Then we came to 2151, and I stopped, looked to left and right.  This
was it, the place where whatever'd start next in our lives was going to
start.

I took Brenda Kay's hand, held it tight, and we started up the walk,
moved up the three steps and onto the porch.  The door was a big oak
affair, stained and beautiful, with a leaded glass window I couldn't
see through.  Next to the door was a brass plaque, not much different
than the one Leston and I'd walked up to and read at Dr. Basket's
office in New Orleans all those years back.  But now we were at 2151

Adams, and this plaque was shiny and looked new, and held out to me a
whole barrel full of promise, not like the somber fear Dr. Basket's
old and tarnished plaque had given me.  This plaque read, The
Exceptional Children's Foundation Nathan White, Director Though there
was a small black button on a switchplate next to the plaque, I didn't
want for whatever reason to push it, didn't want to hear a doorbell
sound through the glass before us.  We were small, I suddenly saw, me
only a cracker from Mississippi showing up here to the door with my
retarded child, my Brenda Kay, and so I reached up a hand to the leaded
glass, hesitated a moment longer just one more moment of this life,
because who knew what would come next?  Who knew, other than God up in
heaven, what would come next?

I knocked.  I looked at Brenda Kay, saw that single strand of hair
fallen back out of place.  How could I have missed it when I'd pulled
back her hair this morning?  I wondered, and I reached up, tucked it
back behind her ear again, her eyes straight ahead, mouth still tight
closed.

My hand still there at Brenda Kay's hair, the front door opened up
wide, and there stood yet another nigger woman, this one young and
beautiful, high cheeks and a fine straight nose.  Her hair was pulled
back tight into a bun, and she had on makeup, too, and was smiling at
us.

I took my hand down from Brenda Kay's ear like I'd been caught
red-handed at something.  I swallowed.  I tried to smile, tried and
tried, and finally tore my eyes from her, glanced aside at that shiny
plaque.  I said, "We'd like to see Mr.  White, if we could."

She stepped back from the door, opened it even wider, and made a
sweeping gesture with her free hand to lead us in.  "Please, " was all
she'd said, and it sounded like a word from a movie the way she said
it, her mouth all in a smile, her eyes smiling, too, really meaning
it.

This from a nigger woman dressed in a white blouse with a high collar
and a black skirt, and though I was glad she wasn't all gussied up in
lavender like the one on the street, already I was wondering if, were I
to end up enrolling Brenda Kay here, she'd be in a class full of
retarded nigger children.

She closed the door behind us, Brenda Kay's hand in mine now, and said,
"Do you have an appointment?  " I turned, faced her, said, "No,
actually.  We do not."  I glanced at the floor, sparkling hardwood,
buffed and polished and gleaming, a shaft of morning light fell in
through a window to my right and lit up the wood, and I could see in
the air dust motes sailing and sailing, just hanging there in the
air.

"Well then, " she said, "we'll see if we can't get you in to see
him."

She paused, and I looked up, saw she was looking at Brenda Kay.

"My name's May, " she said to her, and Brenda Kay looked to me a
moment, just like she always did, then back to the woman.

"This here is Brenda Kay Hilburn, " I said, and reached out, touched my
daughter's arm.  "I'm her momma, " I said, "Mrs.  Jewel Hilburn.

We just moved here not a long time ago, a couple months.  The people
over to the National Association for Retarded Children said we'd do
best to come see y'all."  S "Hey!  " Brenda Kay said, and smiled.  Then
she looked at me, said, "Thedral, Momma!  " and turned back to May.

"No, " I said to her, "not Cathe ral, " and I was surprised at how
she'd remembered her from three years past.  There hadn't been talk of
her even allowed in our house.

I turned to the woman, saw she had a puzzled look behind the smile she
held.  I smiled, said, "She's talking about Cathe ral, a nigger woman
who took care of her when she was little.  Back in Mississippi."

She lost the smile as soon as that word niggenvoman crossed my lips,
and I knew right then it was the wrong word, though I'd never in my
life felt any kind of embarrassment at uttering it.  But I knew it was
the wrong word, here in the foyer of a fine home in Los Angeles in a
nigger neighborhood, a foyer suddenly too much like Missy Cook's old
place in Purvis, a few feet away a staircase ran up to a landing at a
window that looked, I imagined, out onto the back yard, and I thought a
moment on seeing my and my momma's clothes burned in the pecan orchard
back of Missy Cook's house, and on my momma's rocker going up in
flames, too.  To my left was what looked like it'd been a dining room,
big windows looking out on the front yard, chairs spread against the
walls, to my right was a smaller room with a big oak desk, on it stacks
of paper, a blotter, a telephone, a lamp, next to it, on a smaller
table, was a typewriter.

And as I took all this in, I realized what I was really doing, avoiding
the eyes of this woman, May.

"Okay, " May said.  She turned from us, headed into the room with the
desk.  Once behind it she smiled again, pointed to the room behind us,
where the chairs sat.  "You can have a seat, and we'll see what we can
do."

I nodded, smiled, turned to Brenda Kay.  We two moved into the dining
room, where in one corner, next to the window, stood a potted tree,
something I hadn't seen from the foyer.  Brenda Kay walked l .  s right
over to it, took one of its small leaves in her hand, rubbed it between
her fingers.  I sat on the smallest, hardest chair I could find, some
sort of punishment I couldn't figure out why I was giving myself.

From where I sat I had clear view into the parlor across the foyer, and
to May, who was half-turned from us, the telephone to her ear.  She was
talking low into it, and then she stopped, listened a moment, nodded.

She had a pen in her hand, was writing something on a piece of paper on
the desktop.  Then she smiled, her eyes on the piece of paper in her
hand, and said one more word, hung up the phone.

"Mr. White will see you now, " she said, and stood.  "He's only got a
few minutes while the children finish up with morning exercise.  Then
he'll have to be back in the classroom."

I stood, went to Brenda Kay, still at the tree, and took hold her
hand.

Then we were in May's office, her leading us to a door to my left.

She opened the door for us, and our eyes met, the two of us smiling,
and for one last moment I wondered whether this Mr. White himself was
a nigger, the irony of his name right there in my face, Mr. White, and
I wondered if that wasn't what she'd been smiling at all along.

I led Brenda Kay into a room with potted plants all around, in the
windows and against the walls, and there in the center of the room sat
a desk bigger than May's, Mr. Nathan White perched on the corner of
it.

He was white.  Too white, in fact, he was pale and thin, his forehead
high and pasty.  He had the thinnest moustache, too, and wore a white
dress shirt and red tie, tan vest and pants, and I couldn't help but
feel as we walked into the room for the very first time that here was a
white boy, out to impress us with his maturity and poise, what with the
way he sat there on the desk.

"Be seated, " he said, and pointed to two chairs in front of the
desk.

I led Brenda Kay to the chairs, and we did as we were told, sat down,
me on the edge, my back as straight and proper as I could make it,
knees together, hands on my purse in my lap, Brenda Kay leaning forward
in her seat, her hands clasped.  She was already slowly rocking forward
and back, and I said, "This is Brenda Kay Hilburn.  She's eight years
old, nine in October."  I paused.  He looked at her, but wasn't
smiling.

Instead, he had a finger to his chin, started tapping it.

I said, "I'm Jewel Hilburn, " and I smiled even harder, hoping he might
take it up, me not certain what Brenda Kay was up to, her with that
rocking.  She was watching him, waiting.  Just as I was.

"We moved here two months ago from near Purvis, Mississippi."  I
paused.

He smiled, nodded sharply.  "Briefly, " he said, and cut his eyes over
to me, "let me tell you what we're about.  We will test your child, let
you know what level we perceive her learning abilities might reach.  We
test our children each year, determine areas in which they might
excel.

And we teach them.  There are two classes here, one for the younger
children, like your Brenda Kay, a class taught by Mrs. Becky Hamby, in
whom I have all faith, the second class consists of older children,
teenagers.  I teach them.  We are both authoritative and gentle in our
approach.  Firm and careful."  His voice was big for him, as if maybe
he'd taken voice lessons somewhere in his life, and felt it necessary
to use what he'd learned.  It wasn't unpleasant, wasn't intimidating in
any way I could see, Brenda Kay was still rocking just a little, but
now her eyes were gone wandering, looking at the plants in the pots
around the room.

"You go ahead and have a look around, " he said.  "Go on, Brenda Kay.

You can touch them if you want."

Her eyes shot to his when he'd said her name, and now she was looking
at me.

I nodded, and she stood right off, walked around his desk and went to a
plant with pale purple leaves hanging in a basket from the ceiling.

She was in the sunlight now, Mr. White's back to her, and she touched
leaves here and there, just fingered them.

"If I may, " he said, "I would encourage you to enroll her as soon as
possible, Mrs. Hilburn.  That will allow us to begin that lifelong
process of learning as much as she possibly can, as much as her level
of retardation will allow."

"But " I began, and'd meant to ask him the question all these plants,
all this shiny hardwood and oak furniture and the fine rugs on the
floor had screamed for me to ask, how much would enrollment cost?

"In reality, this endeavor might seem hopeless, " he said and now he
was off the edge of the desk, swooping toward me, his eyes on mine as
he came near.  "But hope isn't what we find at stake here.  It's
educability, helping the child find his or her own level of learning,
and proceeding from there.  Finding at what point the child's learning
abilities taper off.  Finding where we can begin working with what they
already know, what they need to know, what, in fact, they can know."

Now he was pacing, his arms still across his chest, that finger still
tapping out his chin.  He hadn't raised his voice at all, hadn't
ranted.

He was only speaking, giving out to me what was going on here at the
Exceptional Children's Foundation.  I felt my neck go hot, my breath so
short with all these words, with his movement and seriousness and
authority.  And I listened.

"We cover such topics as the alphabet, simple addition, money value, et
cetera, as well as storytelling, exercise that's where they are right
now " He pointed behind him, and for a moment I glanced that way, as if
I might see something.  But we were only in a room, his office.

He stopped, stood by the edge of the desk, leaned against it.  "I
suppose you'll want to know who I am, " he said, and he gave a smile,
however rehearsed or insincere it may have been.  Still, I thought, it
was a smile.  "I am a philanthropist, I make no bones about saying
that.

There's no pride in my revealing this fact, no boast.  I come from
upstate New York, studied business management in school.  But I found
that the sort of business I was most interested in involved helping
retarded what I call Exceptional, of course, hence the name of the
Foundation children."  He paused.  "I had a retarded brother.  A
younger brother, and I can remember his being brought home from the
hospital, and my parents staying up and weeping all night long for
weeks."

He said all of this matter-of-fact, even that word weep, a word I
wasn't certain if I'd ever heard spoken before except in the sanctuary
at church, and then it'd been Jesus who wept.  Jesus wept, I thought,
the shortest verse in the Bible.

I glanced over at Brenda Kay, wondered if I could just go ahead and
tell him all about her, about how long in labor I'd been, about Cathe
ral's boys Sepulcher and Temple carrying me downstairs, eyes locked on
each other, and about the drive to New Orleans the first time, and
about the burns on her legs, and how we'd finally moved here.  I
wondered if I could tell him all of that, any of that, but he gave no
room for me to speak.

"They finally placed him in an institution, my younger brother only a
month old.  That was the beginning of the journey, the journey that has
ended here.  You see, " he said, and now he uncrossed his arms and put
his hands on the edge of the desk.  He was still looking at me,
eyebrows knotted up, eyes all concern and care, though, like that
smile, I still couldn't tell how much heart was behind it.  "You see, I
saw my brother grow up, " he said.  "I saw him being raised in an
institution, saw him go from a month-old infant to a child to an
adolescent to a teenager to a young man.  I saw all of it, because we
as a family made it a point to visit him once a month.  It was a fine
institution, fiscally sound and with a caring staff.  And we loved him,
gave him cookies and candy when we came, spoke carefully and lovingly
to him, touched him and hugged him and smiled at him.  Still, it was an
institution in which he lived every day, and over the years I began to
see in my brother's eyes a certain spark, a certain unspeakable
something deep inside him I believe went untapped, and when he died at
age twenty-one, I grieved.  I grieved not for my mother or my father or
my older sister or myself.  I didn't grieve for any of us."

He paused, and he was off the desk now, and sat in the empty chair next
to me, leaned close to me.  I saw he was older than I'd first thought,
saw flecks of gray in that black hair, saw his skin wasn't as soft as
I'd thought before, but was aging, aging like all the rest of us.

"What I grieved for was that spark, that undeniable spark behind his
eyes, in his eyes, that had gone untapped.  I didn't know what that
spark meant, didn't know what it might have meant.  But it was gone."

He finished, and I brought my eyes from his, settled them on my hands
holding my purse, at my old hands here in front of me.  Then I looked
at Brenda Kay.  She stood at the window, had both hands up to the
glass.  She was looking out at something in the side yard of the place,
then turned to me, the sun falling in on her to light up her face.

She pointed a finger to the glass, said, "Momma, look!  Matoes,
Momma!

" She smiled, and I thought I, too, could see a spark of some kind in
her eyes, her green eyes illuminated by the sun so that the color'd
become gemlike, green and light.

"Tomatoes, that's right, Brenda Kay, " Mr. White said, and stood, went
to her at the glass.  "That's another of our projects here.  In
addition to class time and exercise, we also work on our garden out
there.  Cherry tomatoes, for some reason, seems to be the vegetable of
choice for these youngsters."

He put an arm on Brenda Kay's shoulder.  She didn't flinch, didn't even
move, as though already she'd known who this man was and why he was
here.

"That's what we used to grow back at home.  In Mississippi.  Tomatoes,
and all else you can name, " I said, and suddenly I felt stupid.  Words
about vegetables.  I didn't want him to think me the cracker I was,
wanted him to know I, too, was a teacher, had gone to college.

But he only looked at his watch, turned from her and picked up the tan
suit coat from the back of his desk chair, started shrugging it on.

He said, "I know you are thinking at this moment that here is a man who
wears his heart on his sleeve, exhibiting his family's failures and his
retarded brother's plight as well as his own grand designs on the world
for all to see.  But the truth of the matter is that that is how
matters we pretend do not exist change.  Living in closets, hiding away
the exceptional and pretending they do not exist, pretending that God
is in His heaven and that all is right with the world, none of these
antiquated notions serve the exceptional child.  They only bury these
young people, only turn our eyes from finding that spark in every one
of them.  And I am convinced that there is a spark in each child.  That
may be a simplistic view of the world, may even be ridiculous, some
retarded children never learn to wipe their noses, never learn to chew
food.

Perhaps for those the institution is needed.  But not for the children
to whom we address ourselves here at the Foundation."

He paused, the coat on now, and ran a hand down the tie, placed his
hands in his pockets.  He tilted his head to one side, said, "Now, what
do you think?  " I took in a breath, not ready for him to turn this
around to me.  I'd been listening, hearing his words, words that made
sense to me, but words so forward, his handing them all out to me so
abrupt and straight that the only words ready in my head left me just
as quick, "You are a pompous man, " I said.  "But right."

He laughed, laughed out loud and long, leaned his head back and laughed
and laughed, and shook his head.  Brenda Kay turned quick to him, and
then she started to laughing, too, her'huh huh huh!  " filling up
whatever room for laughter was left in here, and I felt myself begin to
smile.

He said, "Thank you, Mrs. Hilburn.  Thank you, " and he came around
the desk, held out his hand for me to shake.  "And I'll expect you and
your daughter here tomorrow morning at eight for her first set of
tests, and for enrollment."

I finally stood, glad to be out of the chair, swearing to myself
already I'd never sit there again, never let him boil over me like
that, though I knew what I'd said was true, he was right.  And I knew,
too, we'd be here tomorrow morning, would arrive out on that street at
seven-thirty just to make sure we weren't late.

I took his hand, a hand that seemed too frail in mine, and we shook.

"Enrollment, " I said, and felt my smile leave.  Now was the time,
"Enrollment, " I said again.  "How much will that cost?  " He stopped
shaking my hand, but still held it.  He said, "What you can afford, you
pay."  He paused.  "Remember?  I am a philanthropist.  Pay only what
you can afford."

He let go my hand, touched his tie again.  He said, "I admire your
candor, and look forward to more of it.  I need the occasional kick in
the pants.  Refreshing, certainly."  He turned from me, started toward
the door.

"Brenda Kay, " I said, "come on, honey, let's go."

I held my hand out to her, the same hand I'd shaken with Mr. Nathan
White, Philanthropist, just held it out to her.

She was facing the window, both hands to the glass again.  For a moment
or two she stared out to where those tomatoes must have been, then
dropped her hands to her side, turned and came around the desk to me.

Then we were standing before the closed door, Mr. White with his hand
at the knob, ready to pull it open.

He smiled at me.  "One last item, " he said.  "The word nigger.  It's
an outmoded word, to say the least."

"Oh, " I said and felt my face blush, "oh, I " "Don't worry, " he
said.

"There's simply the word colored or the word negro.  By no regards new
words, certainly.  But ones which we employ here.  I hope you
understand."

"Yes, " I said, "yes, " and then I felt something settle over me, a
calm I took and wrapped myself in, Brenda Kay's warm hand in mine.

He smiled again, and pulled the door open, followed us out to where May
the colored girl sat.  She was on the telephone, but smiled up at us
anyway.  Mr. White leaned over the desk, took a pencil and piece of
paper from the desktop, scribbled something on it.  She read it, nodded
at him even though she was in the middle of a sentence.

Mr. White turned to us, quick glanced at his watch again.  "May here
will fill you in on what we'll expect tomorrow, how long the testing
will take, et cetera."  He looked behind us and up, and I could hear
scuffling from above, sounds I knew well, the scrape and scratch of
desks across a wooden floor.

He said, "If you wish, you may take a look in either of the classrooms
for a moment, just to give you a concrete glimpse into what happens
here."  He looked at me only an instant, and turned, went into the
foyer and started up the stairs.  "If you like, " he called.

"Otherwise, we'll see you tomorrow."

He was already on his way up, two steps at a time.

"Now, Mrs. Hilburn, " May said from behind me, and I turned to her,
saw her smiling, nowhere in her face any show of that word I'd used,
the one I'd been raised on, the one that'd never meant anything wrong
in my life.  But a word, I knew starting then, I'd try my best to keep
from speaking.

She said, "Let me have your address and home phone number, to start
with."

Brenda Kay and I made it to the landing on the stairs, and we both
looked out the window onto a long green lawn, fenced off on all three
sides, honeysuckle and climbing roses and oleander growing up against
those fences.

"Brenda Kay, " I whispered, "how'd you like to play out there?  " I She
nodded hard, smiled.

"Let's go see where you might go to school, " I whispered next, and put
my arm round her, held her close as we went up the rest of the
stairs.

Then the word sank into her, and she stopped, turned her face to me.

"Schoo?  " she said, her mouth open, eyebrows up.

"School, " I said.  "Like Wilman and Annie.  Like your momma used to
teach long before you ever came around.  School."

"Wimn?  " she said, then, "Nee?  " "No, not here, " I said, and started
us on up to the second floor.

We made it to the top, and I saw across from us a door partway open,
saw just the shoulder of Mr. White's tan suit, him up at a blackboard
a blackboard and talking away.

He moved a little to the side, and now I could see his face.  He caught
sight of us out here in the hall, and pointed his thumb over his
shoulder, meaning, I figured, Brenda Kay's class was the next door
down.

He hadn't even stopped talking, only motioned us on.

We moved along the hall, a window at the far end so that the place was
filled with light, something I was more glad for than I would've ever
imagined I could be, sunlight in a hallway.

The next door was closed, and so I let go Brenda Kay, leaned my ear
close to the door, and heard a woman's voice, no other sound than
that.

I smiled, looked at Brenda Kay.  She smiled at me, and I reached a hand
to the door, quietly knocked.

"Come in, " came the voice, and I reached down, turned the knob, slowly
opened the door.

There were things about that moment I will always remember, Mrs. Becky
Hamby, her blond-white hair parted on the side, curled under just where
it reached her shoulders, her standing in front of a blackboard just as
Mr. White had, the big storybook she held in her hands, the pages
facing her audience, the picture there a drawing of three policemen at
a busy intersection with their hands up, holding back traffic so a line
of ducklings could make it across the street.  And there was the smile
she gave to us, the nod, and the way she started right back into the
story she'd been reading, her voice a song there in the room, "When
they came to the corner of Beacon Street there was the police car with
four policemen that Clancy had sent from headquarters " But of course
it was the children and the slow turn of all their heads to the two of
us standing in the doorway that I would carry with me from then on,
kids with black hair and blond, red and brown, kids with freckles and
teeth and no teeth and glasses and no I glasses, new clothes and old
clothes, even a couple of colored children, and I can remember making
myself think that word, colored.  And all of the children, I figured,
here for the same reason, parents who loved them, parents who held out
hope.

Mrs. Hamby stopped reading when she saw she'd lost them, every one of
them looking back at us, what seemed a sea of retarded children, though
there were only a dozen or so, some with small eyes and wide faces like
my Brenda Kay's, some with just open mouths and sullen eyes, but all of
them looking at us.

"We have visitors, " Mrs. Hamby said, still with the book open.  She
was a good teacher, I could tell already, she wasn't going to lose
sight of reading time, wasn't going to put away the book simply because
we'd shown up, and, too, she wasn't going to shut down the natural
interest they all showed in our being here.  She would make of this
what she could.

"I'm Mrs.  Hamby, " she said.  "And you are .. ."

"Mrs.  Hilburn, " I said, and nodded to her, to all the children.

Their eyes weren't on me.

"And this is Brenda Kay, " I said.  "Brenda Kay Hilburn, " and I turned
to her, smiled.  "My daughter, " I said.

Brenda Kay only stood there, looking at all the children, and I tried
to imagine for a moment what she might think, might feel at suddenly
seeing all these children so like her, so in need of all we could give
them.

But I could come up with nothing, could think of no one but myself, and
the joy of this moment, this fine start.

CHAPTER 27.

BRENDA KAY STOOD AT THE FOUL LINE, HANDS HOLDING THE BASKETBALL between
her legs, knees bent, eyes on the net.  Behind her were the rest of the
children.

"Let's go, Brenda!  " the woman, this Mrs. Klausman, hollered, and it
was all I could do not to shout from where I stood with the other
mothers, Brenda Kay, it's Brenda Kay!  But I said nothing, only held my
arms tighter across my chest.

Mrs. Klausman blew her whistle, a short bleat of a sound, but loud
enough to make it echo off the brick walls of the gymnasium, and scare
the living daylights out of most every child.  Dennis, the boy behind
Brenda Kay, had been standing quiet and still behind her, but now quick
brought his arms up to his chest, started to twitching his whole head
like he does, his thick glasses near falling off with each move.  The
little girl behind him, Candy was her name, started to twisting back
and forth even faster than she'd been doing before.  Another boy,
Randy, him short as Brenda Kay, his hair near the same color, let out a
low deep growl, started lifting one foot and then the other, one foot
and the other.  The two children who'd already shot, Marcella and
Jimmy, sat on the floor behind this Mrs. Klausman, knees tucked up
under their chins.

Jimmy was already shivering, Marcella swaying back and forth.

Brenda Kay was breathing faster now, her eyes still set on the net, her
so small there on the floor, that net so far away.

This was the first day to the high school, the children's first
gymnasium day.  There'd been talk from Mr. White about this
eventuality for the last six years, since I'd started in helping at the
center and being paid for it.  Six years of talk about getting the
children across town to West High School to use the gym during the off
period, 11, 45 to 12, 30, so they could get hold of better exercise,
better facilities, have more fun.

Until today, exercise time'd been at the old Presbyterian church off
Torrance Boulevard.  Behind the church was a parking lot painted with
stripes for a volleyball court, and we'd all of us march the two blocks
up the hill from the Health Center where Mr. White and I held class,
the children and the two or three other mothers that showed up each day
all holding hands.  We'd walk on the sidewalk, beside us the cars on
the street, some of them honking at us now and again, teenagers the
same age as Brenda Kay hollering out things these children didn't need
to hear, but which most likely meant nothing to them, Morons,
Retards.

But we'd sing songs or just talk, and then we'd be at the church
parking lot, and I'd pull from the duffel bag I carried over my
shoulder the ball, and we'd play there on the broken asphalt a game
something akin to volleyball.

I myself had only seen it played on the beach whenever Leston used to
feel like going to see Wilman and Burton at it, back before they'd
gotten married.  Now whenever they got to the beach it was with kids in
tow, my grandchildren, Burton's girls, Susan, Jeannie and Jill,
Wilman's boys, Brad, Robert and Timmy.  But there'd been a time not too
far back, before they'd had to carry playpens and diapers and
umbrellas, when the two of them were out on the beach every afternoon,
all day Saturday and Sunday, back at Venice Beach and showing off to
any girl that'd put eyes on them.

The version we played at the church, though, had no net, no poles, just
that painted square on the parking lot.  We'd give the ball to one or
another of the children, show them again and again how you held the
ball in the palm of one hand, then brought the other up under it, hit
it hard so it flew up and into play.

But that didn't happen too often, of course, most of the time the child
missed the ball, or only held it in her hand like you showed her, and
stared at it or you or the ground.  Marcella was the worst about that,
her black hair in a ponytail so tight you'd swear she had to work to
close her eyes.  She'd simply stare at the ball no matter how softly
you talked, no matter how calm your hand on her back, no matter how
many times you took her hand in yours and swung it up under that ball
just to show her.  Other children Dennis in particular knocked the
stuffing out of it, sent the ball flying high and, usually, behind him,
to where it'd bounce off the hood of a churchworker's car.  One time
the pastor himself had been in his old Desoto, inching out of his slot
at the back door to the sanctuary, only to have a ball Dennis'd slammed
too high and far bounce off his roof.  Pastor'd jammed on the brakes
and looked everywhere, startled and scared, his old man's red face
bleached white with the whump!  that ball had sounded.  All he'd seen,
too, was a parking lot full of retarded children and three mothers bent
over laughing, hands covering our mouths in some small attempt at
hiding.  We joked for months after that, about how Mr. Mcknight
must've thought God was gearing up to speak to him there in his Desoto,
pounding his car roof to get his attention.

The children had fun, even when the ball went too high, or never left a
child's hand.  We women spoke to them as if they were children, kids
out for fun, and that seemed the trick to it all, just to treat them
like they were kids themselves, though they ran in age anywhere from
fifteen, which was Candy's age, to twenty-four, Dennis' age.

Brenda Kay was one of the younger ones at seventeen.  She could get the
ball up into the air on occasion, where sometimes it'd make it a couple
of times back and forth, one child to the next keeping it in the air.

Sometimes it only fell off her hand, rolled a few feet away.  But they
were playing outside in the open air and moving themselves, their arms
and legs.

Then West High School finally caved in to Mr. White, and of course all
we mothers, not to mention Mr. White himself, nearly jumped for joy at
the news, at the idea of our children in a real school, if for only an
hour or so a day.  Mr. White'd had to guarantee in writing the school
would have no liabilities for the whole thing, and guarantee the
children at the high school would hardly see our children.  Even the
gym door would be kept locked from the inside, so as not to disturb any
of the normal children.

Mrs. Klausman also came with the deal.  She was the girls' PE coach,
and'd been assigned this duty, her job supposedly to help out the
children with organized play time, but, I figured, also to see they
didn't destroy the place, didn't each of them go into mad rages and
start to tearing the mats off the walls at either end of the court,
didn't throw up and bleed and bash in the wooden bleachers.  I'd dealt
with people who had no idea what retarded children were about long
enough to be able to spot them a mile away.  She was one of them, I
could see the fear in her by the way she'd tried to smile while telling
us at the start of the period what she perceived her role as being,
"Coach and friend, friend and coach."  Her eyes never landed on the
children around her, but always keeping on us, as though we might throw
her some lifeline, reel her in from whatever hell she thought she was
drowning in.

I wasn't certain how long she'd last, blowing that whistle, hollering
out to the children to throw.  Marcella'd started swaying so hard she
looked near to falling over there on the hardwood floor, when it'd been
her turn, she'd merely done what Marcella always did, stared at the
ball in her hands for a while.  But then maybe because this was a new
place, a big building with brick walls and championship flags hanging
from the rafters, Marcella'd finally held the basketball just like we'd
shown her to hold a volleyball, and for the first time ever she put her
other hand beneath the ball, swung it up hard and quick, and gave it a
good solid slap.  The basketball popped up only a few feet, but it was
the action that'd counted to we three mothers over here seated on the
bleachers.

We'd clapped and cheered, Crystal Holloway Jimmy's momma and Terri
L'Coste Dennis' momma and myself all standing up in our seats.

But Mrs. Klausman had only blown her whistle, shaken her head, and
walked to pick up the ball.  She held it at her hip, the whistle in her
other hand, and stood next to Marcella, bounced the ball a couple of
times.  Then she shot, making that ball go in a perfect arc so that it
fell right through the net without even touching the metal hoop.

"That's how you do it, " she said, and she'd turned, smiling, to where
Marcella'd been.

Marcella was already over on the floor, curled up with her knees under
her chin like she was right now.

Jimmy'd held the ball with two hands like it was a huge rock, his knees
buckling a little under him, and he'd pushed it toward the basket, made
it bounce twice before it rolled away to the right, where Mrs. Klausman
stopped it with her foot.  Then she'd done the same thing, stood next
to him, shot, turned to him.  He'd only looked up at her, his big ears
poking out at either side of his head, his hair in that crew cut his
momma said made him look at least a little more attentive than he would
otherwise.  Then he'd turned, gone and sat next to Marcella.

And now it was Brenda Kay's turn.  Still she stared at the net, still
she held the ball between her knees.  She opened and closed her mouth
with each breath she took, her eyes, it looked from here, already going
red at that whistle.

Mrs. Klausman popped the whistle again, just a short moment's worth of
sound, but shrill nonetheless.  Randy, at the end of the line, gave a
small yelp just as Brenda Kay swung her arms up, let go the ball.

It sailed straight up above her in a perfect line.  Brenda Kay looked
up at it, watched it a moment before she ducked, turned to get out of
the way, bumping hard against Dennis, his hands still at his chest.

The ball came down, bounced on the wood floor, and everyone, even Mrs.
Klausman, only watched, let it bounce until it finally stopped, sat
right there at the foul line.

Dennis started laughing, his laughter even louder than Brenda Kay's,
the sound way up high and cackling like some wild animal's.  I wasn't
sure what he was laughing at, whether it was Brenda Kay's shot or the
ball settling right square back on the line or Brenda Kay ducking and
banging into him.  But he was laughing.

Brenda Kay turned to him, stared at him a moment, then let out "Huh!

Huh!  Huh!  " almost as loud, and suddenly each of the children was
laughing, the gymnasium echoing with laughter so hard and unafraid it
was more a haunting sound than anything else, like laughing ghosts in a
movie.  None of them knew enough to be restrained in how they laughed,
that matter of manners and politeness a notion that only operated in
their heads when Momma or Daddy was with them.

Mrs. Klausman hadn't yet picked up the ball, only stood staring at
them, the whistle in one hand and close up to her mouth, like she'd
been ready to blow it, but couldn't quite get her hand there.  Then she
shifted her eyes to us, we mothers there on the bleachers.

None of us did anything to help.  We only watched, and from the corner
of my eyes I could see in each of us a piece of satisfaction with what
was going on, in how the children had set her on edge, let her know
they weren't little zombies she could point in the right direction and
expect to have operate just fine.  We each of us sat there perfectly
still, backs straight, chins up high.

We'd gotten this far alone, was what I was thinking on the way home
from the high school.  Mrs. Klausman'd finally given up after she'd
been unable to stop the children from laughing.  Even Jimmy quit his
shivering once he'd started in, his laughter more a silent
snickering.

That was when we mothers rounded them up, then went out to the station
wagon, herded them in Dennis and Brenda Kay in the front seat with me,
Marcella and Candy and Jimmy in the back seat, Randy all the way in the
far back in the fold-up seat.  Crystal and Terri climbed into Crystal's
car, a 57 Chevy she hadn't yet decided to give up to her
seventeen-year-old son, Mark, Jimmy's younger brother.  And then I set
off for the drive back to the Health Center, Crystal to take Terri
home.

I pulled the station wagon into the Health Center parking lot, yet
another of these squared-off stucco buildings I'd finally grown used to
here.  By this time Randy in the far back had started in to his
growling and yelping, and no matter how hard I tried to cut that sound
out of my head, it was no use.  The first gymnasium day was fast on its
way from bad to worse, I'd already gotten a headache, and here it was
only a little after noon.

There'd be Mr. White to answer to, report on how it'd gone with Mrs.
Klausman and basketball.  Then Arts and Crafts this afternoon, all that
clay I had to water down and knead up before the children could start
with it.  We'd roll out the clay into long strings, coil it up on
itself into little vases we'd let set in the windows, then paint up,
take home sometime next week.  It was something we'd done before, but
nearly every art project we did we'd done before.

I pulled the keys out of the ignition, turned and opened my door, I
hollered out to the children to line up on my side of the car, hold
hands for the walk back to the classroom, and I wondered exactly how
many coil vases and ashtrays and paperweights and doorstops and
unidentifiable other clay whatnots we'd made these years.  A hundred at
least, I thought, all variations on the same old idea, get them working
with their hands, make something they could hold and think I made it!

I made it!  and have it be the truth.  For that, I figured as I looked
back at them already lined up Candy and Marcella and Dennis and Brenda
Kay and Randy and Jimmy, him shivering again there at the end of the
line maybe all those red coils of clay were worth it.  Dirt well
spent.

"Everybody holding hands?  " I called out, and turned to the
building.

"Ohhhn!  " Marcella gave out, and I turned to her, her eyes wide open
with the ponytail.  Her head was tilted to one side, her mouth open,
jaw jutted out.  "Ohhn!  " she said.  "Dennis!  Dennis!  " she said,
and she held up the hand she was supposed to be holding with Dennis,
just put it up in the air, empty.

Then Randy gave his yelp, put his hand up the same as Marcella'd
done.

His hand, too, was empty, that hand supposed to be holding on to Brenda
Kay's.

I looked at Dennis, at Brenda Kay.  They were holding hands, both of
them with their heads down, staring at the pavement, mouths closed.

Dennis' glasses had slipped down his nose, just barely hanging on at
his ears.

I looked at their hands, saw how they were holding on, their fingers
were laced together, as soft and gentle as could be, the two of them
holding hands like they were courting.

I said, "Now stop that, " and a feeling I'd known would come but which
I'd refused for so long finally broke in me.  It rose in my throat
black and hard, and I took two steps to them, reached my hands to
theirs, and pulled them apart.  I said, "You, Dennis, " and took hold
of his elbow, pulled him away out of line, "you just stand yourself
right on down here next to Randy.  You just stand right there, " I
said, and directed him to the back of the line.

He moved slowly, lifted his free hand and pushed his glasses up.  They
were heavy horn-rimmed glasses, black, and made his face turn owlish.

They made him somehow look intelligent, the thickness of the glass
distorting the shape of his eyes so they didn't look so Mongoloid, so
tapered at the outside edges.  When he was at the end of the line, I
looked into those eyes, looked into them maybe a moment too long, but a
moment I figured needed to be spent this way.

I said, "Now you know we don't hold hands that way.  You know that,
Dennis, " and I tried to hold my eyes firm on him, tried to make JEWER
zos myself authoritative, a word Mr. White'd stressed for so long,
since the first day I'd ever met him.

But he smiled at me, then looked at his hands, stared at them with that
smile on his face.  He moved his right hand down to Randy's, his eyes
on his hand the whole time, and took hold of Randy's hand, held it
tight.

He moved his eyes back to the other hand, slowly moved it toward me,
and took hold of my hand.  Carefully he laced his fingers in mine, held
my hand the same as he'd held Brenda Kay's.

He looked up at me.  His glasses'd slipped again, my hand in his, he
reached up, with his middle finger pushed them back into place.  He was
still smiling, and looked at me.

"Okay lunch okay?  " he said, and nodded.

I paused, looked at him in that authoritative way I thought I had, eyes
boring in on him even through the thick glasses he had on.  I hoped he
might hear what I was saying, really, Don't touch my daughter the way
you might want to some day.  Then I pulled our hands apart, took hold
of his the way I wanted him to, palm to palm, fingers together and
holding on.

Still he smiled, and I saw it was lost on him, what I was doing lost on
them all, they only started to fidgeting there in line against the
station wagon.

I looked away from him and his smile, looked up the line to Brenda
Kay.

She leaned toward Marcella, said something, a single word.  Marcella's
eyes were open wide, staring off.  Then she got the smallest glint of a
smile, her eyes changed somehow, the corners of her mouth just turning
up.

Brenda Kay turned, looked at me, said, "Lunch now, Momma!  " "All
right, " I said, Dennis' hand in mine.  I thought to grip it hard, but
decided against it.  We'd be inside in a minute, and now I didn't know
if I'd even have to report this incident to Mr. White, this little
holding of hands that might not have been just holding of hands.

"All right, " I said again, like I might've been trying to convince
myself eating lunch was the only thing needed doing in these children's
lives.  "Let's go to lunch, " I said, and I started toward the
building.

CHAPTER 28.

I OUR EIGHT YEARS IN CALIFORNIA, Brenda Kay tested in that first year
at a four-year-old's level of intelligence, Leston worked driving truck
for Pico Furniture and lifting and carrying more than his boss had ever
let on he'd be doing, but it was work, money coming at us, even though
Leston was fifty-two years old by then, a man too old for standing and
lifting and carrying furniture.  Every night I'd had to rub his back
down with Ben Gay, his flesh never building up the way it might have
were he a younger man, what with all that exercise and work, and I'd
had to rub and rub and rub until he fell asleep under my hands, Brenda
Kay brought home a pencil holder she'd made out of an old Campbell's
Soup can and a swatch of wallpaper, Wilman graduated Venice High, got
on at Pico Furniture, Leston and him working together and moving
furniture anywheres from up to the Hollywood Hills on down to Long
Beach, Burton married one Sarah Kaminski, a Jewish girl he'd met on a
blind date set up by Wilman and his girlfriend of the time, a girl
Wilman'd known when he was at Venice High and who, Wilman'd confided in
me once she and Burton'd announced their engagement, had had what he
called a "nose job" since their days in school, a girl who wore her
hair cut way short above her shoulders and who seemed not to like me at
all though she wanted me to think she adored me, a Jewish girl, the two
of them married by a judge in Santa Monica so's there'd be no conflicts
about any kind of ceremony whether Jewish or Baptist, though we'd lost
the practice of attending church or Sunday School since we'd moved here
Brenda Kay's teacher, Mrs. Hamby, asked me to step in for her one
afternoon for Arts and Crafts when she had to tend to a dentist's
appointment, and I'd had them all gluing popsicle sticks together into
whatever shapes their hearts desired, Annie had a string of boyfriends
a mile long through high school all of them pretty boys with handsome,
hard jaws and crew cuts and plaid shirts and khaki trousers, and it'd
seemed like we saw each one no more than three times apiece.  Then
she'd run in from that third date all crying, falling apart, and it'd
be my role to go into her room, pat her on the back, console her and
agree with her about the stupidity of Men, though I hadn't yet seen a
man around the house looking for her.  Just pretty boys, Mr. Nathan
White hired me on as assistant to the smaller children, and I quit
working the Hughes Cafeteria, took to bringing in the clay and
papier-mache and colored macaroni, Leston and Wilman both lost their
jobs when Pico Furniture closed up and declared bankruptcy, and Leston
got a job as a maintenance man over to El Camino College in Gardena for
thirty-seven dollars a week.  Wilman went down to the unemployment
office in the hopes of only collecting money so he could lay out on the
beach, instead, they'd made him go over to Watts to the Royal Crown
Cola Company and apply for some job called Truck Sales, a job involved
driving store to store and selling soda po>Nehi, Royal Crown, ParT-Pak
off the truck and filling store shelves with it, a job he promptly got,
started at fifty-two dollars a week, him still living at home, Brenda
Kay at age twelve tested in at age five, James and Eudine had their
third baby, David, company to the other two, Judy and Mark, Billie Jean
had first Elaine, then Matthe back in Jackson, Gower transferred up
there when the Purvis dealership closed down, Brenda Kay and the rest
of her class made handprint ashtrays, hers kept filled by Leston so
that I had to empty it each morning before Brenda Kay and I headed up
to the Foundation in the second car we had, an old 49 Chevrolet Burton
rounded up at Bundy, Wilman met a girl named Barbara Holmes while he
and his cronies from high school were out one Saturday night to the
ballroom at the end of Santa Monica pier to see Spade Cooley.  Wilman
and Barbara'd danced, then gone over to The Clock Drive-In where, he
told me the next morning, she wouldn't let him kiss her, this Barbara
Holmes a Baptist girl from East Texas and whose daddy was an actor
himself and who'd been in a few movies, even with John Wayne one
time.

Her momma'd been a singer with Kay Kaiser and his Kollege of Musical
Knowledge in the 40s, and Barbara herself was a Job's Daughter.  All of
this was reason enough for Leston and me to give approval to them
marrying eight months later at a church wedding in Culver City, to
which Wilman'd been late because of his route taking too long that
day.

The two of them honeymooned up to Las Vegas just over the weekend,
Wilman back at work Monday morning, Barbara back to work at the
telephone company, where she was an operator, Mr. Nathan White talked
the Health Department down in Redendo Beach into giving up its old
storeroom to him, there being now thirty l I l r two children holed up
each day in the Foundation's house on Adams.  I was in charge of
organizing the carpool down there in the South Bay, each of us mothers
trading off driving, though I was there each day one way or the other,
Burton and Sarah had Susan, Wilman and Barbara had Brad, and those two
traded having children for the next few years, baby girls to Burton,
baby boys to Wilman, Jeannie, then Robert, then Jill, then Timmy,
Brenda Kay at age fourteen tested in at age six, Leston was made
supervisor of the heating and cooling plant at El Camino, and I talked
him into selling off the house in Mar Vista for something farther down
the coast, our lives now moving south from Los Angeles, what with
Leston in Gardena, me and Brenda Kay in Redondo Beach.  We made three
thousand dollars off the house in Mar Vista, bought a two-bedroom
bungalo off Sixth Street and Ingleside in Manhattan Beach, not three
blocks from the ocean Mr. Nathan White put me in charge of yet another
of his big ideas, the families of all the exceptional children in the
Redondo Beach class saving up Blue Chip Stamps in order to buy a
station wagon.  A year and a half later, in December 1959, we had
enough for the station wagon, and I had another aspect of my job,
driving that station wagon each morning and picking up the children,
driving them home each afternoon, Leston was promoted to Head of
Maintenance at El Camino College James gave up being a veterinarian for
teaching high school Ag.  in Leveland, just outside Lubbock, Wilman was
made the first Pre-Salesman for Royal Crown, quit dnving truck and was
given a company car, a black 1960 Rambler, and started driving from
store to store and selling from sheets of paper instead of off the
truck, the truck showing up the next day with whatever the store
ordered, Burton quit Bundy, took a job at Royal Crown, and for a few
months followed Wilman's Rambler with his Royal Crown delivery truck,
until he, too, started as a Pre-Salesman, Annie graduated Lawndale High
School still followed by that string of boys, but ended up getting
engaged two years later to a California Highway Patrolman ten years her
senior, him having stopped her on the new Harbor Freeway for speeding,
then writing her up, then asking her out, Billie Jean wrote and said
she'd be out with the babies for the wedding in December, James called
and said they'd all be out for the wedding, Brenda Kay at age sixteen
tested in at age six Brenda Kay at age seventeen tested in at age six
Today she'd held hands with Dennis.

CHAPTER 29.

THE TEMPTATION IS, MR.  WHITE STARTED up, AND ROSE FROM HIS SEAT behind
the desk, "to make more of certain things than is necessary."  He came
round the desk and sat on the corner like always, arms crossed, chin
down, eyes on the floor.

For a moment I thought he was talking about Brenda Kay and Dennis,
though I hadn't said a word to him yet, had just come into his office
from passing out the lunchboxes to the children, each box masking-taped
shut by their mothers, a practice we'd all gotten into what with the
number of times they dropped the boxes walking to and from the station
wagon, or moving into the classroom.  One little girl no longer with us
her parents moved to Sacramento last year, freeing up room for Candy
even pushed her lunchbox out the station wagon window one morning, all
I'd seen of it was a sort of small explosion in the rearview mirror, a
sandwich and chips and apple all flying up into the grill of the car
behind me.  Now the windows were kept rolled up, all except mine.

I'd gotten the lunchboxes passed out, had the tape open for each of
them, when Mrs. Walker, one of the secretaries for the Health Center,
came into the classroom, told me Mr. White needed to see me right
away, that she'd watch over them for me.

I'd turned to the children, saw all of them eating away, Brenda Kay
slowly unwrapping her sandwich as if it might've been gold.  She picked
up one half of it with both hands, leaned over the table until her chin
almost touched the tabletop, and bit into it.  Fried egg sandwich.  Her
favorite, what I made for her most every day, either that or pimento
and cheese.

I'd looked round the classroom, certain I was doing it, surveying it
all, just to put off meeting with Mr. White.  I knew, too, he wouldn't
come down hard on me for what went on, I just knew I'd have to tell him
the truth of the matter, our first day at the high school had been, in
fact, a disaster.

Not that anything bad had happened, actually, they were just themselves
today.  On the batteries of tests the Foundation gave, not one of them
had ever placed higher than a ten-year-old's capabilities, as far as
the public school system out here was concerned, these children could
make coil ashtrays and miss baskets for the rest of their lives and
still get no better at it, still break down into laughter at whatever
they thought was funny.

But that wasn't what I was in this for, the simple ritual of just
killing time in these children's lives.  I'd signed on for the long
haul, certainly, I'd be with my Brenda Kay until the end of my days,
but not just so I could keep treading water.  There was a way to fix
this thing, I knew, and it had something to do with getting these kids
over to West High School even if for only an hour or two a day.  Only
an hour out in the world, but one they might not otherwise get, some
head start at the end point I figured all we mothers and fathers and
brothers and sisters of these children were aiming at, solving these
lives.  I could just picture Mrs. Klausman doing her part to end it
all before it'd even started, her marching into the principal's office
and laying in on him how horrid these children'd been, how worth
nothing they were.  They couldn't even dribble a ball.

I'd given one last look at the classroom, a room that'd been a big
storage room for years before we ever came around.  Now there was a
blackboard on one wall, two big tables set up in the middle, the
children all in their appointed chairs and eating, a heavy and huge
braided rug under it all.  On the walls were pictures of Lincoln and
Washington and Eisenhower, circling the top of the walls cards with the
alphabet in printed letters.  It could have been any classroom, could
have been, I saw, the classroom where I'd started teaching back in
Columbia, these kids roughly the same mental equivalent as all those
ornery children I'd had to deal with so many years ago.

Then Jimmy glanced up at me, him with his crew cut, those ears, and he
shivered hard, nearly dropped the banana in his hand for it.  He'd seen
me looking at him, and turned his back to me, took a bite off the
banana, and I knew where I was, in an ex-storeroom, a room with no
windows.

But better than no room at all.

"Got the call from Mr. Mooney, the principal at West, " Mr. White
went on.  He shook his head, brought a hand from his chest to his chin,
and rubbed it, his same old moves.  "Doesn't look good."

"Of course, " I started up, "Mr. Mooney's got all his information from
the girls' PE coach, Mrs.  Klausman.  That's his first mistake."

I stood behind the chair he always kept positioned in front of the
desk, he still swooped off that desk edge and stood up, came close to
you and started his pacing, all of it, I knew, designed to intimidate,
to force into you who was in charge.  But he wasn't a man who I I
wanted to be in charge for the thin reason of just having power.  No,
he wanted in charge because he knew how to get things changed.

"Gym day, " he said, pacing again, the same man as the first day I met
him, "is our foot in the door, our way of making ourselves known to the
school board, to the public education system at large.  Imagine the
burdens lifted from parents, imagine the opportunities afforded our
children.  Public education for the retarded."

He stopped then, arms crossed, and said, "But you've heard this before,
" and smiled.

I tried to smile, tried hard.  I'd heard it all before, knew there was
hope for that new way of teaching in California, knew we'd come worlds
from where we'd started, knew that there might come some day some day
soon, if any of my prayers were answered by the same old God up in
Heaven new ways to change her, bring up her learning level.

But there were things to deal with now, today.

I said, "Maybe there's nothing to this, but .. . , " and I paused,
waited a moment before I could line up the words I wanted to give.

"There's always something in everything, " he said, and circled back to
his desk.  His office was the opposite of that sun-filled room back up
on Adams, the desk was strictly school district issue, gunmetal gray
with a slate top, his chair the same color gray with a hard green
leather back and seat.  May, the receptionist, was still up at the old
house, down here was Mrs. Walker, a white woman with hair swirled up
high and sprayed into place, lips fire engine red.  Who knew what the
children thought when they saw her?

"Maybe, maybe not, " I said, and half-smiled, looked up at him.  His
own lunch was spread out on the desktop, an apple, two Oreos, a
half-eaten sandwich on dark bread.  He sat down, leaned over the
desktop, picked up the sandwich, bit into it.

"Seems I may've caught a couple of the children up to something."  I
paused.  "Holding hands, namely."

He looked at me over the tops of his glasses, stopped chewing.  He held
that look a moment or two, then slowly started to chewing, leaned
back.

He swallowed, said, "Well.  It's about time."

"What?  " I said, and for the first time in years I wanted to sit in
that chair, wanted to plant myself there, lean my head over into my
hands.

"It's about time, " he said again, and now he was dusting off his
hands, smiling.  "I've had to deal with this on more than one occasion,
believe you me, " he said.  "You wouldn't believe the sorts of liaisons
that begin to happen once this sort of discovery takes place,
especially with this age group.  Why I've seen " "It's my Brenda Kay, "
I said, quick put my hand to my forehead, let it cover my eyes.

He stopped, and I heard him stand right up, come around the desk.  Then
I felt his hand on my shoulder.  "I didn't mean to make it seem .. ."

he began, but stopped.  "I mean, " he said, "it's happened."

"There's always something in everything, " I said, and brought down my
hand, tried again to smile at him, still held on with the other hand to
the back of the chair.

He said, "It's bound to happen.  And it does.  It has.  It will.  But
the only way I've found to deal with it is simply to let them know
they're not to behave that way.  Now, " he said, and let go my
shoulder.  He went to the edge of the desk, stood looking at his
food.

He turned his head to me, nodded at the empty chair.  He said, "Would
you sit down?  " "Only if you promise not to go on the attack like you
do, " I said.

"Promise, " he said, and looked back at his food.

I sat down, glad for the weight off my feet, glad my legs could ease
up, let me relax.  Brenda Kay and Dennis.

"Maybe you won't want to hear this, " he said, "but holding hands is
not the worst thing that could happen.  Not at all.  But, first, do not
give them opportunity.  Don't let them have the chance to hold
hands."

He paused, turned to me.  "Who's the boy?  " "Dennis, " I said.  I
looked down at the gray linoleum floor, a far cry from that gleaming
hardwood, from when I'd only had to worry on enrolling my daughter, on
getting red clay wet enough to work.

"Dennis, " he said.  "He's responsive.  He hears.  He'll listen."  He
paused.  "But if they carry on, keep holding hands even if we instruct
them not to, there's not much else we can do.  Much worse can happen
here.  Maybe holding hands will be outlet enough."

I looked up.  "Outlet for what?  " I said, but I'd already figured it
out, already knew.

He still looked at the desktop.  "Growing up, " he said,
matter-of-fact.

He stopped, looked at me once again.  He reached up, took off his
glasses, crossed his arms.  Then he sat on the corner of the desk, the
same old perch, and here came my old life, this same series of days
that lined themselves up in front of me and told me the same thing
again and again and again, take hold of it by the throat, make it
work.

Puberty fell on them, that word so filthy gone unspoken, but what I
already knew was upon my baby girl.  She was already seventeen, her
body going through its own motions like there were things it had to do,
wild things my daughter's brain never dreamed of, every night when I
gave her her bath, there were new signs, her breasts growing larger,
more thin wisps of hair between her legs, all of it a mockery, I knew,
sheer spite from God once again.  Now here she was holding hands with a
boy, their bodies like blind animals making I their way along,
searching, not knowing what it was they were looking for.

And one morning some five months ago Leston and I'd both woke up to
Brenda Kay hollering out from her bedroom.  I'd rolled right out of
bed, rushed to her room, alive in my head the memory of her burned
legs, the pain of them even as she rolled over of a morning, memories
so fresh we might as well have been still back in Mississippi, the
house filled with the stink of old and soaked bandages.

I opened her bedroom door, saw her standing next to her bed, a finger
pointed at the mattress.  "Momma!  " she hollered.  "Momma!  " "What's
wrong?  " I'd said, but by that time I already saw what she was
pointing at, a bloodstain there on the middle of the sheet, and I'd had
to swallow hard, keep myself from crying as I turned to her, looked at
the seat of her nightgown, saw more blood there.  She'd started her
monthlies.

"Jewel?  " Leston'd called from the bedroom.  "What's going on?  "
"Nothing, " I'd said, then went to the bathroom, headed for the box of
napkins I'd kept under the sink for the last three or four years, me
never certain when this morning might come.

"Morning accident, " I called out to Leston, and let him think she'd
just wet the bed again.

Take hold of it, grab it by the throat, make it work.

Mr. White was right, of course, they'd have to be separated, separated
as much as I could make certain.  And there'd be much worse could
happen, too.  But I wasn't going to let that happen, not at all.  I'd
been in charge of her all this time, I wasn't about to surrender to
letting that foot in the door.  No.

I stood, didn't need the chair anymore.  There were ways to fix this
world, and us in it.  There were simple ways, keep the two separate.

"You're right, " I said.  I started for the door.  "It's an outlet, " I
said, and steeled myself for whatever I had in front of me to do.

"Good, " he said from behind me, and I knew he'd sat back down, had
started in on his lunch again.  "And gym day does not cease as of
today.

Gym day will be on our regular agenda, every Monday, Wednesday and
Friday from now on."

I had my hand on the door, turned the knob.

He was chewing, spoke with food in his mouth.  "We're on our way to
having our children in the public schools, " he said.

"Fine by me, " I said.  I pulled the door open, stepped out, pulled it
to behind me.

"I'll be down there in a couple of minutes, " he called after me, but I
already had the door closed.

* * * Eight years in California.  Good enough for a lifetime, I thought
as eade down the corridor toward the old storeroom, and knew something
d changed inside Mr. White's office just now.  I knew somehow things
were different, and suddenly it had to do with him and the fact he'd
never had any children of his own, never seen them grow up and away
like I'd seen all five of mine.  And no matter how much the
philanthropist he was, no matter how hard he'd grieved at that spark
lost in his brother's eye, he had no retarded child of his own.  No
matter how many cases he'd known, they were all still theory, all of
them all of us, I thought just ideas played off his owneas.  Holding
hands wasn't the worst could happen, he'd said.  But I knew it was the
door standing wide open for the next thing to come.

Mrs. Walker stood at the desk when I got back, the children quiet
still, slowly chewing, eyes of some lifting up from their food to take
me in, others' heads bowed to the task at hand, lunch.

She quick turned to me, flew a hand up to her chest.  Her fingernails
were long, the same red as her lips.  "You scared me to death!  " she
said, and smiled, then made her way past me.  "They've been just like
this, she said at the doorway.  "Angels, " she said.

She was gone, and I turned, looked back at them.

Brenda Kay was in her place, her sandwich finished.  She held one of
the chocolate chip cookies I'd baked last night, held it in her hand
and looked at it.

"Dennis!  " she shouted, looked over to him seated across from her at
the far left corner of the table.  "You want?  " Dennis' shoulders went
up at his name, and he cocked back his head, looked at her through
those thick lenses, the glasses far down on his nose.  He clutched half
a sandwich with both hands, held it there at his chin.

He looked at her a moment, then nodded his head hard But by this time I
was already away from the desk, had my hand out and took hold of the
cookie as Brenda Kay was standing, leaning over to him.  I took it,
said, "Now I baked these for you, Brenda Kay, " and placed a hand on
her shoulder, gently pushed her down into her She looked at me, her
mouth open.  She had a few last bites of the fried egg sandwich there
in her mouth, yellow and white and brown "Now if you don't want this,
I'll go ahead and have it myself, " I said, and I brought it to my
mouth, nibbled it.  "Thank you, Brenda Kay, I said, and tried to
swallow, tried hard, but couldn't.  I JUST chewed on that small piece
of cookie in my mouth.

I glanced over to Dennis.  He looked at me, then at Brenda Kay then let
his head fall, took the sandwich in his hands.

CHAPTER 30.

THAT NIGHT ANNIE STOOD ON A STOOL IN THE LIVING ROOM IN HER WEDDING
gown.  Mrs. Zafaris, the seamstress from the wedding shop over on
Crenshaw and who lived one block over, tucked here, tucked there, her
mouth full of pins.  Annie the whole time was lifting a fold of white
and lifting, looking at herself and turning, looking and turning, Mrs.
Zafaris hollering at her the best she could with those pins in her
mouth to hold still.

We were in the kitchen, Leston and Brenda Kay at the table, eating the
pork chops and gravy and collards I'd made, me busy at cleaning
everything up.  We'd gotten the call from Billie Jean last night, her
in Phoenix, that she'd be in near seven as best she could figure.  It
was quarter till now.

I hadn't seen her in eight years, and knew it to be a crime, knew it
way deep down.  We'd been so filled with our lives out here, so carried
along with just making do, I knew we were the ones heavy at fault.  We
hadn't seen our oldest daughter in eight years, had'nt even seen our
two grandchildren, what I still called our babies, though Elaine was
six now, Matthe four.  No longer babies, but children, and as I hurried
to wash up the skillet and pans I pictured James and Billie Jean at the
same age as Elaine and Matthe , Burton brand-new and still nursing back
then.  I knew I'd missed worlds of my grandchildren's lives, knew that
at that age they were already gone, James already the independent boy
he'd find himself later on, insisting he not work with his father,
insisting on joining to fight the war, all of it without his parents'
approval not out of spite, but simply because he knew he could do it on
his own.

Once, when James was six, Elaine's age, he'd come home from a fistfight
with one of the Skokum kids at school, the Skokums a family more
cracker than we'd ever hope to be.  He'd had a black eye and a scrape
across his cheek like somebody'd taken heavy sandpaper to his face.

When Leston'd gotten home from the woods and we were all to the table
for dinner, Billie Jean barely able to see up over the edge to the food
on her plate, Burton suckling away, Leston said, "You going to tell us
what happened?  " then acted like it was no matter to him what the
answer he got was.  He only reached across the table for a biscuit from
the basket of them, heaped hominy onto his plate.  I'd made a big fuss
over it, of course, when he'd walked in the door from school, painted
the scrape up with iodine, pressed cold washrags to his face hoped that
black eye'd disappear before Sunday church.  James'd shrugged, said,
"Alton Skokum."

"Alton Skokum what?  " Leston said, and buttered his biscuit.

He was quiet, shrugged again.  "Called you a nigger-lover."  He reached
for a biscuit himself, started forking it open.

Leston finally looked at him, knife in one hand, biscuit in the
other.

"So you fought him?  You think I need defending?  " James said nothing,
only went at the biscuit.  "I don't know what that means, Daddy, " he
said.  "Nigger-lover.  But I knew it wasn't good, the way Alton said
it.

That's why I had a fight with him."

He had the biscuit open then, steam up off it, and he looked at me.

"Momma, " he'd said, "you pass me the honey?  " It'd taken a moment or
so for me to nod, smile, pass it to him.  That was that.  End of story,
the beginning of James' life and the revealing even that far back as to
who he'd end up being, teaching high-school Ag.  in Levelland, Texas,
because, Eudine'd written us enough times, that was what he wanted to
do.

And there at the sink in our house in Manhattan Beach, where I could
smell the sea through the open windows at night, and where the
bedsheets were heavy with the damp air, I thought of whoever my
grandchild this Elaine was, Billie Jean and Gower's six-year-old,
wondered at what'd happened in her life so far that would already set
her and who she was in motion, and I was sorry, too, that there hadn't
been a part of me in there, a hand in raising her and Matthe .  And
then there were James and Eudine's children as well, three of them,
Judy and Mark and David, all these lives on the face of the earth and
me able to touch on them so little, all of them well on their way to
not knowing who their grandma was already.  We lived in California.

But there were the other grandchildren, the ones I took what comfort I
could in when I wasn't tending to Brenda Kay.  All the attention she
took every day and the job of driving and assisting Mr. White
exhausted me, so that when, on most Saturday mornings, Burton and Sarah
showed up with Susan and Jeannie and Jill, and when Wilman and Barbara
showed up with Brad and Robert and Timmy, it was all I could do to make
a few batches of biscuits and slice up some bacon for their breakfasts
while Wilman and Burton worked on the yard, mowed it up nice for
Leston, and did whatever else was needed, whether weeding the
flowerbeds or painting the shutters or l fixing a shingle.  That was
all my grandkids would remember me by, I figured, biscuits and bacon,
their daddies at work on our yard.

The grandchildren were a hardship for Leston, he didn't know what to do
with them, usually ended up getting mad at them for whatever reason
Jeannie and Susan pulling each other's hair, Robert digging a hole in
the yard, Jeannie and Brad just running through the house, getting
energy out they otherwise would have spent at the beach.  Eventually
he'd holler at all of them to be quiet, then'd look to me to provide
entertainment of some kind.  Sometimes he'd take a child up into his
lap, then do the trick of rolling a cigarette with one hand, the
child's mouth open and watching this strange magic take place right
before their eyes.  Then he'd let that child down, light up the
cigarette and hold the smoke in his lungs as long as he could, all the
grandchildren down around his knees and counting out loud how long he
could hold it, him smiling all the while, winking at them.  But that
sequence of events'd only last long enough for Burton to get the
oleanders over to the side yard trimmed up a bit, only long enough for
Wilman to pull a couple screens off the windows before the children'd
lose interest, wander off.

Most times they ended up playing with Brenda Kay, scribbling right
along with her at the kitchen table with the boxes of crayons I always
had for her, the tablets of colored paper I kept.  That's how Saturdays
went.

But, finally, Leston got what he wanted out of this life, so far as I
could tell.  In these eight years he'd come around from the man moving
furniture to the Head of Maintenance at El Camino College, seventeen
men under him now, he'd come around from the man with his hands jammed
into his pockets to the man who could call up either or both sons, tell
them he wanted them over of a Saturday morning to change the oil on the
Plymouth, to help wallpaper the bathroom, to dig up the little strip of
ground along the back fence where Leston grew okra and snap beans and
tomatoes.  And they came, which, I knew, pleased my husband no end.

They came, usually brought their children along, sometimes the wives,
neither of whom much liked the way things went, Saturdays, if Leston so
wanted it, were his and his alone, and whatever plans the wives made,
whether a trip to the beach or mowing their own lawns or weeding their
own flowerbeds, were lost.  Burton and Wilman were the sons following
Leston off into the woods, it was easy to see, Hilburn and Sons Lumber
Company, the company that never happened, but happened in its own way
nonetheless.

A little over a year ago he'd come home from work and stood in the
kitchen in his gray maintenance uniform and held me tight in his arms,
lifted me off the floor and laughed.  I'd thought at first maybe he'd
lost another job, him gone crazy over so much loss of himself through
his days.  But no.  It was because he'd been told by the president of
the school to buy white shirts and dark pants and a slew of new ties,
that he'd be wearing that sort of outfit from now on.  Starting
immediately he was Head of Maintenance.  No more pressing uniforms,
either, he'd be taking all his clothing to the dry cleaners he had a
cleaning allowance now and that was when I'd laughed, too, Brenda Kay
laughing right along with us, there at the kitchen table.

That night we'd made love for the first time in over a year, and in his
hands I'd felt some return of reason to him, of the power he held over
his world.  Here was my husband, as good as returned from the dead,
that old language of our bodies resurrected.  Here was my husband of
the years Before once more, though my breasts had long gone the slack
of age, my legs up around him merely the flesh and bones of a woman
fifty-six years old.  It was a slow and pleasant making love, not like
when we were children ourselves and on our honeymoon in Hattiesburg,
and suddenly I'd remembered the two of us taking a bath together there
in the hotel room, naked as jaybirds and quick to make love as many
times as we could before we'd have to go back to Purvis.

And as we made our slow love that night, I couldn't help but think on
those days, the days Before, Before and Before and Before, when what
Leston and I'd had, I finally saw, was love.  Love was what we had, and
Leston, finally brought to the point of being ready to move inside me,
seemed suddenly filled with the kind of love we'd had then, not the
passion of the body, but of the heart.  We wanted one another, wanted
to feel each other as close as we could, and I marveled at what went on
in the world, at how many times this world'd had to spin before the
language we knew of each other surfaced in our lives, spoke again.

We made love that night, and we were happy in it.  We were happy, and
when, finally, he was inside me my husband now sixty years old, even
more of his hair gone, the flesh on his back soft and loose in my hands
I saw the same twenty-four-year-old I married, the same man I met at
Sunday church in East Columbia, Mississippi, the same man with callused
hands and dirty fingernails and an easy smile.  This was the same man
whose sounds mixed with mine our first night together to remind me of
my own parents, and here had come the sounds again, the ghosts of my
parents in our bedroom in Manhattan Beach, the two of us grandparents
eleven times over and living in what might as well have been a foreign
country, even after those many years we'd lived in California.  Not the
life I'd ever thought would happen when we'd made love our first time
so long ago, the sounds we'd made that night now old friends come to
visit us here, my husband a man who'd wear a tie to work from then
on.

And this Saturday was Annie's wedding, the day after tomorrow, Gene
O'Reilly her suitor, the man who'd been nicknamed Frog by his fellow
Highway Patrolmen.  He was a motorcycle patrolman, and was short,
thick, friendly.  His was a true and friendly smile, eyes big, mouth
wide so that, yes, you could see he'd be called Frog by men who weren't
afraid of him.

So far Annie hadn't called him that but once, that time on an outing to
The Rock, a place Burton'd brought us to our first months here, and
which we'd made our own beach since then.  It was way up north of Mar
Vista, all the way up near Port Hueneme, black rocks and waves crashing
and a stretch of sand as well.  We'd go there Sundays and picnic, and
Leston would fish in the ocean what Burton informed us was called
surfcasting and Brenda Kay would set her feet into the cool water.

Usually there was nobody about, nobody for us to worry over seeing her
legs, seeing our daughter.  Just us.

Gene'd come along that time as a sort of baptism, all the grandchildren
screaming and carrying on down to the edge of the water, burying each
other in the sand, the wives yapping on about all the food, Leston out
at the water with his pole, Burton and Wilman throwing a football back
and forth up and down the beach.  All of this, and Brenda Kay, too.

But he took to her right off for some reason, a reason I couldn't
figure out, while Annie was helping me and Sarah and Barbara lay out
the food, Gene had knelt next to Brenda Kay there at the end of the
blanket we always used at the beach, one of those ugly green moving
blankets Leston'd brought home one time and'd promised he'd return,
baby Timmy and baby Jill crawling round on it, droopy diapers and
all.

Gene knelt next to her, touched her back, talked to her in a quiet way,
then pulled from the pocket of his Bermuda shorts a small, thin square
box, black.

He touched a finger to it, fiddled here and there, and then I could
hear a radio station, the call letters KTLA, then some music, Hank
Williams' voice small and tinny, but there.

We women stopped, food wrapped in wax paper in our hands, and watched
as Gene handed the thing to her.

"It's one of those transistor radios, " Barbara said.

"My, " Sarah said.  She was quiet, then said, "Think it's a bribe?  "
"If it is, " Annie said, "then I hope he bribes me, too."

Barbara laughed at that, and I smiled, watched my daughter while they
went on unwrapping the food.

Brenda Kay looked up at him.  She had on slacks, like always, and l f ,
a blouse, her feet bare, her last toes jammed together like they would
always be, a jumble of toes.

Gene held out the radio to her.  She glanced from it to him and back.

Then she looked to me, saw I was watching.

I nodded, and she reached her hand to the radio, took it, held it to
her ear.

"You want to hold it that close, " I could hear Gene say quietly, "then
you want to turn the volume down."  He hadn't taken his eyes off her,
not even when she'd looked at me.  Gently he took the radio from her
hand, touched the side of it.  Hank Williams' voice went even smaller,
and he gave it back to her, placed it back in her hand, lifted her hand
to her ear.  "There, " he said.

"Hey, Frog!  " Annie called out then, and Gene turned to her, got that
smile.  "Time to eat!  " Gene looked at the ground, slowly shook his
head, poked a finger in the sand.  Brenda Kay sat with the radio up to
her ear, was already rocking away to the music.  Then she let out the
first moan, her singing.  Gene glanced at her only a moment, looked
back at the sand, drew something there with his finger.  He was still
grinning.

He said, "Annie, I wish you wouldn't've said that."

"Frog!  " Burton called from down the beach, his arms up to catch the
football Wilman'd just thrown.  "I heard that, Frog!  " He caught the
ball, and already he and Wilman were running up toward the blanket and
the food, both of them hollering "Frog Man!  The Frog Man!  " Of course
Annie was all smiles, and went around the blanket, knelt next to Gene,
Brenda Kay still rocking.  She said, "But you still love me."

"Maybe, " he said, and Barbara and Sarah and I all laughed at that the
grandkids swarming up now, all of them calling out "Frog!  Frog Frog!

" "Let's go ahead and eat, " I said, "before sand gets all in
everything, " and Gene stood, went to the ice chest, pulled from inside
it a can opener and started in on cans of soda pop for the kids, Nehi
grape and orange and lemon-lime, next, he opened cans of beer for the
men, Sarah and Annie taking one right along with them, Barbara making a
tsk-tsk sound and grabbing up a Nehi orange for herself.

I went a few feet toward the rocks, where Leston was casting, cupped my
hands around my mouth, hollered out, "Come on in, Leston!  " He was
reeling in his line, and turned to me.  "First quiet I've had today!  "
he called, his voice nearly swallowed by the wash of the waves.

He was smiling.

"Suit yourself, " I said, though only to myself, and I turned back to
the family, everybody eating now, Gene with his head back and Annie
feeding him potato chips one at a time like they were grapes.  Jeannie
and Susan were giggling, mocking them, Jeannie's head was back the same
as Gene's, and Susan held a chip just above her mouth.  "Oh, Frog!  "
she said, and they both fell down, laughing.  Burton said, "Now y'all
cut that out, " and Sarah, next to him, a piece of fried chicken in her
hands and almost to her mouth, stopped, said, " Y'all.  You're never
going to lose that."

"Damn right, " Wilman said, and Barbara laughed, slapped at his leg.

"Bill, " she said.  "Watch your mouth."

Bill.

Brenda Kay gave out a moan seemed even louder than normal for her, and
I went to the grocery bag the paper plates and napkins were in, pulled
out one of each.  I said, "Now we'll get you some food, Brenda Kay, "
the words just me talking to myself.

But before I even had a spoonful of potato salad on the plate, there
was Gene handing Brenda Kay a can of Nehi grape.  She stopped her
rocking, smiled up at him, took it.

"There you go, " he'd said to her.

I had every dish cleaned and put away now, the table cleared and wiped
clean.  Brenda Kay was still at the table, the transistor up to her
ear, Leston in the front room with Annie and Mrs. Zafaris.  It was
seven-twenty already, and I had pictures in my head of Billie Jean
having rolled her car somewhere between Blythe and Indio, that
wasteland she'd die in thinking this was all California was, desert and
rocks.

Then the doorbell rang, and I went into the front room just as the door
pushed open, Brad and Robert rushing in and grabbing me round the
knees, the two of them calling, "Gramma!  Gramma!  " Next came Barbara,
Timmy in her arms, asleep.  "Sorry about the doorbell, " she said, "but
Robert wanted to do it.  No way to stop."  She smiled, and I patted the
boys' heads, said, "Nothing wrong with hearing your doorbell ring.

Kind of nice, I think."

Leston stood as Wilman came in.  Wilman said, "She's not here yet?  "
and Leston shrugged, said, "You know Billie Jean."

They shook hands, and Barbara turned, headed back toward our bedroom.

"I'm going to lay Timmy down, " she said, but Wilman was already
talking to his daddy, the two of them speaking low on how Wilman's
sales route was proving out, how the additions at El Camino were
progressing.

Brad and Robert had let go of me, were over now at Annie, her still up
on the stool.  The two boys put out their hands, just touched the white
material, and Annie glowered down at me, whispered, "Momma."

"Come on now, boys, " I said, "Brenda Kay and I baked some cookies the
other day, and there's still some left."

They turned right then, took off for the kitchen.

By eight-thirty, Burton and Sarah and their children were here, and
still there was no sign of Billie Jean.  Mrs. Zafaris finished with
the dress and was gone, clearing out at least that much room for the
grandchildren to tussle and fuss in, Timmy still fast asleep in the
bedroom, Jill on her hands and knees and laughing and drooling, trying
to keep up.  Wilman and Burton and Leston sat in the front room talking
mostly of Royal Crown and all the goings on, the same talk as always.

My two sons threw out the names of their bosses and shook their heads,
Leston all the time nodding away like he knew these men they talked of,
when I knew all along it was just pride in his sons, they were doing
fine, Wilman and Barbara getting ready to buy a house all the way down
in Buena Park, out in Orange County, Burton with an eye on a house
closer in, just over to Torrance.

Annie was in the kitchen with us, huddled against the wall phone, face
to the corner of the room, whispering and laughing to Gene.  She turned
around now and again to wave off a laughing grandchild or two tugging
at her.  Brenda Kay was eating a cookie, scribbling on a pad of paper
with one of those old red pencils left over from when Annie used to use
them, just scribbling away and moaning to the music from the radio at
her ear.

It was near on to her bedtime already, and she still had to have her
bath.  Already, too, she'd started in to whining about all the ruckus
the grandchildren were making, her leaning her head to one side like
she does, then letting out with a loud "Momma, please!  " testy-like,
almost crying.  She was used to the quiet of a house this time of
night, not to all these people, all this noise.

Then, above it all, I heard a car pull up and stop out on the street,
me already standing, ready for it to be her.

Everything else carried right on, no one hearing a thing, and I went
into the front room, cut through the middle of the men talking, weaved
my way round children, and made it to the door, opened it.  "Momma,
please!  " I heard Brenda Kay call out behind me, then heard Barbara
say, "Boys, quiet down."

A car was parked on the street, the engine already ticking down.  It
was dark out there, the only light that from a lamppost four or five
houses down, so I couldn't tell who was inside until the driver door
opened up.

Then Billie Jean stepped out, cried, "Oh, Momma!  " and came to I me
across the lawn.  She had her arms up, a purse hanging from the crook
of her elbow, and when she made it to me she almost knocked me down, so
much force in her hug.  She hugged me and hugged me, eight years' worth
of a hug, and I turned with her in my arms, the two of us making a slow
circle there in the yard.

I pulled away from her, saw in the dark a woman's face now, thinner,
longer, her eyes harder, deeper somehow, her hair poofed up and sad
high on her head, a week away from whatever fashionable Mississippi
hairdo she'd gotten before she left.  I saw all this in the dark of a
lamppost so that she looked gray, her skin and eyes and hair all
different shades of gray.  Billie Jean.

"Now where's my grandchildren?  " I said, and I turned toward the car,
my arm round her waist, hers around mine.

We started to the car, and I thought I could see in the back seat the
shadow outlines of two children.  "Elaine?  " I said.  "Matthe ?  " and
squinted at the darkness inside, us almost to the sidewalk.

Billie Jean let go, went to the rear door, opened it.  She stood there
a moment or two like a chauffeur, her standing tall, then she leaned
in, said, "You two come on out now."

She stood up again, and I saw first two shiny black shoes, then two
legs in black pants, then a white shirt and black bow tie, then a boy,
a little boy standing at the curb, hands at his side, just standing
there, looking at the ground.

Billie Jean let go the door handle, squatted next to him and fiddled
with the tie, though it seemed perfectly straight to me.

"Matthe , " she said, "I want you to go over and give your Grandma
Hilburn a big hug.  You do that."

He didn't look up from the ground, but started toward me, and I went to
him, scared as he must have been at meeting me on a dark street like
this, an old woman he'd never met, him tired as he was after five days
on the road.

I took him in my arms, hugged him, Billie Jean's baby, him already
four, four, his hair greased and combed and parted in the middle.  I
said, "I'm so glad to meet you, Matthe .  I'm your Grandma Hilburn, and
I want you to know I love you."

I tried to get him to look at me, for his eyes to meet mine so he could
see exactly what I meant, that in fact I loved him, though I didn't
know him, knew him only through the parade of letters and photographs
she'd sent over the years, letters filled with the daily news all our
lives were filled with.  Only in this way could I know how he'd busted
open his chin after falling down the front porch steps not a week after
he was walking, and that it'd taken seventeen stitches to put him back
together.  Nor could I know his first tooth had come out only two weeks
ago but through his momma's words .  to me on paper, and that the tooth
fairy'd left him a nickel under his pillow, which he swallowed the next
morning in the belief the money was needed to grow the next tooth back
into place.  And only through letters could I know the other child, the
one still inside the car, my granddaughter Elaine, and how she refused
to let Billie Jean pick out her clothes for her, coming out of her room
each morning neat and clean and dressed better than Billie Jean herself
could do.  Little Miss Independent, Billie Jean called her in her
letters.

Still, I looked at Matthe s eyes, trying to get him to look at me.  I
said, "Show me that place where your tooth used to be, " and I smiled,
touched his cheek.  But he wouldn't look at me.

Billie Jean was whispering hard into the back seat now, and I thought I
heard a small slap, thought maybe it was just her spanking the car seat
to get her child moving, but then I heard Elaine start in to crying,
and I wondered what it was to set her off.

"Billie Jean?  " I said, and stood.  "You okay?  " She was pulling
Elaine out, her crying loud and long now, and then I could see her,
frilly dress gray out here, her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail,
her face screwed up into a cry, Billie Jean holding her by the wrist
and sliding her out onto the curb next to her brother.

"This is a fine how do you do you're making for Grandma Hilburn, "
Billie Jean said, and still the child cried, put her free hand to her
face, rubbed back tears I couldn't see.

"There, there, " I said.  "It's been a long trip, I know."

"We'd of been here earlier if it weren't for the traffic, " she said
above her daughter's crying.

"And if we didn't have to stop, put on Sunday clothes, " Matthe
half-whispered, his head still down.

I laughed at that, trying hard to calm down the air out here, but it
didn't work.  His comment only served, it seemed, to set Billie Jean
off.

"Now don't you start up with me, Matthe , " she said, and I could tell
her teeth were clenched.  "Just you don't."

"I won't, " he said.

"He can if he wants, " Elaine said, all that crying suddenly gone.  She
wasn't even breathing hard.  "He can pitch a fit if he wants.  We can
do whatever we want.  Papa told us so."

"Don't, " Billie Jean whispered.  "You don't."

"They're divorced, " Elaine said right then, her eyes on her momma.

"What?  " I said, and swallowed hard, took a breath.

Elaine's mouth was straight, no smile or frown or anything there.  Only
this child's gray face, a gray dress, beside her her gray brother and
her gray momma.  She was watching her momma, watching her, I saw, to
see what she'd do.  l l

"Oh, Momma!  " Billie Jean cried out even louder then, let go Elaine's
hand.  She made fists of her hands, put them to her eyes, my oldest
daughter like a child all over again, crying.

"What?  " I said again.  I let go Matthe , felt dazed, though my body
automatically did what a momma needed to do right then, I went to
Billie Jean, held her tight, rocked her.  And then I cried, too.  I
opened my eyes a moment or so, saw the two of them, these displaced
children, surprised and puzzled at all of this as any children would
be, their momma suddenly made small enough to be a child, the child of
this old woman they'd never laid eyes on.

"Two years, " Billie Jean cried, "two years, " and she sobbed.

A moment later I felt new hands on me, and I opened my eyes, saw
Barbara and Annie and Sarah crowded round us, smiles on their faces,
and I realized they hadn't heard Elaine's words, them believing these
tears we were giving out were tears of joy, tears being spent on a long
overdue welcome to Billie Jean and her children.

The knot of us turned, headed toward the door, where more people
spilled out, Burton and Wilman, then the grandkids, all of them
clustering round us as we finally made it to the door, where Leston
stood, hands on hips, smiling.

"Daddy, " she said, and she tried her best, I could see, to sniff back
her tears, catch hold her breath, smile up at him.  But it was no use,
she looked at him a moment longer, then burst out again, her face in
the light from inside all red now, no longer that dead gray out at the
curb.

Her face was red with crying, and I leaned hard into her, held her
tight.  Take hold of it, I thought.  Make it work.

My breath was hollow, short, my fingers tingling with the sharp edge of
the news she'd brought, real news, not that she'd passed off in what
now seemed useless letters.  Gower Cross, I thought, and suddenly saw
Burton flinching at that name the day we'd driven into Los Angeles
and'd told him his sister'd married him.  All I knew of this Gower
Cross was that he worked long hours and traveled a lot.  That was all I
knew of him, and then, just as suddenly, I saw how little I knew of my
own Billie Jean, her able to hide so well her life from us, only to
have the darkest and biggest secret she could carry coughed up by her
own daughter.

I held her even tighter, whispered into her ear just loud enough for
only her to hear in the midst of all this commotion, "You just hug your
daddy.  We'll talk about this later.  Just don't you worry none."  And
still I didn't know what I'd say to her, how I could keep her from
worrying, and now the tingling moved from my fingers into my hands,
started creeping into my arms.  I knew nothing of what to do next.

She nodded through her crying, and left my arms for her daddy's only a
couple feet away.

I turned from everyone, looked back for Matthe and Elaine.

The other grandkids stood round them out at the car, Matthe and Elaine
dressed up and shiny, the others messy and beat from a day at hard
play.

They all stood off from Billie Jean's children, a loose circle, none of
the children saying a word, only sizing each other up.

I crossed the lawn and neared them, said to the regulars, "Now y'all
scoot, let these children get some air, " and slowly they scattered,
Brad and Robert and Susan and Jill backing away a few steps before
jumping into the old routine of running and screaming, this night an
extra treat, I knew, what with staying up late and being out on the
street in the dark.  "On in the house, " I shouted after them.  "Go
introduce yourselves to Aunt Billie Jean, " I said.  They stopped the
circles they were making in the yard, arms out, Robert and Jeannie
already staggering a little though they'd just started twirling.  "Now
get on, " I said.

They turned, headed back inside, where they started laughing again.

"Momma, please!  " I heard Brenda Kay cry, even out here in the
street.

"Bath, Momma!  " she yelled.

But I stooped down there in the yard, looked Elaine and Matthe straight
in the eye, and I said, "Now I don't want to start out things in the
wrong way.  I want you to know right out that I love you both.  I'm
your grandma."  I paused, said, "You understand that?  " They looked at
the ground then, at the grass, slowly nodded.  "Yes'm, " Matthe said,
and Elaine whispered, "Yes, ma'am."

"Fine manners, " I said, and smiled, though they still wouldn't look at
me.  "I don't know what you all been through, but I'm certain of one
thing only, it's not been pleasant."

At this Matthe started to sniffing, reached up and rubbed his nose.

"But you're at my house now, my and your granddaddy's house, and we're
here to take care of you, because we love you."  I paused again, said,
"Do you understand that, too?  " They both nodded.

"Then what I want you to do for now is just to keep quiet about the
problem.  You know, about the " "The divorce, " Elaine whispered.  She
looked up at me, and put two fingers to her lips, made the old move
like she was twisting a key.  "My lips are sealed.  Matthe ?  " She
nudged him with an elbow.

His head still down, him still sniffing, he quick brought two fingers
to his mouth, twisted them like a key just as his sister had.

"Itcome out, and everybody'll know, " I said, and smiled, though
suddenly the huge size of all this slammed into me.

"It'll come, " I said again, "and we'll all of us know, but you got my
guarantee there's nobody going to love you any less for it.  Nobody.  I
love you.  Your granddaddy loves you.  Your aunts and uncles and all
those cousins love you.  They do."  They were words just coming out of
me now, loose and free, but taking on their own meaning in spite of
that.  It was the truth, we loved them, we did.  Maybe I even loved
them more now than I would have because of whatever it was they'd gone
through.

Divorce.  Divorce was what they'd been through, and I saw how little I
knew, too, of that whole ugly territory.  All I knew of it was a man
walking toward my house when I was a little girl, a man who smelled of
pomade and who patted my head.  I never even knew if my parents were
divorced or not, though they might as well have been.  And that was
when I reached a hand to both of them, touched the cheeks of both my
grandchildren, because what I did know was the pain I'd carried with
me, the pain buried deep in me, planted by the sorrow in my own mother,
the touch of my father's hand on my head.  These two children had their
own pain, no pain I could ever know because it belonged to them.  But I
had my own, and hoped that by my touch they might see I knew a piece of
what they held in their own hearts.  Just a piece of that pain.

"Now let's come on in, " I whispered, and stood, brought my hands from
their faces, held them out for them to take.

Matthe was the first, though he still hadn't looked up.  He took my
hand, and then Elaine took the other, and I turned with them, headed
toward the front door.

I looked up from the two of them, and saw the silhouettes in the window
of four children, just standing there.  They saw me looking, and
disappeared in a swirl of laughter.

Billie Jean sat next to Brenda Kay at the table, an arm around her.

Brenda Kay'd taken the radio from her ear, was grinning and grinning.

"Bijen!  " she shouted out to me as I came in, and I nodded, said,
"Your long lost sister."  I smiled, smiled at all the faces of my
children, all of them here except for James, who'd arrive sometime
tomorrow with his own group in tow.  They were all here at the table,
Sarah and Barbara leaning against the counter and smiling, too.  Every
one smiling, from Leston there at the head of the table right on down
to Brenda Kay.  I'd dropped Matthe and Elaine off in the front room
with the grandkids, figured it best to let them settle in that way
before being forced to face all these adults, and Brenda Kay.

But though Billie Jean was smiling, of course there was the huge and
awful secret I knew of her.  I could see right off that sorrow hidden
in her face, in her smile, in the way she reached up just then to
Brenda Kay and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.  There was behind
her smile, her moves, her eyes the knowledge of something I'd never
faced before, never knew, never would.

It was my mother's face I was seeing.  That was what I recognized in
her, the look of defeat, of love lost or squandered or never found at
all.  My mother was seated at our table, and I felt my heart squeeze
down on itself, felt my throat knot up, felt my eyes ready to brim
over.

Divorce was there in her fingers as she brought that hand down and
laced it together with the fingers of her other hand on the table and
held them tight together, too tight, and I wondered how anybody
couldn't see there was something wrong, so wrong in my daughter.

Burton and Wilman blabbered on and on with their questions about how
things were back home, asking after old girlfriends and high school
football teams.

There sat Leston, too, him smiling all the while and nodding, a
cigarette smoldering in his hand.  He didn't look at me, his eyes on
his daughter and on his sons, them surrounding him in just the manner I
knew he dreamed of.  He drew in on the cigarette, held the smoke, and I
wondered at what had held our own marriage together all these long
years.  Love was in us, certainly, but even when I'd decided to move
our family to California without Leston's blessing, I'd still pictured
him going with us, even if I'd had to tie him to the roof.

We'd been through it, I knew, too, and for a moment I marveled at the
fact we'd not gotten divorced after all.  Then Leston finally let out
the smoke, chuckled at something Wilman said, and in that smile, in
that smoke, I thought that it was precisely because of all we'd gone
through that we were still together.  Him without me wouldn't have
worked, just as me without him would have failed.  I drew power from
him, he from me.

And now he was a new man, a confident and successful man allowed to
laugh and smoke and call his boys over to work for him.  Head of
Maintenance.  Leston Hilburn.

I looked back at Billie Jean, and wondered from where she drew the
power to smile as she did, to keep up the hiding she seemed to be doing
so well.  I wondered how long it would last.

She answered the boys' questions as best she could, gave out numbers
and names and shrugged, too, when she didn't know, then asked questions
herself after this Gene her baby sister was about to marry, how tall he
was, how they met, her all the while smiling.

And again the magnitude and depth of what she'd been through pierced
me, and I saw how all these words were working for however short a time
to cover her, to keep her from the real topic that'd come out sooner or
later.  Again I wondered what it was I'd do to make good on that
promise to her we'd talk about it, and the promise, too, I'd made to
her children, that everybody'd know, that the truth would come out,
that things would be fine.  I had no idea where any of that would
start.

I called out, "Brenda Kay, bath time, " and went to her, took hold of
her hand, tried my best not to let my eyes meet on Billie Jean's for
fear of what she might see in me, Fear.  Cowardice.  Seeking refuge in
my retarded daughter and what routine I could use to put off whatever a
momma was supposed to do here and now, a divorced daughter and two new
grandchildren on her hands.

Brenda Kay stood right off, the transistor radio in her hand.

"That radio's from Gene, " Annie said to Billie Jean.  "It's so cute.

She won't go anywheres without it.  Momma even lets her bring it in and
listen to it while she's taking her bath."

Gene, I remembered.  And Annie getting married day after tomorrow, and
suddenly it was like Mrs. Zafaris and Annie in that dress had all been
years before, not on this night.  Not tonight at all.

"Night, all!  " Brenda Kay called out as she walked along behind me
into the front room, and I said, "We'll be back for hugs good-night in
a few minutes."

"I love you, Brenda Kay!  " Billie Jean said.

"Love you, " Brenda Kay said.

The grandchildren were sitting in a circle on the floor, Matthe and
Elaine right there and part of them.  They'd gotten a deck of cards
from the end table drawer.  It was a Crazy Eights deck, on the cards
pictures of clowns instead of diamonds and spades and clubs and hearts,
and as we walked through the middle of the circle, Brad said, "Susan,
do you have a six?  " "Go fish, " Susan said.

"Liar, " Jeannie said, and I spoke up, said, "We'll not talk like that
here."

I glanced down, saw Matthe and Elaine both with their mouths open,
staring at Brenda Kay, their hands fallen down in their laps to reveal
every card they held.

I stopped, said, "This is your Aunt Brenda Kay, " and smiled.

They said nothing, and Brenda Kay said, "Momma, bath!  " "Say hello,
Brenda Kay, " I said.

"Hello, " she said.  She wouldn't look at them.

Brad said, "You guys, hold your cards up so we can't see them."

But Matthe and Elaine didn't move, only stared, and I saw in their
faces how much there was to do, how much.  These other grandchildren,
the regulars, knew how to act around Brenda Kay just talk to her,
smile, hug her when they came over.  That's all.  And when she got
cranky like this, just ignore her.  It was my job to take care of her,
get her bathe , lay out her clothes for the next day, get her to bed,
keep her happy.  My job.

Robert said, "Matthe , do you have a nine?  " and Brad reached over to
him, pushed his little brother's shoulder, said, "It's not your turn,
dodo."

"Y'all behave now, " I said, and we moved on toward Brenda Kay's
bedroom, and the refuge giving her her bath would give me.  Matthe and
Elaine'd be here tomorrow morning.  They'd be here, and so would Billie
Jean.  Tomorrow.

I turned on the light in Brenda Kay's room, and there on the bed lay
Jill and Timmy, curled up and pink and asleep, oblivious to everything,
just babies not yet walking, asleep here in a house not their own, in a
bedroom not their own.  My grandchildren.

"Babies, Momma, " Brenda Kay whispered, and for a moment it was as if
someone else had spoken, as though there might be some fine and lovely
ghost haunting the room, the words easing themselves into my ear like
warm light.

She'd whispered, a sound she'd never made before, her words all these
years so tight and forced and hollow in her throat.  Brenda Kay
whispered, and I turned quick to her, saw her with a finger to her
lips, saw her mouth pucker up and watched her blow air out, what I knew
was her imitation of somebody saying Shhh.

Her seventeen, and still learning.  Seventeen, and this new move in
her, and I felt myself smile, felt my hands moving of their own up to
her and hugging her, holding her hard, harder, maybe, than I'd held
Billie Jean out there on the lawn.  I held her tight, until finally I
let go, pulled back, saw her smiling at me.

I said, "Now where'd you learn that?  " She shrugged, still smiling.

"Babies, " she whispered, again that new sound out in the air, here in
the universe, a new sound that signaled me there was always hope, even
in the face of whatever ugly surprises the same old God could dish
up.

I gave her one more quick hug, then took her by the elbow and guided
her back out into the hall, cut off the light behind me, led her into
the bathroom, closed the door behind us.

I sat on the toilet seat, said, "We can just undress in here tonight, "
and reached down, untied her white shoes.  "Lift, " I said, and she
lifted her right foot, then her left as I took off the shoes.  She
lifted the right foot again, let me slide her sock off, did the same
for the left.

Next I reached up, started unbuttoning her blouse for her like I did
every night.

She was still smiling, still had a hand up to her lips, still blew out,
so very pleased at my reaction, at what attention she'd gotten out of
it.  I finished with the last button, started to slip the blouse off,
and said, "Now you tell me who taught you that, little girl.  Mr.
White?  " "Whisper, Momma, " she whispered, and brought her hand down
just long enough for me to take off the blouse.  Still she smiled.

"Now turn around, " I whispered, and she smiled even bigger, her teeth
showing now.  Our moves were rote in us both, us here at our nightly
task, and she turned her back to me so I could unfasten the little
white cotton brassiere she started wearing two years ago.  But it was
the whispering that was different, and I wondered how long this game
might go on in our lives, how many days or weeks or years.  I smiled.

I undid the brassiere, dropped it next to the blouse, whispered, "Let's
turn around, " even as she was turning.  I whispered, "Was it Mr.
White?

" She shook her head, her finger still to her lips.

I reached up, put my hands to the elastic waist of her slacks, started
easing them down over her hips.  Once I'd gotten them down to her
knees, revealing like every other night the series of scars across her
legs like red maps of some strange and made-up countries, scars that
made my stomach twist the same every time I saw them, I closed my eyes,
whispered, "So who was it taught you to whisper?  Was it Annie?  " The
slacks were down at her ankles now, and she lifted her feet again,
slowly kicked them off.  I opened my eyes.  She stood before me in just
her cotton underdrawers, her finger still up, the transistor radio
tight in her other hand.  There were her breasts, small and
insignificant, the nipples the palest pink imaginable.

I leaned over to the tub, twisted on the water, let it run on my
hand.

I looked up at her, said, "Was it little Susan?  " "Whisper, Momma, "
and I could barely hear her for the water into the tub.  It was warm
now, and I took the white plug from the edge of the tub, settled it
into the drain, and felt the bathroom warming up.  The tiny room was
suddenly a fine and beautiful place, green tiles up the walls around
the tub, wallpaper Burton and Wilman'd put up earlier this year on the
rest of the walls, great sailboats out at sea, sails all rigged up and
full.  Two gold-painted plaster angelfish hung on the wall behind
Brenda Kay, a magazine rack filled with old Reader's Digests sat next
to me between the wall and the toilet, a soft and pale green rug lay on
the floor in front of the sink beside Brenda Kay.  Steam lifted into
the room now, and I breathe it in, filled my lungs.

I sat up from the water, kept on with the game.  I whispered, "Was it
little Susan?  " She shook her head.

I reached to her waist, started peeling down her underdrawers.  The
little window up above the bathtub was open, let the warmth from the
water fog up the room more than otherwise, and now the room was cozy,
the refuge I was looking for, what I wanted while I thought things out,
put off taking hold and making it work for however long I could, even
if just until we were through with this bath.  Just that much.

"Then who was it taught you?  " I whispered.

I got Brenda Kay's underdrawers down to her ankles, let her lift her
feet up yet again, and saw it.

The steam in the room made me have to hold the underdrawers up closer
to my face, and I held them in my hands, held them and stared.

There at the crotch was a bloodstain the size and shape of an egg.

Nothing new, yet still a surprise, a simple and sad gift from God.

I looked up at her, saw her through the thin steam smiling at me,
whispering something, her finger at her lips and the rush of water into
the tub keeping whatever word she uttered from reaching me.

Yet even through the rise of tears in my throat, through the rise of
the knowledge of what exactly this in my hands meant, even through that
I managed to whisper, "Who taught you to whisper?  " one final time.

She leaned closer to me, didn't even see the bloodstained underdrawers
in my hands, or if she did, didn't think it had anything to do with
her, which, I saw, was the truth, her bleeding every month'd never mean
anything other than dirty underdrawers, than her momma having to check
the seat of her pants four and five times a day just to make certain
she wasn't soaking through.  What I held in my hands would never mean
anything.

Her smiling face wasn't six inches away when she stopped leaning toward
me.  She took her finger from her lips.

"Dennis, " she whispered, and put her finger to her lips again, blew
air out.

I let my head drop, closed my eyes.  I said, "Get in the tub."

"Whisper, Momma, " she whispered, but I only leaned over to the faucet,
turned off the water, said full-voiced, "Get in the tub, " and heard
how the sound of my voice banged off the tiles in here, how it
ricocheted and rounded in this tiny room, at the same time shattered
any sense of refuge might've been in here to start.  It was gone, and
suddenly I knew it'd never existed.  Refuge from my life wasn't
possible, of course, not even here, in a bathroom in a house in
Manhattan Beach, the house filled with children and grandchildren.

And then, as if God's slap had been lost on me, as though I hadn't just
seen in the bloodstain in my daughter's underdrawers, in her whispered
word that you could never take refuge from your life, never get away
from what you had to do before you, somebody knocked on the bathroom
door.  No surprise at all.  Enter trouble.  No news here.

"Momma, " Burton said.  "Momma, you better come on out here, " he
said.

"Billie Jean, she's crying out here.  She's crying, and so are Matthe
and Elaine."  He paused.  "Momma, " he said, "all hell's breaking loose
out here."

"Just a minute, " I said.  I was still there on the toilet, still had
my eyes closed.  "Just wait, " I said.

I heard Brenda Kay climb in the tub, settle herself, then heard the
transistor radio come on, some silly rock and roll song, a girl asking
again and again for somebody named Kooky to lend her his comb.

"Momma?  " Burton said, and I opened my eyes.

I said, "I'll be out in a minute or so."  I said, "Crying's good for
you, " and I swallowed hard, stood from the toilet, then got down on my
knees before the tub, took the washrag from where it hung on the
faucet.  With my other hand I reached for the bar of soap nestled in
the corner where the walls and tub met.  I put my hands with the soap
and rag into the warm water, started lathering it up.

"In a minute, " I said, and started in on Brenda Kay.

CHAPTER 31.

WHAT MORE CAN I SAY EXCEPT THAT I UNDERSTOOD LESTON WHEN HE came home
from work one evening in April, him in his white dress shirt and thin
black tie, his black pants and shined wing tip shoes, standing there in
our kitchen.  Brenda Kay sat at the table, the transistor to her ear,
in her other hand a thick green crayon held tight, her hand squirreling
out with the greatest of efforts the rows of letters she'd been making
for three months now, the huge and joyful triumph of them, What is
there for me to say, except that I understood him when he smiled down
at Brenda Kay, touched her hair with one hand, with his other loosened
the tie at his throat, then looked at me.  A cigarette hung there at
his lips like always, across his face a smile that creased his eyes
nearly closed, this man Head of Maintenance at El Camino College, my
husband.

He tapped ash into the handprint ashtray Brenda Kay'd made so long ago,
and said, "We're moving back."

What is there for me to say, except I understood him?  Because I did.

Though I hadn't known it was coming, I could have seen it if I'd dared
pay that kind of attention to him.  There were clues, his life moving
along with no help from me, as I could tell.  Just moving, while I'd
always been all eyes on Brenda Kay.

The first clue had come years ago, when I'd stopped pressing the gray
uniform he'd worn for so long, traded in for the dry-cleaning allowance
and the shirt and tie.  And there had been the way he'd made love that
night, the power that'd returned to him and his hands, how he'd held
me.

And lately there'd been the clue of his new interest in what Brenda Kay
was interested in.  There was a new program on the television, !

"American Bandstand, " a man named Dick Clark running the thing, on the
program all kinds of musical bands every Saturday morning.  We'd gotten
the television as a gift from Burton and Wilman not long after Annie
and Gene got married, my little Annie and her husband with a baby of
their own now, Laura, and with another one on the way.  Brenda Kay
watched the program every time it was on, and now she could see the
boys and girls who sang the songs she listened to on the old transistor
Gene'd given her, her eyes wide when those groups sang, even wider when
the children in the audience were shown dancing.  On Saturday mornings
when Burton or Wilman or, now, Gene weren't over and helping out,
Leston'd sit right there alongside her and watch with her, point out to
Brenda Kay teenagers dancing who seemed funny, the two of them laughing
in the front room while I went about my Saturday chores of cleaning the
kitchen, vacuuming, all else I had to ignore during the week when I was
at Brenda Kay's school.

Leston'd been there through Dennis, too, had assumed a sort of position
in things by volunteering himself to go over to his house, square off
with his parents, even Dennis himself.  I'd just smiled at his ideas,
at how he still thought children and their problems could be solved
with muscle and weight, as though Brenda Kay and Dennis were nothing
more than kids whose parents didn't want them to date each other.  For
two years now the battle'd been on, I'd forbidden the two of them to
ride together, sit with each other, share food or pencils or anything
else.

All of it in vain, of course, still Brenda Kay would come home and
whisper to me, laugh at the mention of his name, or she'd see a boy and
girl on "American Bandstand" dancing away, point at the two of them,
holler out, "Dennis!  Brenda Kay!  " But nothing more than that came of
the two, no wavering in the way things between them fell.  I didn't
know if it was because of me and what I'd resolved to do that night two
years ago when she'd first whispered his name to me, or if it had to do
with Dennis' mom, Terri L'Coste, her full aware of what was up and as
resolved to keep the two apart as I was.  Nor did I know if it weren't
just the two of them themselves, this seeing each other in the faces of
teenagers on the television all they could know of love.

And there had been the giant clue Leston'd given as to the future of
our days here in California.  It was a clue I hadn't seen at all, one
that came the day she gave to him the first row of letters she'd ever
made, those B's labored and forced and hard, but B's all the same.  Mr.
White'd been stone resolved not to start her in on letters and such,
her not testing in at a suffficient level for him.  But I'd seen him
working with the children for years on their letters, and I took to
filling in the afternoons until Leston pulled in, with working on her
name one letter at a time, first through the curves in the letter B,
then the straight lines, until she was making one and two and three of
them of an afternoon.  We never told Leston what we were up to.

Then three months ago I'd pulled the surprise on him, had Brenda Kay
make an entire row in one afternoon.  When Leston walked in the door,
there stood Brenda Kay, all smiles, a hand behind her back.  I stood in
the doorway between the kitchen and front room, a dishtowel in my
hands, behind me the kitchen filled with the smells of fried ham and
mashed potatoes and biscuits, and I said, "Go ahead, Brenda Kay.  Show
your daddy what you did."

She quick brought the hand from behind her back, held out the sheet of
lined paper straight out of a tablet just like the ones I'd filled my
whole childhood.  There was a look on my Brenda Kay's face, one I'd
never seen before, a sort of startled surprise and pride, her eyebrows
as high up as they'd go, her mouth in a big open smile.  And there was
a look much the same on my husband, who took the paper from her hand,
looked at the row of gnarled letter B's there, then bent over and
kissed her cheek.

It was then he uttered the words it'd be months before I'd realize
meant more than they did, "We did it!  " he hollered out, and hugged
his baby daughter tight, an eighteen-year-old girl just completed her
first line of letters, all of them capital B's.

We did it.  I thought nothing of those words, only went to him and
kissed his cheek, then kissed Brenda Kay, her already laughing.  "B,
Daddy!  " she shouted, and Leston'd said, "B, Brenda Kay, " and laughed
more.

But suddenly, this evening in April, Leston's tie already loosened,
supper almost ready, I felt all these clues fall suddenly into a big
and intricate shape I couldn't quite recognize.  Still, I knew what he
meant when he said, "We're moving back."

"Moving where?  " I said to him, though no name had to be uttered.

He put the cigarette to his lips again, took one last drag, then
stubbed it out in the tray.  "Home, " he said, his eyes on the wisps of
smoke up from the dead cigarette.

I was at the counter, slicing up a green tomato I'd picked from the
small strip of vines that grew along the back of the house.  Leston
liked the green ones sliced up and fried, then spread with mayonnaise
and sprinkled with pepper, and I looked from him to the tomato on the
cutting board, the knife in my hand.  I closed my eyes a moment, opened
them, sliced right down and through the tomato, and again.

I said, "So we can run our lives right back into the ground.  Run right
back to that cracker life we had before."  I paused, though I kept
cutting away.  I said, "And this isn't home?  " I nodded at Brenda
Kay.

I said, "You see what she's doing there?  You think we'd be able to get
this far back where you call home?  " "We got this far, " he said.

I wouldn't let my eyes meet his, instead stared hard at Brenda Kay
wrestling those letters in her head to the paper, fighting hard for
them, the crayon nearly snapped in two for how hard she gripped it.

But still I saw him out the corner of my eye, saw him looking at me as
he pulled the tie on through his collar, slowly folded it up in his
hands.

"We got this far, " he said again.  I That night we lay in bed, me on
my side and facing him, but as far away from him as I could get.

Leston, I could make out in the dark, lay on his back, eyes open, his
hands behind his head on the pillow.

I whispered, "But she's writing.  She's got the first letter of her
name down so well she don't have to look at the letter B anymore to
write it."  I paused.  "I heard they'll all be starting up to Lawndale
High School soon.  Part of the day.  It's in the works."  I paused,
whispered, "We can't leave."

He whispered, "You taught her what she knows.  You taught her to write
that first letter to her name.  Just like you taught who knows who all
back home how to read and write.  You're a teacher.  That's you."  I
was quiet, then whispered, "Your job."

"My job, " he said, and in the light from the small shard of moon
through the window I thought I could see the shine of his eyes, wide
open and unblinking, him staring at the dark ceiling above us.

Then I saw him smile.  He whispered, "The reason I got my job is
because it's nigger work.  That's all."  He paused.  "I got the
position I do because it's a nigger job, and I was the only white boy
willing to do it.  I never told you that."

He rolled onto his side, faced me, and I lost his eyes, saw only his
silhouette, the shape of his head and shoulders, then the folds and
lines where the blanket and sheet took over.  There was that word,
right here in our bedroom, the two-syllable one that brought on the
specter of our old lives, that shadow never far from us at any given
moment, only one word away.  I'd always just said the word colored to
him each time he used the word nigger, nothing more.  But enough from
me to let him know I didn't approve of its usage around our home.  This
time, though, I was silent in a darkness that suddenly seemed thick and
full.

He said, "The man I replaced was a nigger, and he never gat to wear a
tie and wing tips the whole time he was with the college.  I l l l llt
ll it Gray uniforms every day.  Moses on his shirt.  Every day."  He
stopped again, and now I felt myself slowly move over toward him, felt
my body go from the comfort of sheets I'd already warmed up to a new
place in our bed, new terrain, the sheets cold but forgiving, warming
up quick enough to where the cold couldn't seep into me, chill me to
the bone like the fog did early mornings.  Then Leston's hand was on my
shoulder, just resting there.

He whispered, "But it don't matter, because I did it.  I did the
job."

He took a breath, held my shoulder a little tighter, then eased up.  "I
won, " he said, "and you won.  We beat this place.  Brenda Kay's near
on to writing her name, I wear a shirt and tie to work.  We're sitting
in a house worth enough money to buy a palace back home."

I closed my eyes, had seen enough, even though the room was dark.

I whispered, "What will we do there?  " "Live, " he said
straightaway.

"Eat.  Sleep."  He paused.  "Fish, " he said, and I could see him
smile, even through my closed eyes, even through the dark.  He
whispered, "I been in touch with Toxie.  He tells me there's a place'd
be perfect for us, down near to " "Toxie, " I cut in, "you been talking
to Toxie."

That was when I sat up in bed, started in on the hard fight I was ready
for.  Toxie.  Mississippi.  Fishing and smoking cigarettes.  I said out
loud, loud enough, I wanted to make sure, for Brenda Kay to wake up,
"You sure got the nerve to go on ahead and start making big plans for
this family.  You sure got the nerve."

He still lay on his side, the room silent a few moments, moments dark
and full and empty at once.  I hadn't lived here ten years just to see
all hell break loose.  I said, "Just who you think you are?  Just who
you think took care of Brenda Kay every day of her life?  Just who you
think took care, too, of your daughter, of Billie Jean and Matthe and
Elaine while they got set up here?  Who you think's got a job to do at
a school for retarded children?  You think you're going to lead me by
the nose down the primrose path you think moving back to Mississippi is
going to be?  " I stopped, breathe hard in and out, felt my face hot
and flushed in the dark, my hands in fists, palms sweating.  I listened
for the struggle of sheets that would be Brenda Kay waking up in the
next room, waited for her to cry out in the dark for me to come save
her.  But nothing happened.  She slept.

"Talk to me of nerve, " Leston said then, his words heavy and sharp and
black in the room, some huge ax through the darkness.  "Talk to me of
making big plans for a family, about going right ahead and doing what
you want for your family."  His voice was as solid as I'd ever heard
it, and I knew then it wasn't only me with resolve in this family,
wasn't only in my children, too.  It was here in bed next to me.  I
knew what was going on in his head, knew how he was leading me.

"Talk to me of nerve, Miss Jewel Hilburn, " he said, "and selling off a
house bit by bit, sending to magazines for brochures.  Selling a clock
off a wall with nobody's blessing but your own."  He paused, and the
words still hung in the air around me, shiny, black words just hanging
there.  He'd brought me and what I'd done back to fight me, slapped me
cold with my own history, with the tight ball of nerves and flesh that
made me me and nobody else.

Leston rolled onto his back again, put his hands behind his head again,
looked at the ceiling again.  He whispered just loud enough for only me
to hear, his voice total control, "I been here ten years for you.  You
railroaded me into this place, and I stayed.  I stayed, and now we beat
this place."  He stopped, and still I was breathing hard in and out,
because I could see the future already, .  saw in the dark hollow where
his eyes ought to be a place two thousand miles east of here, where the
air was thick and wet and hot, where things moved slowly and carefully
right on to their deaths.

He whispered, "It took you three years to get me out here.  Now I been
here ten, " his words even more quiet now, each of them almost a ghost
of its own in this room, a room not a half mile from the Pacific, where
waves beat against the shore every day, this world spinning round to
reveal what that day could bring, things as strange and full as rows
and rows of the letter B, as strange and empty as the idea of
Mississippi.

"And, " he whispered again, his voice now down to nothing, only a dream
of real words, "you are my wife."

The only sound then was me, breathing in and in and in.  Only me, and
then I swallowed, took one last huge and hard, deep breath, because I
understood him.

CHAPTER 32.

I NEVER KNEW MY HUSBAND TO BE HAPPIER.

We sold the house nine days after we listed it, made more money than it
seemed we would know to do with.  Three days later Leston went right
out, bought another new car, and when he came home driving a beige
four-door with wide whitewall tires, I wondered if he weren't just and
always the child, joyful at things he could drive, a life he could
control the way he'd controlled his voice in the dark of our bedroom,
and the way he'd controlled the lives of his children these long years,
James the only one to escape early enough on, and the way he controlled
the colored men who worked for him at El Camino, and the niggers back
in Mississippi, all of them controlled by him.

Except Brenda Kay, of course, me part and parcel of her.  Now we were
moving to where he called home, and now, I'd seen as he pulled into our
driveway that night with the new car, this would be his return in
triumph, and his last stand at controlling me.  You are my wife.

Hilburn and Wife Lumber Company, trooping off into the dark deep woods
of Mississippi.

He cut the engine, leaned his head out the open window.  "Well, " he
said, then opened the door, climbed out.  He slammed the door closed,
slapped the roof, smiled at me.  "What do you think?  Studebaker Lark
Regal."

Behind him the early evening fog'd begun to bank up, the sky to the
east a brutal, deep blue, the gray out over the ocean suddenly soft and
obliging.

I said nothing, only turned, went back into the house.  He knew what I
thought.  No need for words.

"Momma, " Anne said, little Laura in her lap, a pacifier plugged into
her mouth now there were twelve grandchildren, an even dozen, and my
Annie already expecting another one, too.  "Momma, there's just no
sense in this, " she said.

We were in the kitchen, Annie, Billie Jean, me and Brenda Kay, her at
the table with her paper and crayons and making swirls and lines and
jagged circles.  Annie sat across from her in Leston's chair.  Laura
held a saltine in one hand, banged on the tabletop with the other, her
eyes moving from me to Brenda Kay to her momma and back again.

Billie Jean had on her white uniform, the nurse's hat she wore all day
long now off her head and on the counter, her hair down.  Most
afternoons she dropped by on her way home from the hospital, Annie
coming by two or three afternoons a week, too, and stayed for a cup of
coffee.  Matthe and Elaine were taken care of by a lady with two
children of her own two doors down from Billie Jean's apartment, Annie
always on her way running an errand or three, and so it always seemed a
rush of time, that cup of coffee.  But at least my daughters came to
see me and Brenda Kay, and for that I was thankful.

But today the rush was gone, and when the two of them'd shown up to the
door at precisely the same moment, the looks on their faces the same
somber look, eyebrows knotted up, mouths closed tight, I knew right
away they were here on business.

"Can't Daddy see what this'll lead to?  " Billie Jean said, and pushed
herself off the counter, set her cup down.  "It's not a place people
want to move to, but from.  Annie's right, there's no sense in this at
all."

"So you tell me, " I said, and finished rinsing the beans in the sink,
wiped my hands with the dishtowel hung from the refrigerator handle.

"You two tell me what makes sense here.  Your daddy knows what I feel
about this.  There's been words passed.  It's not that I'm stumbling
through this with no regard for my Brenda Kay or me."  I took a breath,
put my hands together, as though that might turn my words into sensible
ones themselves, not just ones telling of my surrender.  I said, "He is
my husband, and he has let me know in no uncertain terms that we're
going back."  I paused, took another breath.  "I am his wife."

"Dammit, " Billie Jean said, and crossed her arms.

"Watch your mouth, " I said, and glanced at Brenda Kay, transistor to
her ear, her crayon still at work.  She hadn't heard a thing, had no
idea how her world would soon tumble back what felt like a hundred
years, a thousand.  Mississippi.

I looked at Billie Jean, saw the anger play across her face like I'd
seen it play too many times before.  She'd lived with us for three
months when she moved back, months too filled with the bickering of her
and her kids, too filled with Brenda Kay whining out Momma please!  all
afternoon and night long.

I knew the look on her face, knew it told of the blame and anger and
sorrow she put on that whole idea of marriage, of love.

Before she could say anything if she'd even thought to I said, "You
just drop that thought.  You best understand even entertaining the idea
of the word Divorce in this kitchen will get you booted right out into
the street.  Understand that."

She shot her eyes at me, as did Anne.  Laura still slapped at the
table, quiet music still came from Brenda Kay's radio.

"Momma, " Billie Jean started, "it's just that " "Don't, " I cut in.

"There's more that's passed between your daddy and me than you'll ever
know.  And there's more to just me than you'll ever know, too.  There
isn't any escaping this, that " "Divorce don't always mean escape,
Momma, " she said, and her hands were on her hips, her teeth
clenched.

"Don't you put that on me, Momma."

I was quiet.  We'd had this fight enough times, the two of us scrapping
our way around the house some days, me with the notion she was trying
to hide from the whole idea of marriage, that commitment, her with the
knowledge of what she'd left, so that she was always right, the one to
win.  I always had to remember the real truth, she was the only one
could know whether she'd done the right thing by getting divorced, just
as I was always the only one could know my own history, know why I
wasn't one to give up.

But here I was, my willingness to move as good a sign as any I was
giving up.

"I'm sorry, " I said, and I looked in her eyes, tried to smile.  I
said, "I just know from the life I've lived that what God hands down to
me has to be found before I can lay any plans.  Before I can see what I
can do."

I paused, still tried to smile.  "I don't know what's going to happen
out there.  You both know I don't want to go back there.  You know
that, " and I moved my eyes from Billie Jean's to Anne's, saw hers were
brimmed up, tears ready to fall.

"Annie, " I said, and I went past Billie Jean to her, touched her
shoulder.  Laura reached up, touched the front of my blouse.  "Don't
cry, " I said, though it seemed this was the only thing left for any of
us to do.

"Momma, " she said, her eyes never leaving mine, and now a single tear
slipped down her cheek.  "I don't want you to go."

Then I felt Billie Jean's hand on my shoulder.  She said, "I don't want
you to go, either, Momma."  She paused.  "That's all there is to say.

We don't want you to go."

"Then don't say another word, " I whispered, felt tears on my own
cheeks now.

I leaned to Annie, kissed her cheek, then turned to Billie Jean, and
held her.  My two daughters, st.  ill and always my children.

Yet still my children came by each night, spoke to me in the kitchen in
low voices of how we ought not to move, while Leston sat in the living
room reading over contracts on the house, the owner's manual for the
car, and studying hard the three photographs of the place Toxie'd lined
up for us.  It was a rental house on a bayou near Mchenry, a gray
wooden house six feet off the ground with a porch across the front, two
windows like empty eyes.  Behind the house was the bayou, sawgrass and
water.  In the third picture was Toxie himself, standing at the top of
the steps up to the porch, one hand resting on a support post for the
porch roof, the other hand the hand with only two fingers there on his
hip.  He had on overalls and a shortsleeve shirt.  He was smiling.

The pictures came the day after Leston'd informed me we were moving,
and I never got a straight answer out of him as to when he and Toxie'd
worked all this out.  What I wanted to know didn't matter to him, I
could tell, all he needed were those photographs, the ones he brought
with him to work each day, that he'd shown to every one of his
underlings there, that he'd shown to every one of his grandchildren,
right on down to baby Laura, him laughing and smiling all the while
with the joke of that "Start em thinking about heaven when they're
young, " he'd laughed to Gene though all I could see in those pictures
was heat, and sawgrass, and no single thing for my Brenda Kay nor me to
do there.

On the last few Saturdays and Sundays before we moved, the children
were at the house with us, packing up what we had into boxes.  The
grandkids had no idea, so far as I could tell, of what was going on,
simply danced around the cardboard boxes and laughed, ran out in the
yard or were at the beach with Barbara and Sarah and Gene, and I envied
them that.  I wanted to know again what it felt like to be a child, the
life you planned for yourself lined up and ready to be played out in
whatever way you wanted, perfect joy in the belief your life was in
your own hands.

But mine'd been taken from me now, wrestled free of my grasp with
simple words, You are my wife, my husband banking, and banking
correctly, on a promise to love, honor and obey I'd made him thirty-six
years ago.  Now none of what was happening not the packing, not the
money, not the true happiness in my husband none of it felt real.

Nothing was real, not even when Leston brought home the newspaper the
week before we moved, there on page twenty-six of the Gardena Chronicle
a photograph of him smiling in his white shirt and black tie, his face
at a three-quarter angle to the camera.

"Read that, " he said, and put his hands on his hips, smiled, tilted
his head.

I looked at him, me puzzled, surprised, somehow afraid, he'd given no
word to me that this was coming, an article about him, the headline
reading "ECC Head of Maintenance to Retire."

"Out loud, " he said.  I looked at him again, tried a smile, and read
the article.

Leston Hilburn, Head of Maintenance at El Camino College, will be
seeking early retirement, announced ECC president Lawrence Baldwin
yesterday.

"Mr. Hilburn has been of great value to the College for the last eight
years, " Baldwin was quoted as saying in a press release from ECC.  "In
that time he has not only decreased turnaround time for both major and
minor repairs to various College facilities and machinery, but he has
also increased morale among our maintenance crew and served as a model
of efficiency."

Hilburn, who will be 61 this year, has chosen to retire early "so that
I can head back home to Mississippi, " he said in a telephone interview
with the Chronicle.  "We've been here in Los Angeles for ten years, "
he continued, "and now my wife and I figure it's time we went back to
where we're from."

There was more, but that was where I stopped.  I looked up at him,
said, "I figured no such thing."

"What would you have me say?  " he said, the smile gone, his chin up
and head straight.  "I make the paper, and you figure I'll just say out
there to God and the world my wife don't want to go."

"I don't, " I said, and I quick folded the paper up, handed it back to
him.

But what I wouldn't tell him, and what didn't seem real at all, was
that for a moment I thought the picture in the paper was of my own
Jacob Chetauga.  The smile and head and white shirt and black tie
seemed the same man as in my old photograph, buried somewhere in this
mess of boxes we were readying for the move.  That feeling'd lasted
only a moment, an instant, but I'd felt it, and then I couldn't help
but wonder if in these last ten years Leston hadn't lived through his
own death and won out over it, just like my grandfather had.  The
broken rope had been proof of God's hand on all our lives, no matter
how hard we tried to will our lives in our own direction.  Maybe this
was God's will, I thought, maybe I'd already seen my husband live out
his death, and now he was coming up grinning and walking away, just
like my granddaddy'd walked away from a crowd ready to kill.

But then, for the first time in my life, for the first time ever, I
wondered if maybe, just maybe, it'd been only a broken rope, no more
than that.  An accident, and suddenly I saw this forced turn our lives
were taking might only be my husband's sad belief he knew what he was
doing.

It'd been my momma, dying before my eyes, who'd prayed my granddaddy
would have died the day he was hanged, my daddy on an aunt's shoulders,
watching it all.  It'd been my momma who'd wished my daddy would have
seen his own daddy die, because she thought he'd be a better man for
it, one who knew the difference between God's will and his own, the
difference between right and wrong.  And for an instant an instant no
longer than I'd thought the picture of Leston was of my granddaddy
Jacob Chetauga I let the same sort of prayer pass through me as before,
me full aware of what prayer could do.  It'd been me, of course, who
prayed my daddy'd never make it back to our house from that thick woods
he disappeared into each Sunday afternoon, and me, too, who pulled back
the gray wool blanket, revealed him dead to me and my momma and the
entire world.  And me, finally, to pray for ten fingers and ten toes on
my Brenda Kay.  That was the power of prayer.

So I prayed, Leston already unfolding the paper and reading out loud
the rest of the article, about his boys Bill and Burt working for Royal
Crown Cola in Watts, a third son in Texas, James, teaching high school,
and about his son-in-law Gene O'Reilly being a California Highway
patrolman.  I heard the article talk about a house in Mchenry already
rented out, while I let a minuscule prayer course its way through me,
Whatever death it is he's known these ten years, I offered up to my
God, that distant and puzzling and conniving God I thought I sometimes
knew, let him have died enough to see what's best for us.

I paused in the hallway, out of his line of sight Brenda Kay was in her
room, waiting for me to usher her to the bathroom, bathe her and I
listened to him read the rest of the article, listened for word of his
wife and her job, listened for word of Gene's wife, Annie, or for word
on his eldest daughter, Billie Jean, who'd taken a few night courses
over the last two years, then gotten a job as nurse over to Buena Park
Community Hospital in Orange County.  And I listened, most important,
for word of his retarded daughter, Brenda Kay, and the rows of letter
B's she filled her days with.

But there were no words of that sort, only a few more about the brief
and happy history of my husband's rise at El Camino College, and so I
let my prayer move through me again, eyes closed, face to the floor,
Let him have died enough.

In my head, though, was the picture of Billie Jean in my kitchen, arms
crossed, hair undone and down to her shoulders, teeth clenched.  Whose
will was being done here?  I wondered.  Was this God's will?  Could I
escape the will of God?  !

I .  , !  t Did God have any hand in this at all?

Billie Jean's image was in my head, the frustration she felt magnified
in me.  Let him have died enough.  I prayed again, but this time with a
few more words added for good measure, to see there's a wife and
daughter here with him.  Here was the brink of the old world, one I
didn't want to enter, satisfied, finally, with the new one I had, yet
my husband bound by pride and an old dead dream of a place called
Mississippi to bring us away from here.

I prayed.

We left for Mississippi anyway, left on a Saturday morning in the midst
of thick, cold fog and untold tears, from Billie Jean, who promised
she'd visit soon as she'd worked up enough vacation time, from Barbara
and Sarah both, though the two of them, I knew, must have been glad
their husbands'd be returned to them for weekends- from baby Laura
crying away at her two new teeth working in, and from Elaine and Matthe
, the two of them dressed up nearly the same as the night they'd been
brought here, Billie Jean with some strange notion our taking leave
needed Sunday clothes.  The rest of the grandchildren were crying, too,
all of them lined up in the front room of the empty house, our
furniture what we couldn't jam into the U-Haul trailer we were toting
with us to Mchenry diwied up among the children.

Wilman and Burton, of course, weren't crying at all, but grinned and
fidgeted, afraid, I knew, they might let go what they felt about their
daddy taking off without them.  Wilman had on his Royal Crown shirt and
pants and tie, was planning to take Brad and Robert to merchandise a
bit of his route down in Long Beach, Burton'd set his eyes on painting
their kitchen.  "I've been waiting three years for this, " Sarah'd
whispered to Barbara in the kitchen earlier as we were taking the last
kitchen things the coffeepot, the skillet I'd cooked our last morning's
breakfast in out to the Studebaker, Sarah certain, I figured, I
couldn't hear.  Or maybe certain I could.

Annie cried the most.  She cried and cried, and I knew it was because
I'd never had the moment I'd had with the rest of my children with her,
never'd been told by her she was leaving for her own, though she'd been
married for near two years now.  There'd never been a moment like the
one I'd had with James at supper back in Mississippi, nor a night like
the one when Billie Jean'd brought Gower home to us, told us they were
already married, then'd driven off into the dark, waving behind her.

Burton'd followed Brenda Kay back into the woods behind our old house,
the talk we'd had of dreams and making them happen what I always
considered my true good-bye to him, and for whatever reason I always
thought of my boy Wilman's driving us in to Los Angeles, the ease with
which he'd worked the wheel, the way he'd chewed his gum and waved out
to City Hall and'd delivered us right to the doorstep of Bundy Mufffler
that was his good-bye, I believed, him suddenly grown after that, as
good as gone.

There'd never been any good-bye from Annie, Gene hadn't so much taken
her from us as he'd become a Hilburn himself, ever since the day on the
beach and the way he'd handed Brenda Kay her can of soda pop, showed
her how to twist the dial on the transistor radio.  Anne'd never said
good-bye.

And she never would, I saw this morning, the fog outside the windows
pushing in on us, pushing so hard on the glass I thought perhaps it'd
pop, burst on us here in an empty house.

She'd never say good-bye to us, because now it was us who were leaving,
her momma and daddy and baby sister taking out on her.  We were the
ones to leave her, not the other way around.  I hugged her, felt her
heavy tears through my blouse as she cried into me, felt snug against
me the small swell of her next baby, my next grandchild, and I thought
of her when she was a baby girl herself in a house in Mississippi.  I
thought of a ragged, worn blanket she held out to me, a gift worth more
than any Brenda Kay would ever receive, her nyenye, a small bit of
cloth surrendered to Brenda Kay.  Surrendered, given out of a child's
love for a sister we didn't even know yet was retarded.  But Annie'd
known, even then.  The blanket'd been a gift to a sleepy sister, the
sorrow and work of Brenda Kay's life already begun back then, Annie
already seeing it.

So I let her cry into me.  Gene put a hand to her shoulder, whispered,
"Anne, it's okay, " and gave me a small smile, a shrug.  I nodded at
him, smiled.  I closed my eyes, held her even tighter, because I knew
this was the closest I'd ever come to letting her go, slip through my
hands, me leaving her to Los Angeles and whatever might happen without
me here.

She was in good hands, certainly, Gene's, and Burton's and Wilman's and
Billie Jean's.  But not mine.

Finally, Leston cleared his throat, said, "We got to get moving.  Want
to make Phoenix at least."

She pulled away, her eye makeup all streaming down her face leave it to
my Annie to have made herself up before coming over to see her family
off, even though it was only eight in the morning her mouth a crumpled
smile, her hair the most beautiful red I knew.

"These are for Brenda Kay on the road, " Barbara said from behind me,
and I turned, touched my own eyes with the back of my hand.  She handed
me a paper T. G. &Y.  bag, and I opened it, saw inside a box of Crayola
crayons, a couple coloring books, three candy bars.

I looked up at her, smiled, said, "Thank you, " though my tears were
going full now, too.  Then Barbara cried more, and Sarah, and before we
three hugged one last time, I caught a glimpse through my tears of
Leston and Wilman and Burton, all with their arms crossed, all three
shaking their heads, all three grinning.  My boys, the only one not
here my James, who we'd be seeing once we made it to Texas, probably on
Tuesday.

We let go each other, and I wiped my eyes with a Kleenex Barbara handed
me from her purse, we three wiping and smiling- and nearly laughing at
all these tears.

Then I looked around the living room, said, "Where's Brenda Kay?  "
"Already in the car, ready and waiting, " Gene called out, his head
just inside the door.  The room was empty save for we three women,
everybody'd gone outside.

We went out the door onto the front walk, the fog still just as thick,
just as cold, but it didn't matter, I'd grown used to the fog, even
found I liked the way it hid the day ahead, the way it started things
out cool and damp no matter how bright and hot the day'd reveal itself
later on.

I was the last one out the house, closed the door behind me, turned the
knob to make sure it'd locked.  Then I turned, saw all the
grandchildren huddled together on the lawn, all of them except James
and Eudine's.

Though the children weren't in any special order, were just a peck of
kids out on a foggy Saturday morning lawn in Manhattan Beach, I laid
them out in order in my mind, somehow there being comfort in that act,
in being able to know just who all these children belonged to, first
Billie Jean's Elaine and Matthe , then Burton and Sarah's Susan,
Jeannie and Jill, next Wilman and Barbara's Brad, Robert and Timmy,
last, Anne and Gene's baby Laura, her standing all wobbly, there in a
little tutu-like skirt and white baby shoes, a white blouse with
embroidery round the sleeves and neck.  Her hand was tight in Susan's,
a little baby girl looking up at me.

There they stood, all these children strangely silent on the lawn, none
of them more than seven years old, all of them just watching me.

Behind them was the soft gray background of fog, so that I couldn't
even see the house across the street clearly, and then I moved toward
them out onto the grass, knelt before them all and gave each a kiss and
hug, said good-bye.  I felt on my back gentle pats like fragile wings
just touching me, touching me, my grandchildren's hands.

I stood, turned from them to the car and trailer parked on the
street.

Burton leaned against the front fender, Wilman against the trunk.

Billie Jean stood at the open rear door, and I could see Brenda Kay
already inside, the transistor to her ear.  She started to swaying,
then let out a moan, her own song, and though it bore no resem l blance
I could make to the song she was hearing, I knew it was the new Ray
Charles song playing everywhere these days, "I Can't Stop Loving
You."

She started to singing, her voice wandering up and down like it wanted
to settle somewhere, find home, and then came the refrain.  Brenda Kay
let out even louder, slow and long, "Ah ahh stop, love you!  " She
leaned her head to one side, and her auburn hair fell off her shoulder,
the transistor tight to her ear.

"Sing it, Brenda Kay!  " Wilman said, and I turned to him at the back
of the car, saw him with his arms still across his chest, still
grinning.

Barbara, now next to him, reached to his shoulder, slapped him.  "Now
you cut that out, " she said, but she was smiling, too, and I looked
around, saw everyone was smiling, from Laura on the lawn along with all
the grandchildren right on up to Annie.  They were all smiling, all
looking at me.

I stood next to Billie Jean at the rear door now, looked in at Brenda
Kay, said, "You sing it for us, Brenda Kay.  All the way to Phoenix."

But she was turned to her window, lost in the tune, her voice off
wandering again.

Billie Jean took hold of me then, held me, and I said, "No more tears,
now, " and I felt her nod, her chin on my shoulder.  "Yes, Momma, " she
whispered.

Then came the last hugs from my children, and all the good-byes from
the grandchildren, who suddenly broke up, exploded into running on the
lawn, circles and circles and circles, Laura in the middle, hands up,
looking for someone to take a hold.

"Let's get a move on, " Leston said as he shook hands with first
Wilman, then Burton, then Gene.  He climbed in the driver seat, pulled
his door closed, started up the engine.

"Lark Regal, " Gene called out above the engine, took a step back from
the curb onto the lawn.  "She'll get you there easy."

I was already settled in my seat, saw Leston nod at him, smile.  He
gave a small wave to his sons and son-in-law.

Annie leaned in my window, held me one last, long moment, then stood,
took a step back from the car.  She had on a red and green plaid smock
top, green stretch-pants with stirrups and these huarache sandals
everybody wore out here, and when she put her hands on her hips, I
reached out the window, patted her tummy, said, "You take care, my
Annie."

She smiled, quick nodded, her forehead and eyes wrinkled up, ready for
tears again.

Before she could give in to it, Leston put the car in gear, and slowly
we pulled away from the house, our headlights making sad stabs at
lighting up the gray street.  It was fog, clean and simple.  Nothing
for it but to drive slow as you could, watch for other headlights
coming at you.

I turned in my seat, saw out the rear window Annie and Gene, him with
his arm around her shoulder, her with her arms crossed, and I saw
Wilman and Burton turn from the curb, head up the lawn, where Barbara
stood holding hard to Brad's arm, heavy words down at him for whatever
offense he'd made, while the rest of the grandchildren swirled round
the two of them, and where Sarah leaned against her and Burton's
Rambler parked in the driveway of our old house, purse already on her
arm.  I saw all of them back there, all of them disappearing into the
fog behind us.

I looked at Brenda Kay.  She brought the transistor from her ear, held
it with both hands in her lap, stared at it a moment or two, then with
one finger touched the side, gently twisted the dial to change the
station.

She turned it, turned it, then stopped, and here came that Ray Charles
song again, this time on a different station.  She looked up at me,
eyes open wide, mouth open in the closest thing to amazement I figured
she could know.

"Momma!  " she said, and held the transistor at arm's length, nearly
touched my face with it.  "Ray Cha!  " she said.

I said, "Sing it, Brenda Kay, " and she smiled, all those teeth again,
then held the radio to her ear, let out her song.

I turned to the front, saw the lighter in the dashboard pop.  Leston
had a cigarette out, reached over and pulled out the lighter, touched
it to the cigarette.

Here was cigarette smoke in a new car again, a smell I'd thought ten
tears ago a magnificent smell, a mix of the new and familiar with me
inside a car that, in 1952, had been heading west toward a new world.

But now here it was inside a 62 Studebaker headed back to the old, and
I shuddered at that moment, shuddered from the base of my spine right
on up to my neck.  It was a reflex, I figured, that showed the
amazement I felt myself, the open-mouth awe that had hold on me because
of how quick a life could change, how, like lightning, some unforeseen
force could bust in, burn your world right out of your hands, leave you
dazed.  I was just along for the ride back to Mississippi, a place I'd
called home once.  A month ago I never thought this'd be happening.

Now it'd already come to pass.

So I left my window rolled down, let cold fog fill as much of this new
car as it could, crowd out both the cigarette smell and the new car
smell.  I wanted the fog to fill us up, swallow us whole before we
headed out onto the desert, where the rocks and mountains and greasy
brush'd play itself out in backwards motion, our lives going the same
way, backwards, backwards.

We pulled to the stop sign at Highland and Sixth.  Leston honked the
horn for any cars he couldn't see coming at us, then eased right onto
Highland.

We were only a few yards past the intersection when I said, "Turn left
on Manhattan Beach Boulevard."

"Left?  " he said, and glanced at me.  "You mean right.  We got to head
out Manhattan Beach and hit " "I mean turn left, " I said, surprised at
the ease of my own words, how simply they'd come.  I hadn't gritted my
teeth, hadn't the need to swallow hard.  I'd only said words, soft and
clean.

I knew where it was I wanted to go right then, and knew how to get
there.  It seemed like the most simple thing I'd ever known in my life,
just turn left at Manhattan Beach Boulevard instead of right, head west
to the end of the street, and to the pier.  It was the ocean I wanted
right then, what I wanted to draw into me, hold onto.  When we hit the
desert later today, and, even later, when we moved into a house on a
bayou in Mississippi, I wanted the ocean with me, my last look at it,
even if it'd be shrouded in fog.  I wanted that look, and Brenda Kay's
voice behind me, singing away to what'd suddenly turned into the
saddest song I knew I'd ever hear.

"Ah ahh stop, love you!  " she sang out, and I said to Leston, "Turn
left at Manhattan Beach Boulevard, and head on down to the pier."

"It's nothing but fog " "I am your wife, " I whispered, my eyes never
turning to him, only staring out into the fog.

He said nothing, and when a few moments later the gray gave way to a
hazy pinpoint of bright red ahead, both of us well aware that that was
the stoplight at the intersection of Highland and Manhattan Beach
Boulevard, he let out a deep breath to signal how much of a discomfort
my last request was to him.

Because that's what it felt like, my last request, get us to the
Pacific, that west as far west as you could get.

There was nothing to see at the end of the street.  Leston pulled into
a slot in the small parking lot where the city pier went out, and we
sat in the car, before us the broad, dull gray of fog.  All I could see
was a few feet of sand, the first few pylons of the pier like the black
ribs of some huge and long dead animal jammed down into the beach, the
rest of it all fading into the gray.  Now and again a fisherman walked
past us out of the fog, started on to the pier, pole over his shoulder,
tackle box or bucket of bait in hand.  I thought to say to Leston, Look
fish here.  Fish here, instead of a bayou in Mchenry, but I knew it was
no use, and so I kept the words to myself.  And in the minute or so we
sat there two boys in swimming trunks walked past, hair blond as could
be, shirts off, chests bare to the wet air.  Each carried, too, one of
these Surfboards that'd become all the rage, and just then I heard
Brenda Kay sit up behind me, saw shoot between Leston and me in the
front seat her arm, her small, pudgy fingers forming a fist, then
pointing with the first finger at the boys as they disappeared out onto
the sand.  "Look!  " she said.  "Momma, look!  " I said nothing.  Her
fist and pointing finger hung there in the air for a minute or so, the
arm stiff, fingers so tight I thought they'd turn blue.

She pulled her arm back, and I heard her lean back in the seat, heard
her skim through ten or twelve radio stations before settling on one,
Elvis Presley singing "Good Luck Charm."

"That boy's from Mississippi, " Leston said.  "That Elvis boy."

"This isn't Mississippi, " I said.

I turned in my seat, reached over into Brenda Kay's lap and took the
radio from her, clicked it off.

I tried to smile at her, said, "Let's leave this off for a few minutes
honey, " handed it back to her.

She smiled at me, whispered, "Quiet, y'all, " and for the first time in
two years I found relief in that sound, in her whisper.  Quiet was
right, and I reached a hand to her lap, gave a small squeeze to her
hand.

I faced front.  The car was silent, and only then did I pick up what I
realized was the real reason I'd come here, through the fog, fog so
thick you'd have thought nothing could make its way through, even
through that fog, I heard it, Waves broke out there, somewhere inside
the fog that'd eaten us up, somewhere out past the sand before us.  I
heard waves beating down out there in the gray, beating away,
pulverizing the earth with every crash, wearing away the world with
each rise and fall of water.

That was what I'd come here to find, the sound of the world being eaten
away, the good knowledge that no matter what any of us intended the
world still kept giving way.

That would be me, I thought.  Me.  I'd keep pounding, even with this
next life in front of me, a life that wasn't new at all, just a return
to the old.

But I would crash.  I would crash and crash and crash, crash until all
I knew turned into sand, moved the way I wanted it.

"Let's go, " I said, the sound of pounding waves heavy in my ears, a
sound that suddenly melted into the roar of my own blood through me.

"Let's head to where you think we ought to live, " I said to my
husband, and let my words start crashing away.

CHAPTER 33.

WE GOT TO MCHENRY NEAR SUNDOWN FRIDAY NIGHT, PULLED UP IN front of the
house on the bayou, lights on inside the windows and coming out through
the screen door.  Though the light was warm, a soft and smooth yellow,
those windows were still empty eyes, the front door only an open
mouth.

In front of the house was an old green pickup, no tailgate, the back
window cracked and shattered like a spiderweb across one half of it.

We parked next to it, and Leston shut off the engine.

I didn't move.  The car was silent save for the thin hiss of static
from Brenda Kay's transistor behind me.  We'd already replaced the
batteries twice since we left.

Leston said, "Well, here we are."

I turned in the seat, looked back at Brenda Kay the same way I had near
a week ago.  But now she was sweating, single hairs of her bangs
plastered to her forehead, the neck of her blouse sweat through, her
eyes rimmed with sweat.  She had the radio in her lap, her eyes looking
all around out her window.

I faced forward, opened my door.  I was the first one to step foot on
this foreign soil, a place I hated without even giving it a chance.

But that was my right, I figured, if I gave it a chance, I'd lose.  And
I wasn't going to lose.

I reached for Brenda Kay's door handle as Leston climbed out, and here
came the front screen door pounding open, Toxie moving fast across the
porch, the light from inside silhouetting him for a moment.

"Jewel, " he cried out like I'd been ever so close to him all my life,
when what little I could recall of him involved that first Sunday
afternoon supper at Leston's mother and stepfather's, the little
teenage kid, Leston's nephew, who'd leaned forward, said "Hey!  " to
me, then gone on and eaten while I served up food for myself.  Just
that moment, and the lost three fingers to a quick fuse, and the
picture of him following Leston and all the niggers they were niggers
once again, I knew now, always only niggers here in Mississippi to
work, me always at the sink inside the house and looking out at them,
the children round me and howling out for food.  That was all I knew of
Toxie.

Now here we were again, right back where we'd started.  Toxie gave me a
hard hug, his hair at my cheek thick with some sort of hair oil not
even pomade and wet on my skin, the two-finger hand on my back patting
like some wounded bird trying to take flight.

He pulled away, looked at me in the growing dark.  I smiled at him,
said, "Toxie, how you doing?  " though I willed myself not to recognize
him, not to see in the shape of his mouth and in his eyes any
resemblance whatsoever to my husband.  It worked, he was a stranger,
and I was only exchanging pleasantries with him after a long, hot
trip.

He said, "Fine, we fine, " and I turned from him, opened Brenda Kay's
door.

I said, "Come on out, Brenda Kay, and say hey to Uncle Toxie."

Toxie put his hands in his pockets.  He glanced up and over the roof,
nodded at Leston, then ducked down to see inside the car.

Brenda Kay scooted across the seat, let her legs touch ground out here,
her white shoes all the whiter for the closing dark.

"Some shoes you got there, " Toxie said.

I wouldn't look at him, only reached a hand in to Brenda Kay, helped
her out.

Leston came around the front of the car, and Toxie, I could tell, was
torn as to what to do, should he hug his uncle, an uncle not but a few
years older than himself, and welcome him Back Home where he ought
never to have left, or should he stay here, make introductions with his
mother's namesake, this retarded girl?

Leston gave a quick nod at him, then looked at Brenda Kay, who stood
now, arms loose at her sides, in one hand the transistor, static hiss
still filling the air.

"Let's us turn that thing off now, " I said, and reached to take the
radio from her.

"No!  " Brenda Kay shouted, and shook my hand away from hers, brought
the radio to her chest.  She looked at me, then at Toxie, then me
again.

"Suit yourself, " I said, and I turned, smiled at Toxie.  I said,
"Brenda Kay, this here's Uncle Toxie.  Toxie, Brenda Kay.  A little
cranky after this trip."

"I know you, Brenda Kay, " Toxie said.  "I come to see you when you was
in the hospital over to Purvis."  He rocked on his heels now, hands
still in his pockets, and I couldn't remember his ever coming to see
her after she'd burned her legs, not that I'd necessarily remember.

But it didn't matter to me, because I was willing myself not to know
this man.  I was out here and living in Mississippi and this bayou
shanty for one reason and one reason only, to break my husband, get us
back to California and to the progress our lives'd made, get us back in
that line toward fixing our lives.

Brenda Kay smiled, clicked off the radio.  She brought her eyes from
his, and I could tell she was looking down the length of his arms,
stopped when her eyes landed on his pockets, where his hands were
hiding.

"Two finger!  " she shouted, then laughed, "Huh huh huh!  " "You
remember!  " Toxie laughed.  He brought out the maimed hand, reached to
beneath her chin, tickled her.

She laughed harder, squeezed up her shoulders with his tickling.  "Two
finger!  " she shouted out.

"Now that's enough, " I said, and I smiled, though the dark'd probably
made it difficult for anyone to tell I was.  Toxie stopped right away,
put his hand back in his pocket.

"He was only tickling the girl, " came Leston's voice in the dark, his
words quiet, meant to carry extra weight with how soft he'd spoken.

But I wasn't here to lose, and if I put Toxie down this early on, all
the better.  It was Leston I was aiming at, if I cut out Toxie, there'd
be that much less work to do on him.

I said, "It's been a long and tiring trip for all of us.  She doesn't
need any more winding up."  I paused, looked up at Leston.  I wouldn't
let my eyes meet Toxie's, not now.

Leston stood with his hands in his pockets, too.  In the dark I could
make out his mouth, a tight thin line, his eyes only shadows.

I said, "Let's just go on in and see where we're going to live now,
hey?

" Toxie shrugged right away, glanced up at Leston, then to me.  "Sounds
fine with me.  Let's do it, " and he turned, took a step for the
porch.

Then he stopped, looked to the car like he'd not seen it parked there
next to his derelict truck.  He took a hand from a pocket the
five-fingered hand and slowly ran it across the hood.  I could see the
windows of the house reflected in the metal, saw his hand interrupt the
shine there as he let his fingers trace the line of the fender.

"What the hell kind of car is this?  " he said.

"Your language, please, " I shot right out, and slammed closed Brenda
Kay's door, took her hand.

"Beg pardon, ma'am, " Toxie said, and took his hand from the hood.

"Studebaker Lark Regal.  Brand-new, " Leston said, though he wasn't
looking at Toxie.  He was looking at me, and as I started for the porch
I said to Leston, "Excuse me, " moved toward him so that he had to
stand aside, lean into the car to make room for us.

"Studebaker, " Toxie whispered.  He gave out a low, soft whistle in the
dark, and I wondered at how little he could see of what was going on
here between Leston and me, marveled, too, at how easy he'd been to put
away.

Inside, Toxie skittered round the place, going from room to room, eager
to impress upon us just how lavish our accommodations were, the house,
owned by an older gentleman in Gulfport, a plumbing contractor Toxie
worked for, was partially furnished a sofa in that front room, a bed in
both the bedrooms a kitchen table with five chairs had electricity, a
dock out back a gas stove and stocked refrigerator, even a washing
machine.  But what impressed Toxie most, and hence what he spent the
most time showing off to us, was the plumbing itself.  "No lead pipe in
this here little palace, " Toxie said in the kitchen, him rocking on
his heels again while Leston crouched, peered beneath the kitchen
sink.

When he pulled his head out, he looked right away to me, and I said, "A
palace, " a word I thought'd been Leston's a month ago when he'd
described what we could afford.  Leston only smiled at me.

Toxie made certain, too, I turned the water on and off in the bathroom
and kitchen, saw how shiny the stainless steel fixtures were, touched
the showerhead above the tub.  He even talked me into turning the
shower on so I could see how smooth was the flow of water.

When finally he'd shown us every visible inch of pipe in the house, had
flipped on and off the light switches in the bedrooms, had even turned
on the washing machine for a moment, then flicked it off, we three
moved into the front room, where Brenda Kay sat on the blue corduroy
sofa, the radio still in her lap, still turned off.

That was when the treefrogs started in.  All the windows in the house
were open, and the sound whirled right in on us, a dull, thick hum that
swelled in an instant to the same deep and sharp-edged drone I'd lived
through the first forty-eight years of my life.  It wasn't a welcome
sound, certainly, nor was it a surprise, but I knew if I gave myself a
second's chance I'd find that sound ushering in old thoughts on other
times, times when we lived back here, times when the children were
growing up in the old house and the boys or Annie'd complain at the
sound ghosting its way into their rooms.

But I wouldn't let myself remember that, only went to the sofa, said to
Brenda Kay louder than I needed, "Don't you get worked up about those
treefrogs, " though there was nowhere on her face any evidence she'd
even heard them.  She'd remembered Toxie's two fingers from a trip he
made to her hospital room ten years before, why couldn't she remember
the sound the comfort, in fact, if I'd let myself feel it of those
nights years ago, when she was a child?

Leston and Toxie'd gone into the kitchen, though, hadn't even taken
note of the signal I'd tried to send them about the annoyance of
treefrogs.

Then, just as suddenly as they'd started, the treefrogs stopped, the
quick loss of sound now making this house seem all the more empty.  The
room was entirely empty, the room and this house and the whole bayou
out there, the woods and everything in this state completely and
utterly empty.  Just as empty, I knew, as the shadow of our lives here,
the future a huge and empty room we'd never fill.

Now came the sound of the refrigerator door opening and closing, and I
heard first one and then another small spray of sound, two cans of beer
being opened.  Next came low whispering, two men together who hadn't
seen each other in years, well aware their words weren't meant for any
woman, whether normal or retarded, to hear.

I turned from Brenda Kay, who'd clicked the radio back on to more
static, and faced the doorway across the room that led into the
kitchen.

I couldn't see either one of them in there, saw only the shining
stainless steel faucet, two shining stainless steel knobs for hot and
cold running water.  Still, I watched, certain something was about to
happen.

And it did, Leston leaned back from where he stood in the kitchen into
my line of sight, lifted the can of beer in a sort of toast to me, then
took a sip.

I figured it was nothing Toxie'd see meant anything, just a little
gesture made by his uncle to me, Leston's recognition, maybe, of our
triumphant return to Mississippi.  We'd driven in in a Studebaker Lark
Regal, after all.

But I took the gesture for what it meant, for what I'd seen in his eyes
as he held up the can, at the way he hadn't blinked taking that sip of
beer, nothing I'd done so far to make this as difficult as I could had
been lost on him.  His little toast meant he knew all about what was
going on inside me, thirty-six years of marriage to me giving him
enough indications as to how I worked.  And I was working now.

But before he could lean back into the whispered conversation, the
plans for fishing and coon hunting and beer drinking that Toxie, I was
certain, had already laid out for him, I gave him a gesture of my own,
one I knew he'd recognize, I smiled at him, my lips never parting, just
turning up at the corners, and I nodded once, stared hard right back at
him.  Thts battle has begun, I signaled him.

He disappeared, and I heard the whispering again, a low cold laugh from
the both of them.

The treefrogs started up again, drowned out the sound of their
laughter, and I turned to Brenda Kay, saw a mosquito right there on her
left cheek, already parked and working away.

I quick reached up, flicked at it with my finger.  Brenda Kay flinched
a little with my move, and I smiled at her, met her eyes with mine.

I took my hand away then, saw where my finger'd left a small swipe of
blood on her cheek, saw, too, the smashed mosquito on my fingertip.

This battle has begun, I thought.

Toxie didn't stay too much later, and then Leston and I dug in the dark
through the trailer to find the box marked linens so we'd have sheets
for the beds, towels and washrags for in the morning, next we pulled
out the box marked pots and pans so I'd have something to cook
breakfast on.

All this time no words passed between us, the two of us knowing already
what was in store.

Toxie showed up at seven the next morning with three colored men, men I
knew would never believe other coloreds could live in houses as fine as
those in the neighborhood where the Exceptional Children's Foundation
had been.  I saw it in how they slowly rolled out of the bed of Toxie's
pickup when he pulled in, three men in ragged overalls and undershirts,
saw it in how they wouldn't even mount those steps up as Toxie came to
the door, him there in a green cotton shirt and blue jeans, me stooped
at the sofa and tying Brenda Kay's shoes, watching all this through the
screen door.  The door and all the windows were already open for the
heat of the morning, and for that wet air, air that seemed thicker and
wetter than any foggy morning I'd known in the last ten years.

He knocked on the doorframe, and I stood, called out, "Leston, Toxie's
here, " to which Toxie, startled he hadn't seen me through the screen
cleared his throat, cupped his hands to the screen and peered in.  He
smiled, said, "Got the road crew here this morning to help y'all."  He
motioned behind him with his good hand, then stepped away from the
door.

"Boys from down to the shop."

He put his hands in his pockets again, waited for me to open the
door.

He looked back at the coloreds, then to the screen, squinted, looking
for me.

"Leston out fishing already?  " he said.  I made it to the door, paused
a second before I pushed it open an inch or so, let him finish opening
it himself.

"Nope, " I said without looking at him.  "Shaving, " I said, and
turned, headed back to Brenda Kay and her other shoe.

"Unc Tox!  " she shouted out, and Toxie laughed, pulled that hand from
his pocket, made like he was coming at her with it.

She laughed "Huh huh huh" there on the couch, squirmed as he came
closer, her foot pulling out of my hand with the movement.  l !

"Gonna tickle the bejabbers out of you, honey!  " he said, and I'd had
to reach for her foot, take hold hard to it.

"Brenda Kay, " I said, low and strong, and she stopped, looked at me.

"Tox, Momma!  " she said, her forehead screwed up, eyebrows high in a
way I knew meant I should leave her alone.

"Yes, Toxie's here, " I said, and slipped on the shoe.  "He's going to
be working hard today, unloading all our things so we can move in
proper to this palace."

"Palace, that's right, " he said.  "Miss Brenda Kay, you're living in a
regular palace."  He stopped, put his hands in his pockets as I
finished off tying the shoe, then half-pushed, half-pulled myself to
standing, one hand on the arm of the sofa, the other on my knee, I
slowly made it up.

Toxie still smiled, his hands still in his pockets.  Then he sniffed,
looked around, sniffed again.  "I don't smell it, " he said.  He
turned, sniffing, and headed toward the kitchen.

"What's that?  " I said, and gave a hand to Brenda Kay, helped her up
from the sofa.

"Breakfast, " he said.  "Your biscuits, grits."  He disappeared into
the kitchen, and I followed him in.

He stood at the stove, looked over it like it was some dead animal.

"Like the old days, " he said, and looked at me, smiled.  "Your
breakfasts for the crew."

"The old days, " I said.  I put my hands on my hips.  "What gave you
the idea I was here to make breakfast for y'all?  " I said, and
paused.

"Just like the old days, " I said.  This was a war.

"Leston, " he said, still smiling.

"That's right, " Leston said from behind me, and moved past me into the
kitchen.  He was barefoot, had on an undershirt and gray workpants,
something left over from the old days at El Camino.  Above the neck of
the undershirt was a spray of gray hairs, and he had a towel round his
neck, rubbed at his chin and cheek with one corner of it.  His hair was
slicked back, still wet from his shower.  He looked at me, his mouth
straight.

"Told him last night we'd have breakfast over here before we started in
on the trailer, " he said.  He finished wiping his face, took the towel
from round his neck.  "Guess I forgot to inform you, " he said.

"I imagine you'll be wanting the whole works, of course.  Biscuits and
bacon and grits and eggs."

"It's a whole trailer out there we got to unload."  He balled the towel
up in his hands, said, "Then we got to get down to Gulfport to the
U-Haul, turn it in."

"That's a good day's work, " Toxie put in, and I cut my eyes at him,
saw him shrug, smile.

"And the coloreds outside, I suppose I'll be feeding them, too."

Leston nodded, said, "Suppose so, " the towel tight in his hands.

"Coloreds?  " Toxie said then, and it was as if my looking at him sharp
as I had didn't mean a thing.  "Coloreds?  " he said again, and gave a
chuckle, the same low and cold one he'd given with Leston last night.

"That's a California word if ever I heard one, " he said, still
smiling.

He said, "Them's nothing but niggers out there.  No better or worse
than that."

I looked at him.  I said, "You call them what you want, Toxie, and I'll
call them what I want.  You understand that?  " He looked down,
nodded.

"Yes ma'am, " he said, and he looked again like nothing more than the
teenage kid at the supper table, illmannered and ready to eat.

"If I'm feeding this whole brood, " I said, and I paused, weighed out a
few seconds while I gathered up my words, not certain how they'd play
out here, I was thinking right then on May the secretary and how I'd
had to learn that word colored all on my own, and I was thinking on
those two or three retarded colored children that first morning ten
years ago in the classroom at the Foundation, and I was thinking hard,
too, on that colored boy who'd helped me park our old Plymouth, and the
woman in the lavender dress, her baby Leon with the croup.

And though it brought shame to me even as we stood there, whatever hell
was about to break loose here, I was thinking on what ammunition I
could bring to things, get him to see the truth of Los Angeles, the
promise we'd already wrung from it, a row of letter B's, basketball, a
classroom with the pictures of our Presidents on the walls.

Then I said it, said the unimaginable, half because a piece of me
believed it somehow the right thing to do, but another half, the half I
was already ashamed of, because I wanted to use those colored men out
there to my advantage.

I took a breath.  "If I'm feeding this whole brood, " I said again,
"then I think the coloreds ought to come on inside, eat in here."

They were stupid words, I knew as quick as I'd said them, stupid for
the way they showed my own hand instead of forcing his, stupid for how
they revealed me and all the plans I had in my head.

"God damn, " Toxie whispered.  I blinked once, twice at Leston's
granite face, then looked to Toxie.

"Your language, please, " I managed to say, though I knew the tight
pitch of my voice'd already betrayed me, shown me to be nothing more
than an old woman working to get her way.

"God damn, Leston, " Toxie whispered again, and he looked up first at
me, then to his uncle.  "Y'all didn't go out to California and come
back goddamn nigger-lovers, now did you?  " Toxie was smiling, but it
was a different smile now, no longer the child, but the man, the same
man who'd driven here in that old pickup out front, the same one who'd
loaded up three niggers to spend a Saturday helping his uncle and wife
and retarded cousin move Back Home.

The same man who, just by the color of his skin, dictated to those
three men exactly how far back of him they had to walk.

Now he was a man, I saw, ready to say what he wanted, and I saw that in
fact nothing'd been lost on him.  He knew all about what was going on
between Leston and myself, knew, too, by how he lifted his jaw, took a
breath, that he'd thrown in with my husband.  I hadn't put him away
last night at all.

But Leston spoke at just the right moment, said to his nephew, "You
watch your language in this house, Toxie, " and I looked to him, saw
him in profile, his face turned to Toxie.

Toxie nodded, lost the smile.  "Beg pardon, " he said.

"And no, we are not nigger-lovers, " Leston said, and slowly turned to
me.  "What's fair is fair, " he said.  "Them boys out there niggers,
coloreds, whatever you want to call them they're going to work today,
so we'll feed them."  He paused, brought the towel up to his face,
swiped at a dab of soap below his ear.  He said, "They'll eat outside,
too.  Just like they used to."

"Fine, " I said, and brought my eyes from his, right away set about
banging open and shut the cupboards in search of a skillet, a pot to
boil water in.  I wouldn't look at either Leston or Toxie, embarrassed
at having my own bluff called in this way, mad I'd lost this first
round.

And, I realized, I wouldn't look at them, especially Leston, because I
was savoring the small piece of victory I'd found, Leston'd looked
first to Toxie, told him to watch his mouth.  Told him, in fact, this
was our house, no one else's.  That was a victory.

I found a skillet and pan in the cabinet next to the sink, precisely
where I'd placed them the night before, though I couldn't recall
putting them there.  I set them on the stove, Toxie moving out of my
way, hands still in his pockets.  Then I opened the refrigerator, took
out the slab of bacon in there.

"Get out the kitchen, " I said, still without looking at them.  "I've
got food to cook."  I went to the sink, filled the pan with
smooth-flowing water from a shiny stainless steel faucet.  I fixed my
eye for a moment out the window above the sink, out there the bayou,
sawgrass and water, waves of heat already shimmering up off it all.

CHAPTER 34.

I LAY AWAKE EVERY NIGHT THE FIRST MONTH, WONDERING HOW ITPD come about,
and come about so quick.  The open windows above the headboard seemed
only a prank there in the dark, the air inside no cooler, no less
stagnant than that out on the water and in the woods.  The only thing
close to movement was the soar and tear of night sounds out there,
sounds louder and more rambunctious than any late-night siren or
honking horn I'd heard in Venice or Manhattan Beach.

Leston lay next to me, sleeping away, he spent much of each day, as
he'd said he would, fishing or crabbing, or just tooling around in the
Studebaker, a regular country gentleman now, him with no need for a job
and with all the money we had from selling off the house.  The wad of
it was settled into a bank down in Gulfport, waiting for us to find a
house we wanted to buy, or a parcel of land we'd want to build on, all
of it part of his big plan for the end of our lives.

Sometimes we went with him on his rides, the three of us stopping at a
hamburger stand in Gulfport and getting oyster po'boys, then sitting on
the picnic tables set up out front, eating away while that Gulf sun
beat down on us.

Once, too, we went right down to the water, trudged through a beach
wider than any California beach I'd ever seen, the sand here like
sugar, white and fine.  When we finally made it to the water, I rolled
up Brenda Kay's pantlegs, held the bottom edge of my skirt in one hand,
took hold of Brenda Kay's hand with the other.  Then we walked out what
felt a half-mile before the water even got up to our knees.

Brenda Kay and I kept a few paces behind Leston, him leading the way,
his pantlegs rolled up, too, to reveal the pale white skin of his legs,
an old man's legs, I saw that afternoon out on the water.  Then I
looked down at my own legs, saw the blue veins crisscrossing just
beneath skin that seemed transparent as new ice, and I saw that I was
only an old woman.  Most days of my life'd already passed through me,
and not once in the last ten years of those days had the picture of me
walking out in the Gulf of Mexico with my husband and baby daughter
wheedled its way into my head.  Then I pictured California, and the
waves there, remembered the power of them I'd drawn into me the morning
we'd left for this place.

I said, "There's no waves out here, Leston, " and I stopped, let go the
hem of my skirt a moment, held a hand up to my eyes and looked out to
sea.

Leston stopped.  He put his hands on his hips, looked out to sea,
too.

I glanced at him, saw the round, wide patch of sweat on the back of his
shirt.

He said, "Kind of nice, no waves."

"If you don't like waves, " I said.  He turned, a puzzled look on his
face, and I was glad he couldn't know what I meant, glad for the secret
of the sound of those California waves breaking in my head.

He turned from us, said, "Let's keep going, " and started off.

I gathered up my skirt, looked at Brenda Kay, smiled and said, "Just a
little farther and we'll head back in."

She smiled up at me, started walking, and for a moment I let play
across me the notion we were actually having a good time, Brenda Kay
liberated in some way, barefoot in the Gulf of Mexico.  Her steps
through the water were slow and gentle and exaggerated, with each step
she lifted her foot clear of the water, brought it forward, set it back
in the water, did the same with the other foot.

I watched her move this way, watched her smile, then heard Leston say,
"Take a look at this."

I turned from Brenda Kay, saw Leston point at a boat way out in the
water, when Brenda Kay's hand jumped in mine, her screaming out at the
same moment.

I turned to her, felt her hand hold tight to mine, nearly crush my
bones.  She was staggering, her feet moving quick beneath her.

"Momma!

Momma!  " she screamed, though her eyes were on the water, her head
darting, looking, looking.

Then she looked up at me, crying now, and said, "Momma, foot!  Momma,
foot!  " "What, honey?  " I said, and took both her hands.  "What
happened?  " "Maybe stepped on a ray, " Leston said, and now he was all
movement next to me, reached down and lifted her like a baby into his
arms, up out of the water.  "Take a look at her feet, see if there's
any marks."

"Marks?  " I said.  "What kind of marks?  " But I was already poring
over her feet with my eyes, touching all over, searching for welts,
cuts, bites, anything.

She'd gone to silent tears, her breath in short, quick spurts as she
took air in, cried it out.  l I found nothing on her feet, nor up her
legs to the knees.  Only her scars, the same old evidence of an
accident years before.

"Probably stepped on a flounder is all, " Leston said, his voice gone
calm, and I saw a chance, another avenue for ammunition, and I said,
"You knew there were rays out here?  " He looked at me, eyes squinted
for the sun.  Brenda Kay had hold of his shirt collar with one hand,
the other clutched at the neck of her own blouse.  She was still
crying.

"She didn't get stung, " he said.  "She maybe stepped on a flounder."

"There's rays out here, and you knew it, and you let us out here."  I
stopped, peeled Brenda Kay's hand away from her blouse, took it in
mine.

"There, " I said to her soft as I could.  "We're heading back in now.

We're going home now."

I looked up at him again, knew I'd done the best I could with what I
had at hand, we wouldn't be back here, wouldn't step back in the Gulf
of Mexico.

I lay awake at nights wondering on how quick we could get back out.

There wasn't any doubt in me, we'd be back there, and I'd be back to
the Foundation, back to driving the station wagon, back in the
classroom and doing what was necessary for Brenda Kay's life.  That, I
saw, was what I was doing late nights Lying awake, already fixing this,
mending the bone-break our moving here was.

Instead of remembering my life back in California, I found I was
imagining what would be once we returned, emerging once again from this
jungle called Mississippi into Los Angeles, but this time without
having to break all new ground, without having to live in a motel or
bus tables or work for a moving company.

The treefrogs starting up, the night owls and cicadas and various other
animals outside our open bedroom window making their nightly racket, I
pictured Leston heading off to work at ECC each morning in his shirt
and tie, saw him at the table of an evening, rubbing black shoe polish
into the toe of a wing tip with an old rag, then buffing it, shining it
up, brushing it with the brush from the shoeshine box there on the
floor in front of him.  I saw him spending Saturday mornings with the
boys mowing the lawn, saw him with older and more grandchildren circled
round him as he rolled cigarettes with one hand at the same kitchen
table.  And I saw him smiling while surfcasting at The Rock, maybe Brad
or Matthe or Susan next to him, him showing them a thing or two about
fishing.

I saw, too, a party for Brenda Kay when she came back, not the party
Mr. White had thrown for us leaving, a party that'd involved me having
to clear from the walls of the old classroom all Brenda Kay's drawings,
sheets of construction paper I'd labeled "Easter Sun day" or "Our
Garden" or "Three Rainbows, " though Brenda Kay'd never given any of
them names.  There'd been a whole file folder full of them I'd had to
take down while Mrs. Walker passed out cupcakes she'd made, and Mr.
White'd poured Kool-Aid into Dixie cups for us all.

No, the party I saw was one that welcomed her back to the classroom, a
classroom where, after more cupcakes and more Kool-Aid, she'd settle
in, be quick to finish learning the rest of the letters of her name, so
that the next crop of pictures she'd have stapled to the walls would
have her signature at the bottom, no matter how shaky the letters.

And I even saw in my plans, plans like the kind of dream I'd told
Burton of years ago, the kind of dream you had to make happen, or it
wasn't worth dreaming at all in my plans I even saw Dennis, saw in the
time I'd had to devote to keeping the two of them apart some piece of
joy, I had that job to do, had my baby daughter to keep from him.  A
job.

The day after Leston came home with the Studebaker, I told Mr. White
that we were moving back to Mississippi, some sort of true proof in my
husband's purchase of a new car that we'd really be going.  Mr. White'd
only smiled, put out his hand for me to shake.

We were in the gymnasium at West High, the children out on the court in
four teams for two games of badminton.  Long ago we'd gotten rid of
Mrs. Klausman, now had two Long Beach State PE majors paid by the
Foundation to lead the children in their daily activity time.  There
were two station wagons then, too, another woman, Mrs. Cox, and I
traded routes in the mornings and afternoons so we wouldn't get too
bored at making the same rounds every day.

Word had it Word always had it at the Foundation, Word about new and
fantastic events coming at us, those Words floating through us like the
rumors they usually were, but sometimes taking hold, proving out to be
true that not too far off was some sort of short day program at
Lawndale High.  Mr. White's plans to get the children onto the campus
of a public high school for at least a small amount of class time each
day were supposedly coming close to actually happening after all these
years of fussing and tussling with school board after school board.

All the way back to the old Foundation office on Adams he'd been
talking about this happening, our children showing up to public
schools.  And just before we'd moved, the Word had started its rounds,
soon they'd be in real schools, not jammed into an old storeroom.

But that day in the gymnasium, he'd only shaken my hand, put his other
hand to my shoulder, and smiled.  A whistle blew, and one of the
college boys, Neil, a big bear of a boy, black hair in a crew cut,
shoulders broader than either Wilman's or Burton's ever were, called
out to the children, "Okay, people, let's swing the racket up.

Everybody!  " I glanced to the children, saw them swing their rackets
up as close as they'd ever get to together, then looked back at Mr.
White.

He let go my hand, took the other from my shoulder, buried both hands
deep in his pockets.  He said, "If we were in my office, I'd make you
sit in that chair in front of my desk, and I'd put you through my
lecture on how valuable you've been to the Foundation."  He paused,
looked down at the parquet floor, said, "But I think you may already
know that."  He smiled, said, "And I don't think you'd sit in that
chair, either."

"Certainly not, " I said, and smiled.  "You know me better than
that."

"Of course, " he said.  "I, being the pompous and arrogant man I am, am
right."  He laughed, and I did, too, though I found it hard to.  This
was the end of things.

I looked out to the children, saw the other college boy Stan was his
name, a boy as blond as one of those surfing boys we'd see disappear
into fog the morning we would leave for Mississippi standing behind
Marcella, his arm on hers, gently lifting the racket in a fine arc from
her knee to just above her shoulder.

Mr. White cleared his throat, said, "But what I'm not certain I
understand is why you're leaving.  And why, " he said, his voice gone
low, almost to a whisper, "to Mississippi.  Perhaps you're returning to
your family " "I have no family out there, " I cut in.  I swallowed,
said, "I was orphaned at age eleven."

"Oh, " he said.  "Oh, " and I saw only then how thin this relationship
had actually been all these years, he knew nothing of me, knew only I'd
been a teacher once, two or three lives before this one.  He knew
nothing of a logging shack, or of pomade or bamboo fans printed with
Bible verses, or of leather belts or blasting stumps for the
Government.  The fact was that I'd known more of him after our first
meeting in an oak-paneled office on Adams than he knew of mwe right
now, after eight years of helping him.

But what I found most strange was that I took comfort in that, because
it only proved I'd been successful in my mission so far, this
relationship was bound up in Brenda Kay, and how I'd been able to lend
my hand to helping fix her life, and the lives of these other
children.

That was where I'd wanted the focus of my life to stay, and, judging by
how little he knew of me, I'd made that happen.

"I'm sorry to hear that, " he said, his face all serious, and I'd had l
to make myself laugh for him, ease the obvious strain I'd put between
us.  He didn't know what to do with what I'd just told him.

"Thanks for feeling sorry, " I said, "but it happened quite a while
ago."  I smiled.

He looked down.  He said, "Yet I'm still surprised you'd choose to move
back.  What with the unrest there, the racial tension going on."

"Racial tension, " I said.

He looked up at me.  "Why, yes, " he said.  "I'm speaking of the
freedom marches, the bus rides.  Dr.  Martin Luther King."

"Oh, " I said, and I glanced again out to the court.  Stan and Neil
stood together now on the far side of the gym, arms crossed.  They both
had on the same outfit they wore every day, gray sweatpants, gray
sweatshirts, whistles round their necks.  Stan was saying something to
Neil, both of them looking at the children swinging away.  Then Neil
busted out laughing, shook his head.  "Carrie, " Stan called out, "hold
tight to the racket, " and left Neil to his laughter.

"I've been hearing about that for quite a while, " I said.  "But it
won't have anything to do with us."  I looked to him, smiled.  "We're
just poor crackers moving to a bayou."

He looked at me, shrugged.  He said, "Well then, why are you moving?

From all this " he brought a hand from his pocket, gestured at the
crowd of children.  "And from what's coming up soon."

"You mean Lawndale High School, " I said.

He smiled, said, "That must be common knowledge now."  He paused.  "So
why are you moving?  " I swallowed again, took in his words, because
now he was asking for the truth, not stumbling on it, like he'd
stumbled on the small pebble of my history I'd just revealed to him, me
an orphan at eleven.  He was asking straight out for the one true
reason we were moving, and I had to swallow again, struggle out the
words.

I forced a smile, said, "My husband, my Leston, wants us to."  I said
nothing else, felt myself bite my lower lip, felt a drop of sweat cut a
small swath down the middle of my back.

"Oh, " he said.  He took his hands out of his pockets, crossed his
arms.

He had on a navy suit coat suits being his own uniform of sorts, and I
remember looking at him as he half-turned from me, looked away from me
and out onto the court.

He said, "I've certainly no experience in that department, as well you
know.  Marriage, I mean."  He paused, nodded at the children.  "I'm
quite pleased with the performance of these young men."

I turned to them, too, saw that Stan and Neil were lining the children
up in order of height, little Carrie first, followed by Marcella,
Brenda Kay two children back from her, Dennis, I was thankful, five
children back from Brenda Kay.  They each still had a racket in one
hand, and stood a few feet back of one net.  Then Stan ran around to
the opposite side of the net, a birdie in one hand, racket in the
other.  "Ready?  " he called out, and Neil, next to Carrie, him so big
and brawny next to that tiny child, took hold her wrist as Stan'd done
with Marcella.  "Ready!  " Neil said, and Stan batted the birdie high
up and over the net, Neil swinging up Carrie's racket so that she
batted it right back.

Stan made a big stunt out of backing up and backing up, trying to
center himself under the birdie coming back down to him, his arms
flailing about as he backed up even more, then finally fell down on the
floor, only to have the birdie drop dead center on his chest.

Neil cheered and clapped at Carrie's making contact with the birdie,
her so pleased with herself she dropped the racket, clasped her hands
together at her chest and started stomping the floor, a smile wide
across her face.

Then the clapping and cheering was picked up by the rest of the
children, healthy sounds of young people happy at what success they
could find.

Mr. White turned to me, smiling.  "You see what I mean?  This program
is certainly a triumph.  A far cry from a church parking lot.  And a
far cry from that dismal start with Miss what's-her-name."

"Klausman, " I said, and he nodded, looked back to the children,
Marcella stepping up for her chance now.

But I was looking at his navy suit coat, at how, with his arms crossed,
the cuffs of his white shirt poked out the sleeves, the cuff links he
had on with some insignia on them, and I remember thinking how this was
his own uniform, his identification, the clothes he wore saying simply
philanthropist.  And suddenly I saw Leston's white short-sleeve shirt
and wing tips and black ties, his uniform, Head of Maintenance, it
spoke, and there came to me the picture of my two sons wearing their
Royal Crown uniforms, Salesman, and I wondered, too, if James, standing
before his high-school Ag.  class, didn't wear a white laboratory coat
like my old science teachers at Pearl River Junior College wore, those
coats saying Teacher.  And I thought of Billie Jean, her white outfit
and paper hat tacked high up on her head, Nurse.

I looked out at the children there, Stan doing the same act again with
Marcella's birdie, the birdie arcing high, then falling, falling, and I
looked at Brenda Kay, at what she had on, blue cotton shortsleeve
blouse, blue slacks to hide her scars, white orthopedic shoes, Retarded
daughter.

And finally, I looked down at my own clothes, at the gray and blue
plaid dress, buttons down the front, thin little collar, black shoes
with a low heel.

Mr. White turned to me again, uncrossed his arms, jammed his hands
back into his pockets.  Those cuff links'd gone, just disappeared.

"Your husband, I imagine, has family there?  In Mississippi."

"Oh, yes, " I said, nodded, thought of that photograph of Toxie, his
two fingers there at his hip.  "Spread around the state.  We'll be
seeing them."

"I want you to know how truly sorry I am to hear this from you, hear of
your husband's choosing to leave, " he said, and here came his hand to
my shoulder again, him on stage as always, his touching me meant to
convey how genuine was his emotion.

He said, "I've never been married, so I can only imagine how difficult
it must be to have to form your own will to someone else's.  It must be
tremendously difficult, and for that I admire you.  Giving up one's own
will for the judgment of another, " he said, "even at the risk of
sacrificing Brenda Kay's education."  He stopped, slowly shook his
head, then said, "I can only imagine."

And though I nodded, knew in his words was a kernel of truth this was
not the best thing for Brenda Kay another part of me seethe , wanted
his hand off my shoulder, his words out of my head.  I nodded, while
inside I shook my head as hard as I could, You can not imagine, I
screamed.  You can not.

He smiled, gave my shoulder a gentle shake.  He said, "We'll have a
party for you and Brenda Kay before you go."

I lay awake each night, and each night my mind and the pictures I came
up with worked right through the same cycle, first, what new
occurrences I could use as ammunition against my husband, crash away at
him and his own wrongheaded resolve to make us stay here, even if
Brenda Kay'd been so scared by that fish beneath her feet she wouldn't
even dangle her feet off the dock now, wouldn't even climb into the
jonboat Leston'd bought off a friend of Toxie's.  Each night I hoped
for more occurrences such as that one in the waters of the Gulf of
Mexico, even if they'd be at the expense of my baby daughter.

Next came pictures of the life ahead, those pictures prophecies, I
knew, the image of Brenda Kay's name scrawled across the bottom of a
picture I might name "Waves at the Beach" as great a glory as I could
figure on seeing in my life, a glory I knew would some day be mine.

And lastly there came to me each night that blue and gray plaid dress,
my eyes looking down at it, that word Wife and the uniform I knew I'd
wear the rest of my days no matter what clothes I had on come to haunt
me, me still Lying there awake in bed, still here in Mississippi, still
trying to find some way back.

I never knew when or how I fell asleep, only knew that when I awoke
each morning I sat straight up in bed, my nightgown soaked with sweat,
and shot my eyes round the room in an effort to remember where I was,
and who this man in bed next to me was, and why that word Wife still
circled me, swirled round me like a fearless ghost in the pale, wet
light of dawn on a bayou, outside the open window behind me the
lonesome, measured drone of a woodpecker high up in a cypress, this
next day in Mississippi already begun.  , .  f CHAPTER 35.

BUT IT WAS LESTON TO CALL DOWN GOD'S ANSWER TO MY PRAYERS, MY husband
to make happen our moving back to California, though he'd no way to
know that was what he was doing.  On just one day my husband put into
motion our lives in a way that led to our leaving this place, and put
us back on the narrow path.

One morning in July he woke up before me, and when I sat up in bed he
was already at the dresser, pants on, cigarette at his lips.  He tucked
in the old shirt he had on, then started to buckle the belt, all with
his back to me.  Sunlight came in from behind me, through that open
window, so that his clothes seemed to shine, white in the light as I
blinked my eyes, rubbed back the little sleep I'd gotten.

He said, "Taking Brenda Kay fishing.  If that's fine with you."

He cinched the belt, reached to the dresser for his pocketknife and
change.  He half-turned to me, smoke snaking up from the cigarette.  He
blinked at the light shining in on him as he looked at me.  "No need to
worry, " he said, and smiled.  "You get her dressed, and I'll entertain
her awhile.  Give you some time to yourself."  He paused.  "Thought
maybe, too, we'd take a drive after lunch."

In his smile was that same confident and powerful man, the one who, the
evening he came home and told us he wouldn't be wearing a gray uniform
anymore, had lifted me off my feet, nearly swung me round the kitchen,
and for a few minutes while I got myself dressed, then made my way to
Brenda Kay's room, roused her from sleep and led her to the bathroom,
there seemed some jagged edge of remorse in me for giving him all the
grief I knew I did each day.  There'd been the business I'd given him
about his knowing there were rays out in the Gulf, for example, or the
ten or twelve new mosquito bites Brenda Kay woke up with each morning,
me leading her into the kitchen where Leston sipped his coffee and
rolled his cigarettes.  Then I'd stand his baby daughter in front of
him, lift the bottom edge of her nightgown, point out the small red
welts.

Each morning I said, "Take a look at these, Leston, " the red welts on
her scarred skin an even deeper red than those about her ankles or
arms.

Then I always turned Brenda Kay around, led her right back out the
kitchen and to her room before Leston was able to say a word.

Yet still here was my husband, up and out of bed and, I could hear
through the bathroom floor, already down in the storeroom under the
house, fiddling with his tackle box, making ready, I knew, the old
bamboo pole he'd found down there when we'd moved in, fixing right then
a bobber to the line, a hook and weight, so that his daughter could
fish with him, this same daughter sitting on the toilet and yawning.

Remorse is what I felt, even through the humidity and heat of the day
rising up around me.  I reached down, reeled off the right number of
sheets of toilet paper for Brenda Kay she'd already jammed the toilet
four times for using too much of it, the water pressure here nowhere
near what it used to be in Manhattan Beach and I smiled at the fact it
didn't matter how fine the plumbing in a house was, if a pipe got
plugged, it got plugged.

She finished, and I heard Leston stomp up the porch steps, the screen
door bang closed.

"Ready yet?  " he called out from the front room, and Brenda Kay stood,
pulled her underdrawers up, flushed the toilet.  She watched it like
she does, watched it until the water swirled down and disappeared.  She
looked at me, smiled, proud.

"Daddy's taking you fishing today, " I said, and that remorse I was
feeling made me smile all the harder, guilt working its way through
me.

I said, "You're going to have a fine time with him.  You two catch some
fish and I'll fry it up for supper, all right?  " "Fish?  " she said,
and slowly lifted a hand to her head, scratched.

"That's right."  I turned on the water at the sink, said, "Now let's
wash up first, then we'll get dressed and you can head out the dock."

She bent to the sink, put her hands under the water like every morning,
but then turned her head, looked up at me.  "Fish?  " she said.  Her
hands were still beneath the water, her eyes steady on me.

He'd never asked her to go before, never showed her a thing about
surfcasting, nor crabbing.  Nothing.  This was a fact I knew, but only
now did I see what was different about all this, it was Brenda Kay
who'd realized it, too, her eyes on me a question, asking, Is it
true?

It hadn't taken me long to find out how little I could teach Brenda Kay
on my own, for all the hours I spent each day working on the alphabet
at the kitchen table with her, showing her her name printed out
carefully in big block letters on tablet paper, Brenda Kay never once
made an effort to write out the letter R. Instead, she dissolved into
tears after the first twenty minutes of my urging, my holding her hand
and tracing the letters, so that still all she churned out the first
two months we were here were rows and rows of letter B's, and scribble
drawings, and collage pictures we made with white glue and pages
clipped from the Reader's Digest.

But that spark she had, the spark I was determined not to let die, was
still here, this early morning in July she'd perceived a change in her
daddy's behavior herself, one more piece of evidence that there was
hope for her.  There was a spark in her eyes, the same spark I believed
must have been in the eyes of Mr. White's baby brother himself, and I
thought of how that spark'd been lost, burned out.  This was my baby
daughter, and I knew that if she were only in the right place and
surrounded by the right people, the right activities, she could grow,
could find a way to write her name, to figure the number of sheets of
toilet paper she needed.  She needed those other children around her,
needed the teachers, needed the time swinging badminton rackets in
order for her to learn.

I called to Leston, "Out in a minute, " took the bar of soap in my
hands, lathered it up hard and fast.

I had sausage already going on the stove, and stood now at the sink
filling the coffee pot.  I could see the two of them on the dock, the
sun above them now so I didn't have to squint so hard.  Leston's plan
was that I'd make a little breakfast, bring it out to them when it was
ready, then the three of us could relax awhile outside, watch whatever
he or Brenda Kay pulled in.

I finished with the pot, brought it to the stove.  It sounded like a
fine enough plan to me, but when I went back to the cupboard by the
sink for flour for the biscuits the house wasn't that much of a palace,
after all, what with no pantry, food stocked just into shelves, the
washing machine planted right here in one corner of the kitchen I
glanced out the window to see Brenda Kay, her already given in to
swatting at mosquitoes.

Leston said something to her, took hold of her pole and lifted it so
that it pointed up, the bobber some ten feet or so out away from the
dock.  He stood next to her holding his own pole in one hand, he hadn't
yet cast out.  He towered over her, and spoke at her.  His words,
though I couldn't make them out, were loud, as though she might be hard
of hearing.  With his free hand he pointed at the water, then made a
few quick circles in the air with his fingers.

Brenda Kay said nothing, didn't nod or otherwise suggest she'd heard
any of it.  Instead, she stood with her mouth open, her eyes on the
water.

Then, slowly, she let the tip of her pole start moving down to the
water again, and Leston reached to it, quick brought it back up
again.

Brenda Kay swatted at her cheek.

Leston spoke to her again, made the same circles in the air, then bent
down close to her, smiled hard at her.  Still she wouldn't look at
him.

He looked at her a moment longer, then took a few steps down the dock,
bent over a tobacco tin, laced a worm through the end of his hook.  He
checked the line, cast off from the end of the dock.  The worm and hook
and bobber dropped to make smooth, clean circles on the morning water
out there.

I smiled, reached for the flour tin and the baking powder both, brought
them down.  Biscuits and sausage it would be for breakfast, nothing
heavy.  So far it'd been a prosperous day, that look of puzzlement in
Brenda Kay's face enough to keep me going at least the rest of it.

Remorse was gone, I had more evidence now that we needed home, and
soon.

All I needed was a way to introduce it to my husband, make him see in
the surprise on her face a call for us to head back to the Foundation,
to his children and grandchildren.

I poured out the flour, pinched in a little baking powder, mixed it up
with a fork, made a hole down the center of the flour to the bottom of
the bowl.  I tipped a little buttermilk into the center, worked it
around with my fingertips, then picked up the ball of it, rolled it
between my palms, laid it on the baking pan on the stove.

I had eight or ten of them made when I heard Leston's voice again,
thought maybe he or, if this day was shaping out the way it'd started
to so far, maybe Brenda Kay herself'd caught something, and I went to
the window, fingers heavy with biscuit dough.

Brenda Kay's pole was dipped down into the water now, and she was
swinging it back and forth, cutting up the water.  Then Leston was
beside her, and grabbed the pole out of Brenda Kay's hands.  He was
talking at her again, this time no smile.  She swatted at her cheek
once, then at her neck, then her chin, three swats right in a row.

Leston swatted at the back of his neck, waved a hand in front of his
face, shooing away mosquitoes.  He was still talking to her, two poles
in his hands now.

He set his pole down on the dock, pulled her line in, lifted it to show
the hook was bare.  He stepped over to the tobacco tin, brought up
another worm.

Brenda Kay turned to him, swatted at the back of her neck, and I could
see already a small circle of sweat at the base of her back.

Leston held high the worm, quick twisted it onto Brenda Kay's hook, and
I saw her shiver with his movement, with the way the worm simply
slipped through the hook.

Leston moved to the edge of the dock, dropped the line into the
water.

He was trying hard to smile, I could see, and he made again the circles
in the air, talked at Brenda Kay again, and handed her the pole.  ! 
!

_ L She wouldn't take it this time, only stared at where the bobber sat
in the water.

Leston smiled harder, most all his teeth showing now, and held out the
pole to her.  She still wouldn't take it.  Then he pushed it at her,
his move nothing giant, nothing hard, just a gentle push, the pole
touching her arm.

She moved quick away from the touch, her eyes on the water.

That was when I turned on the faucet, started rinsing off my hands.

I'd seen enough in just these few moments.  I'd seen enough, and there
flashed through my head the image of Billie Jean what seemed centuries
ago, her bent over at the waist, Leston with his belt pulled out and
ready to bring down on her, we three out behind the barn at the old
place.  I saw in my head the lipstick on Billie Jean's face, saw her
eyes looking up at me, and heard Leston's whispered words at me, Go on
inside, he'd said, and because all those years ago it'd been his job as
the daddy to administer the punishment, I'd turned and headed back to
the house.

I knew he wouldn't try that on Brenda Kay, figured maybe the most he
might do out there would be to let his voice go even harder, push the
pole a little stronger at her.  But I trusted a part of me right then,
the part that signaled something might happen if I weren't out there
quick enough.

My eyes on Leston as I worked the dough off my hands, I realized I
couldn't remember him ever spending any time alone with her, spending
any piece of his life with just her and her alone.  It was a fact, a
huge and awesome truth that hit me like a revelation, her life and how
it'd been spent had always been in my hands, and always would.

Certainly he loved her, had never been one to be ashamed of her, as far
as I knew.

But there came to me no pictures of the two of them alone, just me and
every day of my life since she'd been born taken up with taking care of
her.

So how, I wondered, could I ever let Brenda Kay's life get out of my
hands this way, so far out of my hands I'd thought she could go out
fishing with her daddy?  He was a man who had no idea, I was certain,
how to take care of his baby daughter, how to talk to her the way I
did, take her to the bathroom, bathe her, read to her, hold her hand
and trace the letters of her name even while she cried through it
all.

He had no idea at all.

And suddenly I saw Mississippi for what it was, enemy territory, deep
and troubled and ugly, even here with my husband to protect me, care
for me as he thought fit.  This place would never be the same place
he'd thought it would be by our simply moving back, taking up residence
in the place he'd seen his glory come and go.  This was not the same
place.

Nor was I the same woman.  Just as there'd been lives I'd passed
through on the way to this detoured one, maybe there'd been different
meson that same road, different Jewels.  Right now I wasn't the same
Jewel Leston'd had to tell to take care of herself that morning
lifetimes ago, the first morning I'd known Brenda Kay was in me, him
perched on the edge of our bed and smiling at the promise a next new
child had held out back then.  I'd been a different Jewel that morning,
a morning even before Cathe ral'd come and stood outside our kitchen to
call down the curse of God on me, reveal to me the truth of the
hardship of this life, a life that'd started in Mississippi and that,
if my husband had his way, would end here.

But I wasn't going to let that happen.  I took hold the hand towel
hanging from the oven door handle, started drying my hands, and looked
out the window one last time before I went out.

There stood Brenda Kay, still out on the dock, but facing the kitchen
window now, eyes trained right on me as though she'd known I'd seen it
all.  Her mouth was open, her bangs already a little wet with heat.

Behind her stood Leston, still trying to pass off the rod to her.  He'd
lost the smile, his words heavy and hard at her, though I still
couldn't make them out for what they were.  Maybe they were words of
encouragement, maybe he was swearing at her not paying attention.  I
didn't know.  All I knew was that she was looking to me, waiting for
me, and that I was already on my way.

I went out the kitchen door and down the stairs, nearly ran through the
yard back of the house and out onto the dock.

"Here she comes, " Leston said, his jaw clenched.  He dropped the pole,
let it hit the dock with the wooden clatter he knew it'd have.  He
turned from her, from me, and headed out the end of the dock, cast out
his line.  "Saving the day, " he said almost in a whisper, but one loud
enough for me to hear.

I said nothing.  I only made it to Brenda Kay, put an arm round her
shoulder, led her off the dock and through the yard, up the stairs and
into the kitchen.

A little before two Leston came in with the mail and milk and bread.

Since we'd moved here he was always eager to find reason to go to town,
ride up onto the blacktop road in his Lark Regal.  Then he'd park in
one of the slots in front of the only grocery store in town, a little
place Wilman would call a "Mom and Pops" for how small it was.  Getting
milk and bread was no chore, nor was picking up the mail from the
cluster of eight or nine boxes a mile up the road.

I was at the washing machine, pulling out sheets and making ready to
put them on the line.  I still wasn't speaking to him.

He set the brown paper sack on the counter, and held up two pieces of
mail.

"Looky here, " he said, and held them until I looked up, saw what he
had in his hand, an envelope and a postcard.  I saw, too, he still had
the same smile when I'd awoken this morning, the same impervious smile,
the one that seemed to shout at me we'd never leave this place, that
this was the end of the rainbow.

He dropped them on the table, where Brenda Kay sat coloring in one of
the books Barbara'd bought her, the transistor radio next to her and
turned to low.  Country was the only music she could find down here, no
more rock and roll.  Right now it was Jim Reeves singing out low and
sad.

"Well, " Leston said, and gave a thin whistle.  "Bugs Bunny with blue
fur."  He was looking at the coloring book, then grinned, said, "From
Eudine and Annie."  He tapped the mail without looking up at me.  He
squatted next to Brenda Kay, said, "That's a pretty picture, Brenda
Kay."

"Thank, Daddy, " she said, a sky-blue crayon in her hand, her still
scribbling away.

I lifted the basket of wet sheets, set it on top of the washer, and
went to the counter, put away the milk, then picked up the mail from
the table.

I looked at the envelope first, saw it was from Eudine, her big and
looping letters a dead giveaway.  The postcard, then, would be from
Annie, and I hid it away in my apron pocket, saved it.  I loved Eudine,
certainly, but I wanted to go slow with word from my daughter, savor it
and any word of life out there in Los Angeles.

I crossed the kitchen to the counter, leaned against it as I opened the
envelope.  Inside was just a two-sentence note on a piece of scratch
paper "Sorry this took so long to get developed.  Will write soon as I
can breathe!  " and signed only with a big E. Inside, too, was a
photograph, a color one of all of us standing outside their house in
Leveland when we'd stopped in on the way here.

Leston, the tallest, stood at the left, awkward and stiff next to
Eudine.  He had an arm on her shoulder, her holding onto his hand.  She
was smiling, her lips that same bright red as always, though she'd
started wearing her hair up and close to her head, and there were the
tiniest wrinkles beside her eyes.  Next to her stood Brenda Kay, both
hands at her sides, her looking off to the right at something none of
us'd ever know.  Next to Brenda Kay was me that's me, I thought as I
looked at the picture, me a black-haired and smiling old woman who
seemed even shorter than I thought, my arms thin and I aged round the
baby I held in my arms, baby Jane, grandchild number four from James
and Eudine.  In front of me stood the two boys Mark and David, both tan
and barefoot and wearing only shorts, both with crew cuts, both with
their faces screwed up into monkey grins at the camera.  Next to me
stood Judy, my first grandchild, her already thirteen and smiling, her
head leaned over and resting on my shoulder.  Those pigtails she'd had
in the grocery store parking lot in Big Spring, Texas, ten years ago
had given way to long tresses of strawberry blonde hair she wore curled
and loose.  She had on jeans and a shirt of her daddy's, the front
tails of it knotted just above her waist so you could see the tiniest
bit of her midriff, and though you couldn't tell it by the photograph,
I knew she'd already gotten a young woman's curves, Eudine's mouth
running all through dinner about the number and size of the boys who'd
already started to coming round.  There we were, all of us in the
photograph.  Except for James.

I held it in my hand, touched at the images of my grandchildren with my
fingertip, all the while a piece of me sorry it hadn't been me to take
the picture instead of him.  I wanted his image there in front of me
right now instead of this old and tired woman smiling out at me.  Then
I found myself looking at the images of his children and his wife and
his retarded sister and his momma and daddy, just trying to muster an
image of James in my head, trying to see in all of us something of
him.

And now I knew I was growing old, because all I could get together was
a gray outline, like a picture out of focus, him at the dinner table,
him in a uniform, him shaking his daddy's hand ten years ago.  Only
that.

"What she send?  " Leston said.  He stood next to me, reached for the
picture.

I handed it to him, said nothing.  But, like all day long, that silence
didn't seem to matter to him.

"That's a fine picture, " he said.  "Those boys of his, " he said, and
gave a short laugh.  "Two goobers, " he said.

I turned from him, moved to the table, pulled out a chair across from
Brenda Kay.  I sat down, brought out the postcard.

It wasn't a picture postcard, but one of those preprinted ones, "This
Side Of Card Is For Address" and a three-cent Liberty stamp printed in
purple on the one side, her message on the other.  But I looked first
at our address written out in Anne's fine, solid handwriting, "Mrs.
Jewel Hilburn, Mchenry, Mississippi" and I wondered what she'd thought
of when she wrote that out, wondered what she'd remember of this place
from her childhood.

I turned the card over, slowly read it.

July 13, 1962 Dear Momma Just a short note while I have a minute this
morning.  We are all moved, but are still putting away boxes & such.

We bought a beautiful Coldspot refrigerator from Sears.  It is really a
dream & has a large freezer section.  Barbara had a Tupperware party &
I stocked up on all kinds of goodies that will come in handy.  Laura
seems to like her new room just fine, although she has to call me every
now & then just to make sure I'm still here.  It seems like there are a
million bratty kids around here, but at least there are children for
her to play with.  She is now quite proficient at feeding herself, you
should see her.  In fact she gets real mad if you try & help her.

Guess that's about all the room I've got.  Love, Annie , That was it.

Just the note she said it would be, nothing more.  There were things I
could take from her words, I knew, the image of Laura, alone in a room
and happy until she saw she was alone, then calling out, a Tupperware
party at Barbara's, Barbara like always bubbling over and happy at
everything, a shiny new refrigerator.  But that was it.  I couldn't
even picture the new house they'd bought, only knew it was in Torrance,
sat at the peak of a hill in a new tract of homes.

Leston said, "Soon's you have the sheets up, we can take our drive."

I looked at him.  I said, "So long as it's not Gulfport, " and broke my
day-long silence.

He laughed, reached a hand up to his hair, smoothe it back.  He said,
"Not to Gulfport."

"Dive?  " Brenda Kay said, and we both turned to her.

"Yep, " Leston said.  "Surprise destination."

She looked at me, puzzled.  "Supise?  " I nodded.  I still had the
postcard in my hand, hoped that maybe by just holding onto it something
else'd come to me, a picture of that house, the sound of Laura's
voice.

Maybe even the sound of waves crashing that foggy morning, a sound that
seemed suddenly fading in me this day, a day I felt I was fast losing
hold of.  I couldn't even picture my oldest son.

I said, "Your daddy's got some surprise up his sleeve for us, " and I
smiled at her, turned to the washing machine, took up the basket.  I
went to the back door, turned and pushed open the screen door with my
back.

I said, "You want to come out back, help Momma put up the sheets?  "
"No, " Brenda Kay said right out, no hesitation.  She was still
coloring away, her eyes never leaving the paper.

Leston looked at me.  He shrugged.

He said, "I'll be out front, " and turned, headed out to the front
room.

A moment later I heard the front screen door open, close, next his slow
footsteps on the porch.

Outside I put up the sheets, clipped and clipped and clipped, my arms
aching with the work of it.  The slow afternoon breeze was almost as
wet as the sheets, and I hoped it wasn't too late in the day to be
putting them out.

But what I hoped most for, and what I never heard, was Brenda Kay s
voice come down to me from that kitchen window, her calling out to me
like baby Laura, making certain she wasn't alone.

CHAPTER 36.

I WASN'T LONG IN FIGURING OUT WHERE WE WERE HEADED.  I KEPT MY mouth
closed about it, figured I'd let my husband believe in his ability to
surprise me for as long as I could, so when we turned left, headed on
13 up toward Carnes, there was nothing left for me but to sit back, see
how he planned to play this out.

We drove on through the woods, trees reaching over the highway.  Once,
a little while north of Lumber ton on 11, when the trees seemed to
stretch out over us for as far ahead as you could see, Brenda Kay
hollered out behind us, "Tree tunnel, Momma!  " and both Leston and I
laughed, him shaking his head, grinning.

I said, "That's right, " and nodded.

A mile or so farther on Leston said, "No doubt you know where we're
headed."

"You tell me, " I said, and it was as if our having laughed together a
few moments before might have happened a year ago, or ten.  I said,
"This is your surprise, " and looked out my window at a green so thick
you could see only a few feet back in, and I thought of my daddy, of
him disappearing into the same thick green of a Sunday afternoon in a
place not far from here, not far at all.  Because that was where we
were headed, back to the old places.

"My surprise, " he said, and the dashboard lighter popped.  I didn't
hear him pull it out, a moment later glanced from my window to the
dashboard to see it still there.

Then I looked at him, at his profile sharp against all this green
shooting past him.  His hair jumped with the wind in through his open
window, the unlit cigarette jammed between the first and second fingers
of his right hand holding the wheel, his left arm hanging down out the
window.

This was my husband.  This was Leston, and I swallowed hard, because I
knew what I was doing, knew for every second I breathe what I was
doing, fighting him, trying my best to beat him.

I took in a deep breath, held it, looked out the windshield.  Afternoon
light fell in places through the trees to the road, dappled it with
light, my window open, too, my hair jumping just as much as Les
ton's.

The air moving round us seemed fresher, the shattered bits of light out
there on the blacktop making the drive feel that much cooler.  But I
knew better, knew this wind through the car was only a brief fix-up of
the heat we had to live in, sleep through.

I hung my arm out the window, too, held it palm forward so I could feel
like I could catch the air, hold on to it, keep it cool in me.

Leston popped in the lighter again, said, "Dealer's choice, " and drove
on.

We were just this side of Purvis when he finally slowed down, hit the
blinker, turned left onto an old dirt road, not even oiled, and I knew
where our first stop would be.

The trees seemed even thicker than I remembered back in here, that
green giving way now and again to fields already thick with rows of
more green, watermelon, sweet potatoes, corn.  Then just as quick the
fields would disappear, and here came the green again, honeysuckle,
kudzu, wild grapevine.  Now and again, too, a shanty'd poke out from
the woods, porch, tin roof, a dog or two.

He slowed the car to a crawl, eased it to the right, and stopped.  He
let the engine run a second or two before he cut it, then all I could
hear was the sound of crickets.

"There, " he said, and lifted his arm, pointed to my right, his hand in
front of me.  "Right there, " he said.

I looked.  Shrouded in magnolia and longleaf pine and vines of all
sorts was our first house, the cabin Leston'd built.  Our first home,
here on Rosehill Road.

That same dappled light shone on the house, on the rusted tin roof
scattered over with pine straw, on the black and rusted-out pickup off
to the left and up on bricks, no wheels.

I could see the rough wood sides of the house, exposed logs, gray
mortar between each.  The windows weren't busted out, what I took to be
a good sign for the place, and the chimney seemed in order, only a
brick or two missing off the top.  Otherwise, it looked just about the
same, except that when we'd had it Leston kept the front and back and
side yards cleared.

Brenda Kay said, "Davey Cockett, " and we two laughed again though we
didn't look at each other.  I was only looking out the window, taking
in this place that seemed so long ago my memory of it might as well
have been a dream, a chapter out of a book I'd read when I was a little
girl.

I said, "It's a log cabin, all right, Brenda Kay."  I paused.  "This is
the place where your brother James and your sister Billie Jean were
born.  Right here."

"Bijen?  " she said.  "James?  " "They're not here, " I said, and I
knew without even looking behind me she had her face out the window,
scouring the place with her eyes for her brother, her sister.  "But
this is where they were born, " I said.

I wasn't thinking about those children, though.  I was thinking about
how this was the house Leston and I'd come back to from Hattiesburg, a
house that'd seemed in its own day a palace those many years ago, a
palace to a girl who'd been thrown from a mansion in Purvis on to the
Mississippi Industrial School for Girls, from there to a bedroom in a
house in East Columbia, tossed and tossed, one life to the next.  I
looked at the place, me sitting in the powerful silence of no engine
running and the whirr of crickets round us.  This was where I'd landed
those many years and lifetimes ago, me with a handsome husband with
deepwater green eyes, dreams of his own lumber company and a family
large enough to carry it on into the future.

"Something's missing, " Leston said, and I touched my lips with the
tips of two fingers, felt the bottom lip tremble, and tried hard to get
my mind off what I knew would lead me right on down the road to
tears.

He said, "You remember what's missing?  " I turned, looked at him.  He
was smiling, cut his eyes to mine a second, then brought them back to
the house.  He nodded at the place, and I turned back to it, looked
hard at it.

"Shutters, " I said a minute or so later, and felt myself smile,
remembered the shutters he'd put up for me after James'd been born, his
gift, those white shutters with the pinetree silhouettes in the
center.

"Kills the place, those shutters gone, " Leston said, and I blinked at
his voice, nodded, my eyes on the bare log walls.  "But looks like it's
holding up good enough."

The front door opened then, and a colored girl with a sleeping baby in
her arms came out.  The girl had on an undershirt and a pair of faded
green pants, the pantlegs cut off just above her knees.  She nodded at
us, and I smiled, nodded back.  I judged she was maybe ten years old,
if that.

Leston opened his door, and I turned to him, saw he was already
standing, leaning against the doorframe, his arms on the roof.  All I
could see of him were those gray pants, his yellow shirt, his belt.

"Momma, " Brenda Kay said, "Nancy."

"No, " I said, "that's not her, " and I shook my head.  Nancy was one
of the retarded colored children from our days up on Adams at the old
Foundation house, a girl we hadn't seen or heard of in years, and I
wondered at what all Brenda Kay had stored up, what memories of her
life were jammed in her head, looking for escape if only the right
object or face or word passed before her.  And I wondered, too, .  s l
, what all of this iiving in Mississippi she'd recall, at what point in
her life she might shoot out the name Toxie, the word fish.  Leston
called out, "How y'all?  " She stood right there in the open doorway,
and now another child came out, stood just behind her, this one a
little shirtless boy.

"Fine, sir, " she said, and nodded.

"Your momma and daddy home?  " Leston said.

"No, sir, " she said.  "They working."

He was quiet a moment, and I looked back at him, at his middle.  I
said, "Leston."

"I built this here house, " he said to her.

"Yes, sir, " the girl said, and now the baby in her arms woke up.  It
lifted its head off her chest, looked around, stopped when it saw the
car.

"Leston, " I said again.

"Shh, " Brenda Kay whispered behind me.  "Baby."

Leston was quiet a moment, then said, "Well."  He tapped the roof of
the car twice, said, "Well now, you take care, " and then he was
sliding back into the seat, pulled the door closed.

"Yes, sir, " the girl said, nodded.

I said, "Bye-bye, " out my window, and waved.

Leston started up the engine, and the boy took a step back at the
sound.

The girl waved at me, and the boy, given bravery, I guess, by his
sister's wave at me, stepped back up to her, then moved in front of
her.

He waved, too, and Leston eased out onto the road started off.

I turned from the children to Leston, saw he was smiling.  He glanced
up at the rearview mirror, said, "Brenda Kay, where to next?  " "Home,
" she said, and for some reason, again one we'd never know she started
singing, "Ahh ah stop, love you!  " "Home it is, " he said, gave it the
gas so that behind us, I knew without looking back, there trailed a
cloud of dirt.

The next road we turned off on was an oiled one, a step up on the
quality of the lives of those living round here.  When we'd lived here,
though, it'd been just dirt.  Now there'd be no dust cloud to follow
us, trail us like a hound trying to find some animal on its way back to
its nest.

The road, too, was a little wider, and by the time we made it to the
other house, the one where Burton and Wilman and Anne'd been born, the
sun was starting on its way down, the shadows cast on the road nowhere
near as clean and sharp as those on our way here.

Leston slowed down, pulled even with the house, cut the engine.

"Home, " he said.  l I' I J r rr "Home, " Brenda Kay said.  I said
nothing.

Leston turned in his seat, said to Brenda Kay, "You remember this
place?

You remember when we lived back here?  " "Home, " she said again, no
question on her voice.  Just that word.

"Well, " Leston said.  He turned to me.  "Here we are.  Scene of the
crime."

"What crime?  " I said, my eyes still on the house.

He was quiet a moment, then said, "Figure of speech."  He popped open
his door, climbed out.  He crossed in front of the car, was already in
the yard and headed for the house before I called out, "What are you
doing?

" He took easy strides across the yard, the grass thick in places,
other places worn down to dirt as though whoever lived here used the
front yard for a parking lot.  He didn't look back at me, didn't turn
and smile or say a word.  He only lifted one hand, gave a short wave
back at us, and kept going for the door.

That was when I opened my door, stepped out onto the thin grass next to
the road.  I stood, turned to Brenda Kay.

I said, "Honey, you wait here for a minute or so.  Momma and Daddy's
going to have a look."

She quick nodded, her mouth open and eyes looking over the house, and I
thought for a moment maybe she did remember the place.  Why not?  I
thought, and then I opened her door, reached in for her hand.  I said,
"You just come along, Brenda Kay.  We'll have us a look around here."

"Home?  " she said, and looked up at me.  Finally it'd become a
question for her, and I smiled, said, "Once."

Leston knocked at the door, three quick raps that cut through the thick
air, made our stopping , n here more an intrusion than it already was,
though there didn't seem to be anyone around, no cars, the spots in the
yard where grass'd been rubbed bare speckled with oil stains.

He knocked again, this time harder, slower, but still no one
answered.

He stepped off the stoop, went to the window to his right, the
front-room window, and peered in.

"Definitely not niggers living here, " he said, his hands cupped to the
window, his face to the glass.

"Leston, " I said.

"Coloreds, what have you, " he said.  "Whatever, they're not living
here."

I still held Brenda Kay's hand, took a step toward him.  He stepped
away from the house.  twu BMT LUTT "How can you tell?  " I said, and
thought of a lavender dress, of a colored boy helping an old white
woman park a 52

Plymouth.

He looked at me over his shoulder.  "You serious?  " I shrugged, went
to the window he'd stood at.  Now I was curious wanted to peek in at
what someone'd done to the house that'd been our home.  I knew the
rising danger in that curiosity, in giving over to what was Before
instead of eyeing what could come.  Still, I let go Brenda Kay's hand,
went to the window.

Inside was furniture, an old divan and a chair, the stuffed back of it
worn at the center.  In one corner, there beneath where the stairs came
down, stood an old radio, big and boxy, just like we'd had.  And to my
right was the fireplace, the hearth, on it a stack of what looked like
magazines.

Scene of the crime, I thought, these were the stairs I'd been carried
down by two colored boys after too many hours of trying to give birth
to the eighteen-year-old girl behind me, and this was the fireplace,
where there'd been a can of lighter fluid left out.

My life in a single room.

I turned from the window, saw Leston standing away from the house,
looking up at the place, Brenda Kay just behind him, hands at her
sides, her looking up at the house, too.  Just my husband and my
daughter.

It was a frightening image, the two of them there in the yard, our Lark
Regal behind them on the oiled road, all shined and bright Leston and
Toxie washed it every four days or so, Leston letting his nephew tinker
under the hood most every evening he came by.  But it wasn't just the
car out there that scared me, or my daughter still looking at the
second story, or my husband, his neck craned to take in the house.

What frightened me was the way the sun suddenly worked on it all,
Leston stood in the shadow of the house now, his face no longer
squinted against anything, only examining the other house he'd built
for his family.  Brenda Kay, though, stood just past the line of
shadow, out there in July sun, heat beating down on her, shining hard
on her head, on the auburn hair she'd gotten not from me, but from her
daddy.  And the sun shone on her fair skin, her eyes squinted
near-closed, her brain never having been granted the privilege of
common sense, she could just lift a hand to her forehead, help block
out that sun, or just take a step forward, past that shadow line, and
be in shade.  And the sun was working just then on that shiny car,
symbol of what Leston thought we'd achieved in ten years, success
measured by the width of a whitewall, the hum of an engine.

"Look up there, " Leston said, and I moved toward him, then past him to
Brenda Kay, took her hand and pulled her into the shadow of the
house.

Then I looked to where Leston pointed, an upstairs window on the right
side of the house.  "Look at that, " he said.  "You see that screen?  "
I nodded, not certain what he was after.  The window itself was up,
inside it thin curtains, still in what had become a breezeless
afternoon.

He said, "Look at the screen, will you?  " "I am, " I said.  I was
looking, and I wasn't seeing what he wanted.

"There's a rust stain down near to the bottom, in the center.  It's a
rust stain, a circle."  He paused, brought the hand down.

I saw the stain, saw the faintest trace where an already rusty and old
screen was even rustier, then looked at him.

He was smiling at me, slowly shook his head.  He said, "You don't
remember."

"It's the boys' old room, " I said.  "That what you're after?  " He
gave a small laugh.  His eyes went to the window again, and he nodded
at it, said, "That's the boys' room, right.  But that stain.  That
stain's where Burton and Wilman used to pee when they was too tired or
scared or cold to head out to the privy."  He paused, still smiling.

"That is, before we had the indoor plumbing."  He looked at me again.

"You remember?  " "Yes, " I said, and nodded, at the same moment felt
myself suddenly falling into the chasm he'd led me to, felt myself
smiling all the way down into a darkness he wanted us to hole up in the
rest of our days, that abyss called Memory.  He wanted me to spend the
rest of my life like he and Toxie did every evening he was over, the
two of them out on the porch as the sun set behind cypress and oak,
them both talking on what they'd done with their days.

I was falling because I could hear two boys' whispers like silver in
the night, steps to a window, that window sliding up slowly, as though
we wouldn't hear the long quiet pull of wood on wood as the window went
up.

I closed my eyes a moment out there in the heat, and heard those sounds
again, even above the crickets, of two boys peeing out a second-story
window, their whispers, silent laughter, all of it right here in my
ears.

I opened my eyes, looked at the house, took it in in the way Leston was
doing, the clapboards were still the same white, though the paint'd
blistered up, what little lawn there was out here was trimmed up,
short, whoever lived here at least wanted that much to look nice.

But it was our house, I saw, the same one that'd been illuminated by
the headlights of the old Plymouth ten years ago as Leston'd pulled out
and away from our old lives, Wilman and Anne and Brenda Kay all asleep
in the back seat, and I fell even deeper, faster toward the point
Leston was aiming me for.

I smiled, and Leston nodded again at the screen, said, "Those two boys
were goobers, too."  He looked at me, smiled, and started round the
side of the house.

Brenda Kay and I followed, the lawn in the side yard just as neat and
trim as that in front, and I reached out, touched the side of the house
like it was some big and hairy beast.  I just touched it, afraid it
might move, might jump at me, memories cascading down on me so hard.

To my right was the barn, behind it the repair shed, neither of them
any more broken-down now than when Toxie and Sepulcher disappeared in
there each morning to fiddle with the engines on the machinery we'd
owned.  I caught glimpses, too, of the field back behind the shed where
we'd kept the cattle before selling it off, and where, later, we'd
grown sweet potatoes to sell for medicine for Brenda Kay.

Calcium glucanate, I remembered.  Some sort of drug these backwoods
doctors figured on curing mental retardation, and I smiled shook my
head.

We were behind the house now, spread out in front of us the woods into
which I'd let Brenda Kay walk just to see where she went, a teenage boy
named Burton following behind her, and I remembered him stopping at the
edge, kicking the dirt with his toe, him the undercover man, and I
shook my head at this, too, me smiling.

"What's so funny?  " Leston said.  I turned from the woods to him there
with a hand up to his forehead, us no longer hidden from the sun by the
house.

I said, "I'm smiling at just exactly what you want me to, I know it, "
and finally let go Brenda Kay's hand.  This was safe haven here a place
more familiar than the faces of my grandchildren, more comfortable than
a down bed in a mansion in Purvis proper.  Here we were.

I smiled, came toward him.  A piece of me was ready to surrender to it
all, to this point he was trying so very hard to make by visiting these
old places, we had come a long way in our lives, had beaten more than
most people were handed out.  That house six feet above ground on the
bayou was, in some ways, a palace.  Our boys and girls were men and
women now.

And as I came nearer him, I remembered those mornings with the children
even sharper, even clearer, remembered the tussling and fighting
between Burton and Wilman and Annie, her tagging along, and I
remembered Billie Jean when she was only a girl, before she'd lost the
piece of herself she'd given to Gower Cross, and before she'd found, I
could only imagine, the heavy and ugly knowledge only going through a
divorce could bring.

I moved closer to Leston.  In spite of all the waves I wanted crashing
l l in my head and the feel of cold, thick fog round me, even in spite
of all we had to do in California to save our baby daughter, those
waves and that gray started to melting away with each minute we stood
out here in the sun beside our old house.  This was our home, I was
beginning to see.  And I was headed straight for what, I figured deep
down in a place I was about to stop listening to, would certainly be
our deaths, Leston's, mine, Brenda Kay's.

Still, I touched his chest with one hand, smiled up at him, the sun
lighting his face.  Here was the man I'd sworn allegiance to, the man
I'd married, the one who came even before all the Before this house
brought with it.  Before, though it seemed there'd never existed such a
time, even Brenda Kay.  This was the man.  I am your wife, I heard rise
up in me, and smiled at the man who'd built this home for us.

I let my hand go to his face, placed my palm at his cheek, gently
rubbed there with my thumb, this touch just the smallest utterance of
the dying language of love our bodies'd once spoken.  This was
Leston.

I said, "You know I love you."

He reached up, took my hand, and I could feel the strength in him, in
his calluses and rough skin and bones and muscles.

He said, "I love you too, Jewel."  I said, "Scene of the crime, " still
smiling.

"Scene of the crime, " he said.  He grinned, let go my hand.

He put his hands in his back pockets then, looked past me back toward
the barn, just my husband after all, this moment of closeness maybe a
bit too much, or maybe just enough, he shrugged, still grinning.

Without letting his eyes light on mine, he said, "Think I'll have a go
look to the shed.  See what shape she's in."

He glanced down at me, shrugged again, and started away.  "Brenda Kay,
" he called out, "you want to come see the old barn and shed I built?

" "Momma?  " Brenda Kay said.  She was waiting for me, eyebrows up,
mouth open, those white teeth.

"Brenda Kay?  " Leston said.  He was next to her now.  He was still
smiling, but I could see it was something he had to think about.  He
knew what was going on, his own daughter stood next to him, but waited
for me to nod, to signal what she should do.

Leston put out a hand to her, him turned to the barn, Brenda Kay turned
to me.  He reached down, took hold her hand, gave it a small shake.

"Come on now, " he said without looking at me.  "Let's go."

Brenda Kay's hand was dead in his, her eyes still trained on me.  I
said, "Now you do what your daddy says, " and I nodded, smiled.

She turned, went right away with Leston, and I watched the two of them
march off hand in hand along a path clouded over with green.

I turned back to the house.  Scene of the crime, I thought, and I went
to the steps up to the kitchen door, steps I'd mounted too many times
to count, after calling my children in from the woods, or hauling up
the breakfast plates the coloreds stacked on the ground next to the
bottom step, or carrying up the wind-dried sheets and towels and
clothing, and I thought of the sheets I'd hung earlier this afternoon,
wondered if they'd be dry by the time we got home.

I stood at the bottom of the steps, put one hand on the rail, and
suddenly all those times I'd mounted them didn't seem such a burden,
such a chore, and I saw I was about to hit the bottom of that abyss
Leston'd led me to, the one I'd tottered over and into all by myself.

It was my resolve I was about to lose, I saw.

I lifted a foot, set it on the first step up.  This was comfortable,
the wood strong and sturdy, exactly what I needed to feel beneath me
while I carried up a load of laundry or a child with a skinned knee or
an apron full of summer squash or corn, and so I took another step, and
another, let my hand on the rail guide me up and up, closer and closer
to the kitchen door window.

Finally I made it to the top of the steps, stood on the little porch
there.  I cupped my hands to the window, looked in at my own kitchen,
and knew it was me, me, I wanted to glimpse walking across the floor in
there, a skillet of bacon and eggs in my hand, my apron for a
potholder, and hoped, too, I'd see Burton and Wilman come tearing into
the room, Annie right behind them, trailing nye-nye and crying for them
to wait for her.  It was all of that I wanted to see, and knew I would
if I let myself, let the ghosts of past lives, ones I'd thought for
years were behind me, breathe all over in me, illuminate this old
kitchen.

And suddenly there was movement inside, a swirl of color and shape
before my eyes so that I had only time enough to swallow, feel my heart
lurch and heave with what I saw.  I staggered back a step, saw before
me a girl in a flowered dress as she swung open the door, a hand to a
hip, her head to one side.

She said, "What y'all want?  " and I saw her dirty blond hair fall off
one shoulder, saw smeared red across her lips, her bare feet.

She was just a girl, a girl no older than and I'd had to think a moment
on who she seemed no older than, and the only girl who came to mind was
my own baby daughter, my Brenda Kay, tromping round in a broken-down
barn just then.

"Well?  " the girl said.  She quick tilted her head the other way, a
hand still at her hip, the other on the doorknob.

"I " I started, but didn't know how I might lead her to see what I'd
hoped I might find inside my old kitchen.

"We, " I said, and now she'd taken to tapping a toe on the floor, the I
I floor painted a dark red, and not the old stained wood we'd had it.

"We just were looking at the place, " I said.

"We saw you, " she said right out, but then her face lost its edge,
retreated to reveal she was in fact only a girl, no woman in charge of
this place.  She blinked, said, "I saw you, " and brought her head up
straight, let go the doorknob, put that hand to her hip.  She gritted
her teeth, tried to regain whatever power she'd had over me, but she'd
lost it.

"Somebody in there with you?  " I said, and crossed my arms.

She gave the quickest glance to her left, tried to see behind her
without looking all the way.  Then she drew in a breath, seemed to kick
her elbows out at her sides even broader, hold her shoulders even
higher, and I knew I was wrong about how old she was, knew only then
she was at most fifteen.

It'd been in the hair, the color and snarl of it, that I'd misjudged
her age, and in that lipstick, the dress.  It was a Saturday-night
dress, puffed short sleeves, the skirt just above the knees, the
flowers in the material a shade too bright, the neckline cut just a
breath too low.

The dress buttoned up the front, starting at the waist, and as she
brought up her shoulders I could see where she'd missed a couple
buttons, the two below the top one.  It was a dress a little too tight
for her, a girl with breasts, I could see, that'd send her at her age
out to find lipstick, to color her hair this shade, to buy a cheap
dress a size too small, and I wondered who her momma was, and where she
might be, and who the boy inside the house with her was.

Because as she stood taller in some child's attempt at intimidating an
old woman who'd seen all I'd seen about the way this world works, from
the quick and simple death of a father to the slow and hateful one of
her mother, from the birth of a retarded child to the arc of a
basketball in a high school gym, I saw between the open front of her
dress the two curves of flesh where her breasts met, small turns of
pale-milk skin men lived their lives to find, where only minutes
before, I knew, some boy most likely no older than herself had found
strange comfort, a feeling I figured must be foreign and familiar at
once, some memory of a mother's breast buried deep inside him, at the
same time a dream of the future, of the moment when he might enter her
and the world would be his, so that memory and the future were locked
in the same moment, the same touch of tongue on flesh, the body able to
accomplish with no more than mere human touch what it was I wanted in
my life, to remember what'd gone before me, but to push out to what
might be.

Only then did I see I hadn't yet fallen into the abyss, but still
tottered there, still stood with my toes on the edge, about to fall
toward the end of a life that'd be spent here, in Mississippi, among
the bones of my old dead lives, ghosts or no ghosts.  I said, "You're
showing, honey, " and nodded at her chest.

She looked down at herself, saw the buttons, started doing them up,
when from behind her came the boy's voice, "Tell em to head out."

She still fumbled with the buttons, glanced at me, said, "You heard
that."

I said, "My husband built this house, " and I turned, not because of
the boy's words, but because there seemed nothing more to say.  I took
each step down from the porch one at a time, savored them for what they
were, past history.

But when I reached bottom I turned, looked up at her, and it seemed
there was something else I wanted to say, on my own tongue words I
figured might help her, and might help me.

She stood with a hand back on the doorknob, the other at her side.

I said, "Don't let a man speak your mind."  I paused, said, "You want
us out, you tell us."

She took a breath, glanced behind her again.  She stood straight again,
said, "You head on out now."

"Fine, " I said, and I nodded at her, smiled.

She closed the door, but stood at the window a moment.  She turned her
head away from the glass, and I could see through the window her shake
her head, that dirty blonde hair moving back and forth in long locks.

Then she faced me again.

I put up a hand, gave a small wave, hoped whatever it was happened here
wouldn't be lost on her, or on me Her face was blank, no look to it at
all.  Just her eyes on me, that hair down the sides of her face, her
smeared lips.

Then she raised a hand, gave the smallest of waves, just a shake of her
fingertips, but enough to make me wonder what my life would've been
like if my last child, the daughter named after my husband's dead
sister, were born a normal child, and I wondered if that child inside
the window might well have been named Brenda Kay, her momma out to work
somewheres Bailey Grammar, serving up lunches right now to summer
school kids her daughter shut up in an empty house right now while a
boy had at her, the two of them finding the surprise and sorrow of
love.

And I felt then, too, some of the burden and joy, perhaps, that Cathe
ral might've felt by passing on words I could use, giving to me fair
warning of the life to come while she stood here at the bottom of these
steps on a cold March night, me there at the top of them while from
behind me spilled warm kitchen light, light that fell out onto the cold
hard-packed ground out here, light that seemed to illuminate Cathe ral
herself.

The girl turned her head from me, nodded to the boy I couldn't see, the
boy I was glad I'd never lay eyes on.  Then she quick turned back to
me, her mouth and eyebrows and eyes filled with nothing, and she
disappeared.

Leston opened Brenda Kay's door, and she climbed in.  I was already in
the front seat, windows all down, my forehead and neck and chest and
back all drenched in sweat.  I hadn't wanted to stand outside the car
while I waited for my daughter and husband to come back.  I just wanted
in the car, wanted gone from there.  Leston closed Brenda Kay's door,
came around to his side, climbed in.

He put the key to the ignition, started up the car, and I looked at
him.

He seemed scared somehow, his face flushed even more than it would for
the heat.  He smiled too hard at me, wouldn't let his eyes meet mine
for more than an instant.  He faced forward, both hands on the wheel,
and I wondered if he hadn't been out scouring the woods behind the
place, looking for a brass lighter.

I said, "What happened?  " "Nothing, " he said, shrugged.  He put a
hand to his shirt pocket for another cigarette, came up empty.  "Maybe
the heat.  I don't know."

I looked out the windshield, said, "Where to next?  " "Well, " he said,
and looked straight ahead.  He blinked a couple times, said, "Figured I
named the first place, Brenda Kay told us to come here.

Figure it's your turn.  You tell us where."

I was quiet a moment, the only sound the low hum of the engine.  I
said, "Cathe ral's."

I turned to him.  He was already looking at me.

I said, "Take me to Cathe ral's."

A slow smile came to him.  He said, "You want to make amends.  That
right?

" I could lie to him, I knew, just agree to what he figured could be
the only reason I'd want to see her.  Or I could deal him the truth,
hand him all I knew, which is what I decided to do.

I said, "I don't know why.  But please do it."

He lost the smile, pulled away from me until his back touched his
door.

He said, "Oh, " then turned in his seat.  He reached a hand to the
gearshift on the column, put it in gear.  "Okay, " he said, and we were
gone, and as we pulled away I imagined behind us the face of a young
girl, a girl I decided right then to name Brenda Kay, a bigbosomed girl
whose momma wasn't home, a girl who watched us from an open window,
behind her the voice of a boy, calling for her, giving out her name
again and again, while she watched us disappear off the face of the
earth.  I CHAPTER 37.

NELSON SAT OUT FRONT IN A ROCKER NOT MUCH DIFFERENT THAN THE one that'd
been thrown on a fire in a backyard in Purvis.  Leston parked the car
in front of the house, and Nelson stopped rocking, slowly stood while
Leston climbed out the car.

Calling the place a house was giving it more credit than is due, it was
a shanty on the right side of an ancient road, to my left a wide field
of sweet potatoes, and suddenly all of it was too much like the shanty
I'd stood in front of and'd spilled a story to a colored woman while
Cleopatra Sinclair and Bessy Swansea stole her food.  I got a cold
shiver just then, the feeling an ugly surprise in all the heat.

Nelson seemed thinner, shorter, and wore thick glasses, though there
wasn't any doubt it was him as he stepped off the small front porch, an
old man with steps as ginger as Brenda Kay's had been out in the Gulf,
each one measured and certain as he headed for the car.  His head was
down, and slowly he shook it back and forth.  One hand was in his back
pocket, the other to his forehead, a cigarette between his fingers.  He
talked to himself as he came toward us.  Only when Leston saw he wasn't
going to stop, was headed right up to the hood, did Leston finally
close his door, slowly come round to meet him.

I watched all this from the front seat, Brenda Kay asleep behind me,
it'd taken almost forty-five minutes to find the place, neither Leston
nor me remembering exactly where they lived.  I'd been here only once
before, couldn't remember why.  I only remembered a huge live oak
that'd grown halfway out into their road so that the road jogged out
the way of it.  When we finally stumbled onto that queer bend in the
road, the tree grown even bigger, the branches hanging even lower to
the road, I knew we were only a few minutes away, and I'd said, "Brenda
Kay, we're going to see Cathe ral, " and turned in my seat to face
her.

She'd nodded off, her head back and lolling side to side, mouth open,
hair matted down on her head.  The growth was so thick back here, so
close to the road and the car, we weren't moving fast enough to cool
things down.

Nelson stopped in front of the car.  He was old, older than I could
have imagined, his hair gone white, wrinkles at his throat, the glasses
magnifying his eyes so that in the late afternoon light they were huge
and wet.

"Mister Hilburn?  " Nelson said, and brought the hand down from his
forehead, the other out of his back pocket.  He leaned back as though
he couldn't bend his neck, and looked at my husband.

"Nelson, " Leston said, and put out a hand.

A moment or two passed between them before Nelson looked down from
Leston to his hand, then slowly put his own hand out, and the two
shook.

Three or four nails on Nelson's hand'd gone bad, the nails themselves
white and crumbled and dead.

He said, "We heard you was here, " and smiled, slowly shook Leston's
hand.  "We was wondering if you'd stop in."  Leston let go Nelson's
hand, said, "How'd you know we were back?  " "Word, " Nelson said, and
nodded, satisfied at his answer.

He turned to me, sitting there in the front seat and taking all this in
as though it were some performance, staged right off the front of the
car just for me.  Nelson nodded, said, "Miss Jewel, " and put his hands
in his back pockets.

I climbed out then, made careful not to close the door too hard for
fear of waking Brenda Kay.  I walked to the end of the fender,
nodded.

Though I felt I ought to put out my hand, let him shake it, I didn't.

I only smiled, looked at Leston.

"Nelson, " Leston started, rubbed the back of his neck.  "We come by to
say hello."  He paused.  "You looking good."

"No complaints, " he said, and slowly shook his head, the move
exaggerated for how slow it was.  "Just growing old in the Lord, " he
said.  He looked up at Leston, still smiling, and said, "How you doing
youselves?  " "Fine, " Leston said.  "Fine.  Just out looking around at
the old haunts, old stomping grounds."  He swatted at a mosquito on his
arm, smiled.

Nelson turned to me, his whole body moving, even his feet, as if his
back were a board, unable to bend.  He faced me, said, "You bring along
yo' beautiful daughter?  Missy Brenda Kay."

I nodded, smiled at him.  "Right here, " I said, and turned, made for
her window.

He followed me, and I wondered how old he really was.  It seemed at
some time I'd known he was five or six years older than Cathe ral, who
was a year or so older than me.  Maybe sixty-five, sixty-six, I
figured, then wondered what I'd look like, how I'd walk in that not so
distant future.

He leaned over, peered in the window, watched her in silence a few
moments.  Then he stood straight, smiled at me, his eyes growing even
larger with the smile.  He said, "Bless her heart."

I was tired of the pleasantries then, tired of the slow movement all
this was carrying with it.  All of life here in Mississippi carried
with it this small dance around the matters at hand rather than talk on
the matters, and I smiled back at him, cut my eyes to Leston just
behind him, gave a sharp nod he would know.

But before Leston could say or do anything, in only enough time for him
to blink at my silent demand that he tell Nelson what it was we were
really here for, Nelson said, "She be in the house.  She waiting for
you."

I looked at him, saw he'd lost the smile in just that moment.  He
turned, his feet moving in the slow way they had on his long march from
the porch to the car, and now I was behind him, had no choice but to
look at the black pants he had on, at how the cuffs were frayed through
all the way round, the elastic in the suspenders stretched out and
ragged so that they had nothing to do with holding up his pants.  It
was his old man's paunch that held them up, and as he walked in front
of me, I thought of how this was the man who'd leaned into the light
cast from my kitchen doorway to touch his wife's elbow, tell her it was
time to go on home while she prophesied my life, gave me God's will
whether I wanted to hear it or not.  This was the man who'd led her on
home after that, out into a moonless night, me left outside my kitchen
with only the knowledge of what my life would hold, the baby you be
carrying be yo' hardship, yo' test in the world.

I walked behind him, moved closer and closer to his porch and toward
the woman I still wasn't certain I knew what to say to, what to ask.

But she was the woman, I knew then, I'd been heading toward every day
since we'd moved here, and maybe every day since I'd thrown her out of
my house, forcing fault on her, blame for the fire that'd scarred my
baby's legs.

Scars that, in a twisted blessing all its own, had finally gotten us
away from here, and to California, as much the Promised Land as any
place could ever be.

We finally made it to the porch, and I looked up.

I do not know what I expected to see, did not know if I'd wanted her to
be older than I remembered, or younger, heavier or thinner or grayer,
stooped or standing tall.  She'd worn an old quilt over her shoulders
the night she prophesied my life, had on a shapeless cotton dress when
she showed up at our back door toting food the morning after my daddy'd
been killed, had on my own yellow sweater the day I'd slapped her in my
own stab at delivering myself of the guilt I bore for being no more
than the selfish granddaughter of a selfish grandmother, me a woman who
Cathe ral'd already known was for I saking the heart of her husband to
further the good of my retarded daughter.  She was the one to lead me,
I finally saw, from life into life into life, had seen me move from the
shack in the woods to my grandmother's house, had seen me carted away
to the Mississippi Industrial School for Girls, had delivered my first
five children into this world and'd warned me of the smile of God on
the sixth.  So many lives she'd marshaled me into, only to wind down to
this, the porch of her own home.

She stood in the doorway of the shanty, a hand to one doorjamb, the
other buried in the pocket of the brown plaid dress she had on.  I
couldn't see a single hair on her head for the blue kerchief she wore,
so I couldn't say whether she'd gone gray or white or salt and
pepper.

She was still tall, still thin, still only and always the same woman,
Cathe ral.

But the piece of sorrow she'd worn in her eyes the morning I'd slapped
her, the morning she'd taken that slap and then offered me her other
cheek, was huge now, exploded in her eyes so that there seemed no
touching on what misery she'd known.  This seemed the only difference
in her, her eyes, the whites of them brilliant and cold against her
black skin, filled with a brilliant and cutting sorrow.

Cathe ral said, "You come here looking for comfort, then go on home."

Nelson stopped, leaned back and saw his wife.  He whispered, "Don't go
to carrying on now.  These Mr.  Hilburn, Miss Jewel."

Cathe ral didn't move, only let her eyes slice into mine, those same
eyes that'd seen God once she'd surfaced from the Pearl River, baptized
in the same river as I'd been.  Her God was and always would be, I
could see, some different face, some different voice and angle, one I'd
never know.

I said, "Didn't come for comfort."

"Then you came for Hell, " she shot back at me, though her face hadn't
changed, the crisp wrinkles across her forehead and down her cheeks
giving away nothing.

"Cathe ral, " Nelson whispered.  He made it to the rocker, just touched
one arm of it, then turned, slowly lowered himself down to the seat.

He didn't start up the rocking again, only sat with both feet firm on
the ground, hands on his knees.  He was looking past us all, and for a
moment I thought he might be looking at Leston, still just behind me.

But then he blinked, lifted his chin a little higher, and I could see
he was looking someplace altogether different, some place I hadn't yet
been.

He said, "We lost a boy year and five month ago.  It been hard on
us."

He paused, and I felt myself swallow, looked to Cathe ral for her
reaction to his words.

Her eyes were right on mine, and I had to break her gaze, look down at
something, anything, and found I was staring at Nelson's knees, at
those black pants again and how thin the material was, skin straining
to break through, it seemed, though it was only an old man's knees, an
old man's pair of pants.

"Sepulcher, " he whispered, and the name hung there in the air like it
was a ghost itself, taken on form and motion, life of its own.

"We got no comfort to give, " Cathe ral said out clear and simple.

I looked at her.  I said, "I am sorry to hear this, " and found I
couldn't picture Sepulcher himself, only knew him to be one of the two
boys who'd carried me downstairs, loaded me into Leston's pickup for
the bumpy ride into town and the hospital.  And he'd been the one to
fiddle with the cars out to the repair shed.

She looked away from me, brought a hand up in front of her, looked at
it instead.  She said, "Dead in a ditch.  Eyes open."

"Cathe ral, " Nelson whispered.

"No accident, " she said.

The whole world was silent a moment, and then she looked at me.  "You
say you don't want no comfort, " she said.  "But I know the truth.  You
want me to give you the words of Jesus, give something to you like Luke
nine sixty-nine, And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand
to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God."  She
stopped, looked to the hand again.  Her face still told me nothing,
only her words falling down to me here on the ground, this time her the
one up on the porch.

"I am truly sorry, " I said, swallowed again at the idea of a dead
child, a grief I couldn't touch.  "I am sorry, " I said, and heard from
behind me Leston's words, "Nelson, we're sorry."

I felt my husband's hand at my elbow, heard him say, "Come on now, "
and tried to remember if those weren't the same exact words Nelson'd
used on his own wife, him coaxing her away from giving the truth to
me.

"Prophesy ain't worth the widow's mite, " she said.  "Nor tongues.  No
God gifts worth anything but the grace of a child."

She still stared at the hand, looked at the palm.  She turned it over,
looked at the back as if it might speak.

She said, "You want me to give you words to help you make yo' way in
this world, but I ain't here to give them."  She paused.  "But I give
you words anyhow.  Not the ones you come for, but words down from God
all the same.  Words more the truth than any prophesy of yo' life I
ever give."

The sun was fast going down now, sat just above the tops of trees at
the far end of the sweet potato field across the road, the gray porch
and the gray clapboards and Nelson and Cathe ral all going a pale red,
all changing color before my eyes.  She said, "I give unto you words
from the Eighty-eight Psalm."

Finally, she shot her eyes at me, and I nearly flinched with the weight
of them, the heat and storm there.  She whispered, "The wicked are
estranged from the womb, they go astray as soon they be born, speaking
lies.  Their poison is like the poison of a serpent, they is like the
deaf adder that stoppeth her ear, which will not hearken to the voice
of charmers, charming never so wisely."  She paused, made a quick fist
of her hand, eyes still on me.  "Break their teeth, O God, in their
mouth, break out the great teeth of the young lions, O Lord."

The color of all things went deeper red, the sky above us near scarlet
now, the sun touching the trees.  I backed away from the porch, backed
away until I felt my shoulders touch Leston's chest, and stopped.

She let the hand drop to her side, made it disappear into her pocket
again.  She nodded, the sky's color gone to her eyes, so that the
brilliant, cold white of them was now blood red, the color, I figured,
of a sorrow I hadn't yet touched, the color of a place I'd never
been.

"If they a prophesy here, " she said, "it that yo' life going to end up
this way some day.  Will for all of us.  We going to see death, and not
know what to make of it.  Even Jesus, " she said, her voice going back
to the whisper now, "even Jesus say upon the cross, My God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me?  Even Jesus not know what to make of it."

"Let's go now, " Leston said, and I felt his arm move round my
shoulder, felt him start to pull me back toward the car.

"Miss Jewel, " Cathe ral said, and I turned to her, stopped moving.

I looked at her there on the porch, the brown plaid dress soaking up
blood from the sky.  She smiled, said, "Don't a day go by I don't dream
on slapping you with this hand of mine."  She brought the hand from the
pocket again, held it up firm and high in front of her, fingers
spread.

"Don't a day.  Yo' children, all of them, they alive.  I got one dead
in a ditch, eyes open, killed for trying to teach burrhead niggers how
to read in a town a hundred miles north of here don't want no niggers
knowing how to read."

She nodded again, and I felt my heart lurch again, not in the way it
had when that big-bosomed girl'd surprised me at the kitchen window,
but in a way I knew I'd never recover from.  I felt it shudder under a
sudden and permanent weight, set there like a stone on my chest.  "It
you who taught me, " she said.  "That yo' legacy."  She nodded again.

"Even yo' baby daughter, yo' hardship and test in this world, she only
asleep in a back seat of yo' shiny car.  She only asleep."

I looked down, away from her eyes.  I whispered, "I'm sorry, " those
two words too small and insignificant to mean anything.

I closed my eyes a moment, then opened them, looked up at her what I
was certain would be the final time.

But she was already gone, disappeared into the black hole her front
doorway'd become in the gathering dark.

There was only Nelson, slowly rocking in his chair, hands still on his
knees, the creak the chair made the smallest sliver of sound.  The
coming dark'd erased all detail to him, though he sat not fifteen feet
away, and I couldn't see if his eyes were open or closed behind those
thick glasses.  And with that loss of detail his black pants'd turned
clean, brand-new, the suspenders down his chest taut and crisp against
his fine white shirt.

"You take care now, " his voice came to us.

CHAPTER 38.

WHILE I RINSED BRENDA KAY IN THE TUB, SQUEEZED COOL WATER OVER her back
and shoulders and face, I heard Leston turn Toxie back, heard low talk
out on the porch, then the sound his pickup made starting up, backing
out.  I took Brenda Kay's hand, helped her out the tub.  Her eyes
closed, me drying her off with the towel, she half whispered,
half-sang, "Ah ahh stop, love you."

Once I'd gotten her to bed she'd slept all the way home I went to the
front room, saw Leston at the screen door staring out at nothing, a
beer in one hand, the other in his pocket.

I said nothing, only went to the kitchen, then out the back door, down
the steps to the yard.  Treefrogs started up.

It was dark now, and I headed for the sheets on the line, knew that if
I didn't get them in soon they'd be drenched in dew by tomorrow
morning.

Above me, above the bayou and the cypress and oak and pine, above
everything, hung a half-moon, perched out over the water at the end of
the dock like some lost and dying star, trying to find a place to
rest.

I stopped in the yard, looked to the trees around me.  To my left were
the clotheslines, the two T-bars at either end, hanging between them
rows of white sheets a bright gray out here.  They hung straight down
from the lines, no breeze anywhere, and I went to one end, touched the
sheet.  It was still damp, hadn't been out long enough to dry in the
humid heat of the day.

I pulled back that sheet, ducked beneath the line so that I stood
between the two rows.  Slowly I moved down them from one end to the
other, a hand out to either side, my fingertips trailing along each
damp sheet, and for a moment I imagined I was surrounded by gentle
ghosts, ghosts who meant nothing, who carried no weight of death or
grief or sorrow, ghosts making no demands.

I reached the far end, and turned, planned to head back down the gray
corridor, touch each sheet, send each empty ghost shivering one last
time.

There at the opposite end stood Leston, him with no detail at all, just
a huge and looming shadow.  The tip of a cigarette glowed at his
side.

He lifted it up, and I saw the tip go bright red as he drew on .. .

He said, "You asked me today if something happened out at the shed."

He paused.  "It did."

I let one hand touch the sheet next to me.  I caught a corner of it,
fingered it between my thumb and first finger, and remembered a moment
on a porch when a man with wet and stringy black hair did the same with
the corner of a black wool blanket he and three other men had carried
my dead father in.

I let go the sheet, said, "What's that?  " He took in a breath, the
cigarette still at his side.  He said, "We was back to the shed,
looking around, and Brenda Kay near stepped on a copperhead."

"What?  " I said.  My voice was too loud out here, carried across the
water, shot up and into darkness.  I started toward him, my hands
suddenly at my chest, clutching each other, holding on.  "She what?  "
"She didn't step on it, just walked right over it, " he said, and as I
came near him I saw his head drop, saw he was looking at the ground.

I stopped in front of him, searched the shadow of him for more of
what'd happened, more words about how she'd been safe after all.

He said to the ground, "She didn't even see it.  And I wasn't paying
attention."  He paused, said, "I was looking up at the rafters,
thinking on how fine she'd held up, the shed."

"And?  " I said.  Now my hands let go each other, and one went to him,
touched a shoulder.

"I hear this shift in the leaves at my feet, and there he was, just
slithering right between us."  He paused again, brought up the
cigarette, held it at his mouth, though the tip didn't brighten any.

He just held it there.

"I didn't even grab for it, like I'd of done ten years ago, " he
said.

"Ten years ago I'd of just bent down, picked him up by the tail and
swung him, snapped him."

Finally he drew in, and I could see in the light from the ember just
the barest face, the shine of his eyes, the bones beneath his cheeks.

He whispered, "I was scared."

I touched him with both hands now, and through his shirt a yellow shirt
only a shade of gray out here beneath that piecemeal moon I could feel
his arms, the bones of them, the thin flesh.

I said, "I'm scared, too."

"Of what?  " he said.  The cigarette had died down now, and I could
only make out the shadow of his eyes, the idea of his mouth.  But I
knew he was looking at me, and I hoped he might find my answer in
whatever of my eyes he could see in this darkness, Scared I was losing
my baby daughter to the nothing this place had to give, scared of Cathe
ral's words and the death of all of us I felt this night.  Scared my
own life was out of my hands.

But I said nothing, no words forming in me, and suddenly I heard waves
again, felt fog on my skin, saw the bones of a pier.

I let go his arms, turned to the sheet nearest me, reached up and took
off the first clothespin.

He didn't move, and out the corner of my eye I could see his own pale
fog again, smoke breath easing out his lungs and into the night.

Then he was next to me, flicked the cigarette away, took from my hand
the sheet corner I held.  He ducked beneath the line, moved out into
the yard as I took off the next pin, and the next, until I stood with
the other end of the sheet, three clothespins in my apron pocket.

Without a word we moved away from the clotheslines, both of us with a
sheet corner to a hand.  Gently we popped the sheet, shook out any bugs
may have been there.

Then we came toward each other, and when our hands touched, the sheet
folded in half, he said, "Don't even put these back up tomorrow.  Just
go ahead, pack them up."

I nodded, took one end of the folded sheet, took a few steps back.  I
said, "I'll bleach them once we get home, get out any mildew."

We came toward each other again, and our hands touched again.

He said, "I didn't mean it to be this way, Sugar."

I stopped with the sheet, stared up at him.  We were turned a different
way now, the rising moon full in his face, a gray man looking down to
his wife, him giving up.

I said, "What do you mean?  " though I knew.  I knew and knew.

He whispered, "I didn't mean for it to end like this, Sug."

I tried to smile up at him, hoped in the dark he'd think this smile
came easy to me, came from down in me and needed no prompting at all.

I said, "This isn't the end."  I paused, swallowed.  I said, "Sug, this
isn't the end at all."

He looked at me a moment more, then broke his eyes from mine, nodded.

This time he took a step back from me, and we folded the sheet one last
time.  He took it from me, held it to his chest, then went for the
stairs up to the kitchen.

I didn't move for the next sheet, the next clothespin.  Instead I
watched him go, and thought on his naming of me once again, Sugar, Sug,
the last time him calling me that the night we'd ridden into Purvis, me
about to bear Brenda Kay, our lives about to take the giant blind turn
it had.

And I thought again on Cathe ral's words, on blessed words come down
from God, words right out of the Bible, Break their teeth, O God, in
their mouth, break out the great teeth of the young lions, O Lord.

Whether she'd known it or not, Cathe ral'd broken my teeth, broken them
out in a way better than any slap to the cheek could have done.  A son
dead in a ditch, I thought.  Eyes open because of me and what I'd
taught his mother, and I thought of my Brenda Kay asleep in a bed in a
bayou palace, a child unable at my own hands to make even the letter
R.

Leston made it to the steps, but he didn't start up them, as I'd
thought he would.  No, he placed the folded sheet on the third or
fourth step up, then turned, started back across the lawn, and as my
husband came toward me I wondered how he felt, now I'd broken all his
teeth, broken them once again with a prayer to God, a prayer he'd die
enough to see what was best for us.  Here was my answered prayer, my
husband dead enough now, teeth broken.

He was walking easily, hands on his hips as he crossed the lawn, steps
big and comfortable as he made it to the clothesline, started in on the
next sheet.  I am your wife, I thought.  Leston's.  Him all movement
and peace.

EPILOGUE FOUR-FIFTEEN, AND SHE HASN'T GOT HOME YET, AND WHAT I'M DOING
IS what I do every other time this happens, though it doesn't happen
enough for me to feel fine about it, feel a routine to it.  Maybe once
in three months or so she'll be late for one reason or another.  And
each time I do what I do now, watch the clock on the wall above the
sofa, walk to the window every three minutes or so and pull back the
curtains with a single finger, a finger just like every other of mine,
so old, so brown and gnarled I can hardly recognize it as my own.  I
touch the white material, pull it back an inch or so to see the same
empty street we moved to more than twenty years back, this house in
Redondo Beach only a hair larger than the one in Manhattan Beach.  But
this house has a bigger front yard, a bigger back yard, and behind the
row of oleanders at the rear of the yard is a chain link fence, behind
the fence a raised platform of dirt, on top of that train tracks.

Trains come through three or four times a day, and for the first few
months we'd lived here it'd been a strange thing to wake up in the
middle of the night, heavy in my head the dream of Cleopatra Sinclair
disappearing into thick green woods, her turning one last time and
calling out to me, while around me the room shook, the bed trembling
beneath me, the tumble and scrape of wheels on the rails there in the
dark.  But it wasn't long before all of us, including Brenda Kay, got
used to the sound.  Not a month after we moved here, too, Leston and
Burton'd taken out one of those oleanders, cleared a spot for Brenda
Kay, who'd taken to making her way to the fence, her with enough
courage to stand and wave at the trains passing by, especially at the
red caboose, where sometimes a man would lean out, wave back to her.

The house was what we'd been able to afford.  Wilman and Barbara and
Billie Jean lived just down the freeway in Buena Park, living right
over to Torrance was.  Annie and Gene and, back before they'd divorced,
Burton and Sarah, my middle boy finding eleven years ago the same ugly
territory his older sister'd discovered so many years before.

I look out at that street, the gray asphalt of it, the cracked white
cement sidewalk that crosses in front of my house, the green lawn, all
of it a place where, once, my grandchildren, every one of them grown
now, used to ride bikes, used to tussle and fuss and wrestle and
laugh.

But this afternoon I don't see the yellow van, Los Angeles County
School District printed in black letters across the side of it, pull up
to the curb.  I don't see any of Brenda Kay's friends, eyes straight
ahead or out the window, none of them, it seems, ever blinking.  I
don't see Brenda Kay stand from her seat, Barbie lunchbox in hand, pink
canvas knapsack in the other, don't see her slowly make her way out the
door and step down to that sidewalk, her white shoes maybe scuffed a
little.

I don't see Lupe, the Mexican girl who's been driving for eight years
now, don't see her single gold tooth in amidst all the perfect white
teeth she shows when she smiles at me.

Nothing.  That's what I see.  Just that empty out there.

Early of a Saturday morning last month Wilman and Barbara came over,
him in his nice new Oldsmobile company car, parking in the driveway
right here next to the kitchen windows.  I'd been up for an hour or so
already, Brenda Kay and me dressed and ready, though it was only
seven-thirty.

Brenda Kay was in her recliner, the radio on next to her, and had a
ruler and some crayons and a tablet of pastel papers.  She was singing
and singing, like always so far from any tune that it didn't matter.

Just her voice, her attention on the crayon in her hand, her eyes on
the paper.  When I heard Wilman's car pull up I said, "They're here
now, let's get a move on!  " She didn't look up.

We were headed to Saugus for the day, to visit a Mrs. Tindle, a woman
I'd never met before, but who I'd been told about by the people over to
the Gardena Human Services Department.

We were headed there for a reason, one I'd been putting off thinking on
for the whole of my life, and on that morning a month ago I still
wasn't ready for it.

We were headed there because it was a house where retarded girls lived,
a house in the valley up there where this Mrs. Tindle and her husband
cared for girls like my Brenda Kay.

For the past six or seven months, Wilman and Burton and James and Anne
and Billie Jean had all talked to me about this eventuality, this
looking for a place Brenda Kay could live some day, and of course what
this said to me, the real words beneath the ones they kept giving to
me, was that my own days left were lined up and waiting, the last of
them not too far distant.

No news here, this realization lately come into my children's heads l
!

a notion that'd been bounding through my own since before I could
remember.

Since before, certainly, the death of my Leston, him unable to get back
on at ECC when we moved back.  He'd had to take on a job as a janitor,
him dying of a heart attack in a grade-school hallway after pushing a
mop for two years.

Or perhaps I'd even known my life was on its way to over even before
Brenda Kay was born, when on an evening in March James'd told us he was
signing up for the Army, him the first of my children to leave, that
old movement from inside my home out into the world the first sign in a
world filled with signs that my own death was coming up.  Nothing more
than that, my term of days here on earth were already winding down even
that far back.

That was what the trip meant, even though when Wilman came in I reached
up and hugged him and kissed his neck like any other day he came to see
me, then did the same to Barbara, who fussed over me, told me how fine
my dress looked, though it was something I'd had for years, a shapeless
blue thing I'd bought even before Brenda Kay'd started over to the high
school.  We were each of us acting like this was just any other
Saturday morning visit.

Wilman went past me and on into the living room, said, "Billie Jean'd
be here if she'd been able to get off at the hospital."  He paused.

"Burt, you know, he's off to Phoenix with that girlfriend of his.  Anne
and Gene are out to Lake Havasu."

"I know, " I said.

Then Wilman hollered, "Brenda Kay, you fat!  " "Wimn!  " she shouted,
"you fat too!  " Barbara said, "We're going to have fun today.  We'll
go to breakfast at Spires first, then drive on up there.  They're
expecting us."  She reached to the collar of my dress, straightened it
out, though I'd taken a moment myself in the mirror before they came,
knew my collar looked just so.  Still, I smiled, said, "Sounds fine."

"Bill?  " she said, looked past me to the living room.  "Did you
remember the pillow for the car?  " Bill, I thought, and for a moment I
wondered who that was, who this woman could be calling out to, and then
I remembered.  Bill.

"Yep, " Wilman answered, and I heard Brenda Kay laugh "Huh!  Huh! 
Huh!

" to something he said, I didn't know what.  I only heard her
laughter.

We drove north on the San Diego Freeway, me up front with Wilman.

Barbara'd bought a sack full of Tiger Beat and Teen magazines and the
like, Brenda Kay flipping through them and taking in all the pictures
of boys with shirts ripped open to show pale hairless chests.  "Who's
that?

" Barbara would ask, point to a photograph, and Brenda Kay would shoot
back a name, give the television program the boy starred in, or simply
say "Bandstand" or "Soul Tain" if she'd seen him there.  Barbara
clapped with each answer, said, "That's right, Brenda Kay, that's
right, " then pointed to another photo, started all over again.

Though I loved Barbara and what she was doing, a piece of me wanted
quiet, wanted to just sit there in the bright morning light of a
Saturday freeway.  Traffic was just as slow as any other day, cars and
cars round us, more buildings and billboards and reflections off glass
and bumpers and all else.  More broken light and colors and cars than
ever, this city grown too large from that place we'd entered like it
was the new Jerusalem in 1952.  Then there'd been only the one freeway,
us stumbling blind into Bundy Mufflers and deliverance from our past
lives, safe passage into the next.

And Burton's old words came to me, traffic stopped on the freeway, us
not even out to the airport yet, I hope that ain't just a dream of
yours, Momma.  I saw his face as we leaned against the drainboard in
the house his daddy'd built by hand, a face all the clean and soft
angles of a boy just out of the woods after following his sister, the
face of a boy not yet left from home, and then came my pitiful words
back to him, me all knowledge and light and wise years even back then,
Once you let it turn into a dream, then it won't ever happen on you,
I'd said.

But it was a dream, all of it, a dream of how I might fix things for
us, Brenda Kay'd never tested higher than a six-year-old, not even with
the new programs and all the new research and innovations we were
always being told about in the newsletters, Mr. White and his speeches
and chair all long gone.  Brenda Kay made no progress, even when
there'd surfaced those new terms bestowed upon our children by the
school, EMR, for Educable Mentally Retarded, TMR, for Trainable
Mentally Retarded.

And always, always she was a TMR, her programs at the Instruction
Center geared that way.  TMR children had the task of setting the right
number of bolts on a cardboard template, then slipping those bolts into
a plastic bag provided by the company paying for the service.  One day
they'd do the bolts, another day the nuts, then the bolts, then the
nuts.  Certainly there'd been joy in her accomplishing that much, she
even brought home a paycheck once a month, always for some odd small
amount, $7.  31, or $6.  96.  On those afternoons she came home waving
the check, we'd go right down to the bank, cash it, then go to dinner
at a Denny's or Sizzler, where I'd let her pay for her meal herself,
though money still meant nothing to her, only pieces of paper, chunks
of metal handed over to a smiling waitress.

But then, the Tuesday before Wilman and Barbara'd come over, Brenda
Kay'd brought home with her Barbie lunchbox and her pink canvas
knapsack a note from the Instruction Center teacher, a Mrs. Samuelson,
telling me Brenda Kay would have to be removed from the TMR program for
a few months, she couldn't seem to match up the right number of bolts
to the template, Mrs. Samuelson informed me, and probably needed a
break from the work.  For "Refueling" was the word the woman'd used.

Refueling.  - And there we were, on a freeway and headed for the moment
when Brenda Kay and I would lay eyes on the real Jerusalem, a house in
Saugus where retarded girls no different from my own would end up their
own days, the world spinning round them, while Los Angeles and its cars
and freeways and buildings and clean, shiny people lived and made love
and money.  It was a dream, I saw, Burton knowing more than I ever
would even that far back.

My arms were crossed against the cool of the air conditioner, that air
suddenly too cold, ice in me, and I shivered, turned to my son.  I
looked at him, there with his sunglasses on, and saw how the skin
beneath his chin had started to sagging, saw the trace of blood vessels
across his cheeks and how they'd started to break up here and there.  I
saw the sharp edge of wrinkles beside his mouth, him there in profile
to me, and I saw my boy for what he was, a forty-eight-year-old man
driving his ancient mother to a place called Saugus and a house where
retarded girls lived once their mothers died, this the same man I'd
seen watch a doctor change dressings on the dead flesh of Brenda Kay's
burned legs.  He was an orphan, I saw, one of the five I'd left here on
earth, and I quick took my eyes from him, looked out the windshield,
looked for some deliverance of my own out there.

Above the buildings and cars and billboards was a still blue sky, and
all of Los Angeles seemed suddenly far behind us.  It was years behind
us, the sky out there the same sky we'd followed like a star, escaping
Mississippi and headed for here on a day when we'd passed from the
desert and into green orchards, oranges not ready to pick, broccoli and
strawberries and lettuce.

Then the stopped cars all swarmed up, swallowed that sky, and I knew
the only thing I could do was to look back at my son, try and give him
whatever it was I'd kept from him in order to take care of his
sister.

Here was the boy, I saw in the man beside me, who I let stand all on
his own in that doctor's office above the hardware store, the boy who'd
been afraid to cry while he watched the horror of his baby sister's
rotting legs and brown and oozing skin.

Cars all round us picked up speed, and I could feel my blood move .

more quickly in me as Wilman drove faster.  I felt my arms prickling
over in goose flesh, and knew it was because I saw the chance to make
up to my son at least to this one of my children that moment I'd lost
to him so long ago.  I knew I could make it up to him here in the car
before we found the end of my life and what would happen after I was
gone, all of it played out in whatever this Mrs. Tindle's turned out
to be.  This was the moment I couldn't lose, and so I turned to him, my
arms tight against my chest, and I smiled at him, smiled and smiled,
and I spoke.

"Wilman, " I said, and I paused.

"Yes, Momma, " he said.  He quick turned to me, then faced forward
again, sunglasses still on.  He said, "You cold?  " He reached down
with one hand, fiddled with the air conditioning.

"Wilman, " I said again, "I want you to know I love you."

The cold air stopped, too quick in its place the sun through the
windows, all beautiful and light, but hot all the same.  I waited for
him to say something.

"Momma, " he said, and smiled, though I couldn't tell if his heart was
in it, his eyes still hidden behind his sunglasses.  Barbara'd gone
quiet in the back seat, listening.

He said, "Don't be afraid, " and turned to me.  He was still smiling.

"Us going up here only means you're planning for the future, planning
for the day when you can take it easy, rest yourself after so long."

I turned from him, from the lie he and I both knew was a lie.  I looked
out my window, let a few seconds of Los Angeles and California
disappear before I said to him, "You drank a date shake once and threw
up behind a Texaco station."  I was quiet a moment, then turned back to
him.  "You remember."

Now he had his sunglasses off, and he was looking at me.  He was
smiling, and I could see his heart in it, see all of him right there in
his smile, and I saw, too, more of my Leston in him than I'd ever
thought possible, the wrinkles beside his eyes, his high forehead and
sure, easy smile, the freckles across his nose.  But his eyes were
brown, not Leston's deepwater green.  His eyes were deep blackbrown, my
own eyes, and not just my own eyes, but my father's eyes as well, and
the eyes of Jacob Chetauga, all of us still here every minute my son
breathe .

He said, "I remember, " and then he turned back to the freeway.  He
said, "I love you, Momma."

"What's this about?  " Barbara said.  She leaned forward, her hand just
touching my shoulder.  "Who threw up?  Bill?  " Bill, I thought
again.

i, "It was a long time ago, " I said, and I reached up, touched
Barbara's fingers, patted them.  "Too long, " I said.

"Willie Ames!  " Brenda Kay shouted then.  ""Eight Enough'!  Eight
Enough'!

" Barbara let go my shoulder, and I heard her clap behind me, say,
"That's right, Brenda Kay."

Wilman slipped back on the sunglasses, put both hands to the wheel,
drove us on.

We got there near eleven, the sun up high now as we drove along a thin
strip of pavement, Mrs. Tindle's road.  The town of Saugus itself had
been pretty enough, something of a German village, or at least what
someone thought a German village might look like settled out here on
the edge of California desert, little houses with lots of gingerbread
and shutters, picket fences, a Safeway and Von's market built to look
more like chalets than grocery stores.  Then we were out of town,
Barbara calling out directions from a sheet of paper she held, Wilman
nodding each time he found the right street.

To the left of us lay a row of brown hills, here and there a lone
cottonwood, nothing more, at the base of the hill was a railroad line,
empty and straight and heading off into the distance, to the right lay
huge fields, flat and not yet plowed up for whatever it was they grew
here.

My hands'd gone all sweaty, started to shaking a bit, too, with how
close we were coming to this end, my end.  My hands shook, and then I
could feel the sweat on my back, even though I was sitting in this
plush beige velour seat, seats almost the same color as those hills out
there, seats more soft, more comfortable than any piece of furniture
I'd ever had in my house.

And I smiled at that thought, at Wilman and his cars, at him driving us
on into Los Angeles that filet time, his hollering out to City Hall,
Annie burying herself in the back seat, amazed and embarrassed and
disgusted with her white trash brother.

"What, Momma?  " Wilman said, and I turned to him, saw he was looking
at me.  "What's so funny?  " he said.

"Nothing, " I said, still smiling.  I rubbed my hands together.

"Everything, " I said.  I looked at him, touched a hand to my forehead,
felt how cold my skin was, clammy and wet.

"Momma?  " he whispered.

"There it is!  " Barbara said from the back seat, her arm shooting out
between the two of us like she was some little girl herself, finally
got to some place she'd ridden weeks to get to.

It was only a house, two storys with pale blue clapboard, no shutters,
a chimney running up the near side.  The house was on our right, a
hundred yards or so set off from the road and out in the fields.  The
front of the house had two windows downstairs, the second floor in the
front had three windows across it, and I wondered right off which of
those windows might end up being the window of my Brenda Kay's room,
wondered if she might be in a room that looked out on lonesome empty
highway, past it that railroad track so that freight cars would rumble
through of a night, shake the house.  She would be used to that, I
knew, maybe that shaking even comfort to her once I was gone, something
to help her through.  Or maybe she'd end up on the back end of the
house, have a window that looked out onto all these fields.

Then we eased onto that drive, and suddenly the house seemed huge, and
I couldn't move.

Wilman popped open his door, as did Barbara.  But before either got out
they stopped, and I could tell they were watching me watch this
house.

I turned in my seat, made my eyes go straight to Brenda Kay.  I wanted
to see her reaction to this place, this house that could end up her
home.  I wanted to see on her face whatever it was this place
registered in her, some face that might betray she knew what was going
on here.  I was looking for some fear in her, maybe some kind of dread
in how her eyes took it in, in how she held her mouth.

But she was only looking at the magazine in her hand, her eyes going
back and forth across it as though she might be able to read the small
amount of words beneath the pictures there.

I felt tears well up in me, the hard knot at my throat like a cold
fist, because this was the truth of me, I wanted to find in my child
fear of the future, when all along, I saw, it was me who was afraid,
Brenda Kay more equipped than any of us for my ending, because she
could not know what loss was.  "Miss Daddy, " she'd sometimes call out
to me in the kitchen of an evening, and I'd go in to the living room, a
dishtowel in my hands as I dried them off, and I'd search her face for
some sign of tears, of genuine grief, only to see her smile, point at a
tall man in a Marlboro ad in a magazine.

"Let's go on in, " Wilman whispered, and I felt his hand on my
shoulder, felt him give a gentle squeeze there.  Still I searched for
something in Brenda Kay, some evidence, I knew and did not want to
know, of me, of me.

I found nothing.  Finally she only looked up, smiled at me, her heavy,
wide face near as wrinkled, near as old and sagging and aged as my baby
son's next to me.  She was forty-one years old now, a baby the doctors
said would never live past two, would never walk.  Here, smiling at
me.

And there were her eyes, her almond-shaped eyes beneath auburn
eyebrows, her auburn hair cut short as always, bangs across her
forehead like she was ten.  But it was her eyes I saw, and that
green.

Leston's eyes.

She pointed a finger at the page, said, "John Stamos, John Stamos!

Hospital!  "

"Yes, " I said.  "Yes, " and I tried to smile, her image trembling for
the tears I held in my eyes, tears I didn't want to let fall, not
now.

Those were Leston's eyes she had, and I could not cry at that.

She turned to her window, looked at the house then, lost the smile.

She squinted one eye at the sun coming in on her, and looked.

I said, "What do you see, Brenda Kay?  " She paused a moment, lifted
the hand from the magazine, held it up to block the sun as she
looked.

"Schoo?  " she said.  She looked at me, on her face the same look of
puzzlement, eyebrows up, mouth open.

I said, "No, " and swallowed.  I reached over the seat to her, and she
put her other hand in mine.  I swallowed hard again, squeezed her hand,
said, "Let's go see."

Mrs. Tindle opened the front door even before I could knock.  She was
a woman of Barbara's age, but thinner, her brown hair pulled back in a
ponytail at the base of her neck, wrinkles beside her eyes, smaller
ones beside her mouth.  Her skin was dark and tan and clean.  "Welcome,
welcome, " she said, and put out her hand to me, said, "Mrs. Hilburn,
I'm Nancy Tindle."

I took her hand.  She shook mine hard and strong and firm, and already
I liked her just for that, and for the reason she seemed happy, smiled
without putting too much in it.  She seemed real, and when she let go
my hand, she went right to Brenda Kay, held out a hand for her to
take.

"You have to be Brenda Kay Hilburn, " she said.

Brenda Kay took her hand, though she hadn't yet committed to smiling,
only shot her eyes from me to this woman and back again.

"We've got lunch coming up soon as we can round up the girls, " she
said to my daughter, and she turned, still with Brenda Kay's hand in
hers and headed into the house.  I saw then what she had on, a pair of
jeans and a pink cotton blouse, an apron tied round the waist.  She
said, "You guys just follow me.  Pardon whatever mess you find in here,
too."

And we followed her.

The girls, Jenny, Adelaide, Margaret, Jo, Rachel, Patty, Karen, Sammy,
Wendy, Olivia, Martha.  Eleven of them, with room.  for twelve.

Janine, number twelve, had died a month ago, Mrs. Tindle'd told me
over the phone when I'd called her the first time to set all this up.

She'd lingered a moment over the girl's name, letting the word Janine
hang there on the line for a moment or two before she'd hooked to it
the words died last month, and I wasn't certain if she was putting the
words together that slowly for herself and what grief she had in her,
or if it were for me, some sort of revealing of the obvious, our
children die, every one of them, whether we are here or not.

So there were eleven of them, all with about the same degree of mental
retardation, Brenda Kay right in the middle of them.  "We don't want to
bite off more than we can chew, " Nancy Tindle told us while we ate
lunch in the kitchen, her husband, Larry, a small man with quiet eyes
and big hands, in the dining room supervising the girls.  We leaned
against the countertops in the kitchen, a room filled with light from
the row of big windows that looked onto the back of the place.  There
was the barn, and a swimming pool out there, too, something I couldn't
see when we'd driven in.  "We want to give them the best care we can,
and spread that care as even as we can.  One girl needs more care than
another, there's bound to be rifts open up, jealousies, that sort of
stuff.  We want each of them to be loved."  She smiled, lifted onto a
plate a grilled cheese sandwich.  "Mrs. Hilburn, this is for you, "
she said, and handed it to me.

"Jewel, " I said, and met her eyes with mine.  "Thank you."

Visitors made some of the girls nervous sometimes, Nancy'd told us, and
so we'd eat in here, have our sandwiches in the peace and quiet of this
room, so we could talk.  And we talked and I felt myself laugh a couple
times, a feeling in my chest I hadn't expected, a surprise, but a
sorrowful one, too, because each time I came down from that laughter I
came back to the purpose at hand, finding out about this place, this
person, these girls.

Why I laughed, Larry'd built the swimming pool for the girls, Nancy'd
explained, in order to help them get a different kind of exercise.  So
he'd built a cement, in-ground pool all the way out here in the desert,
only to find that, though the girls'd said originally they'd like to go
swimming, not a one of them would dare step foot in it once it was
done.

"One of them, Sammy, I think it was, hollers out Fishing!  " Nancy
said, holding out to me and Wilman and Barbara a plate of Oreo cookies,
each of us taking one.  "There they all are, twelve girls this was back
when Janine was still with us all of them lined up in their swimsuits
and standing at the edge, scared stiff of that water.  They all look at
Sammy, who gets this big smile on her face, then they all turn to
Larry, and every one of them yells, Fishing!  at the top of their lungs
" She laughed then, one hand covering her mouth, and I couldn't help
but laugh myself.  Wilman took it up, too, and Barbara, who laughed the
hardest of us all.

"And here's Larry, " she said, still smiling.  She shook her head,
closed her eyes, and looked suddenly much younger for that smile, for
the joy in how she could find the humor in all these girls.  I
smiled.

"Here's Larry, " she said again, "here with a revolt on his hands,
twelve girls ready to throw him into the water.  So what does he do?

He goes on out to the fishery in Ontario, the closest thing around, and
by nightfall he's back here with a couple of books on the subject, and
then the next day he starts prepping the pool, and by the next week
he's got the pool stocked with these little rainbow trout, and then
there's the girls, all of them, standing in a circle around the pool
twice a day ever since, mornings and evenings.  We never eat any of
them the girls threw a fit, especially Jo and Rachel and Margaret,
crying and ranting and raving the one time Larry tried to clean one of
them.  He didn't even have the thing half-scaled before he had to
quit.

So it's been just recreational fishing ever since then.  And hell
trying to get them to eat fish sticks, too."

Barbara burst out at that, and Wilman shook his head, snickered in his
quiet way.  And I laughed, too, said, "Her daddy, Leston, took her
fishing, when we moved back to Mississippi for a while.  All I can
recall is the mosquitoes."  I crossed my arms, pushed myself off the
counter.

For a moment I thought maybe the laughter, the lightness in me, would
die with that memory, the two of them on the edge of the bayou, Leston
swatting away at mosquitoes and cursing, Brenda Kay swatting all the
same, but turning to me and just staring at me there in the kitchen
window.  But once I gave myself to that picture, twenty-two years old
in my head, of Leston behind Brenda Kay, his hand letting out line, his
mouth moving in words I'd never want Brenda Kay to hear, her just there
and looking at me, I still found I was smiling.

"Oh, no need to worry about mosquitoes.  This is the desert.  Not many
of them at all, " she said.

"Fishing!  " one of the girls in the dining room called out, and in
came Larry, in his hands a stack of paper plates piled with
breadcrusts, napkins and orange peels.  He crossed the kitchen to the
trash can at the end of the counter, smiled at us.

"They heard you, " he said, and dropped the plates into the trash,
dusted his hands.  "Now you've done it, " he said.

"Line up, " Nancy called over her shoulder.  She held a washrag under
running water there in the sink, and suddenly here came the girls.  We
three stepped back as they came in, stood against one wall while the
girls did exactly as Nancy Tindle asked, they lined up, the first one
at the sink, the line going out the kitchen door and disappearing into
the dining room.  Nancy rung out the rag, handed it to the first girl,
a girl a little shorter than Brenda Kay and with black hair that fell
to her shoulders.  She took the rag, wiped her hands with it, handed it
back to Nancy.  "Thank you for lunch, Nancy, " she said, her voice
different than Brenda Kay's, darker, deeper, but just as loud.  Her
eyes were right on Nancy's, and Nancy leaned over, gave her a hug, the
first girl's arms reaching round Nancy's shoulders.  Her hands patted
Nancy's back a couple times, and then the two let go.  Nancy said,
"You're welcome, Rachel."

She turned, rinsed out the washrag under the hot water again, and the
next girl stepped up, wiped herself down.  She was about as tall as
Nancy, thin with red hair, but with the same face and thick arms and
hands as all the girls, each of them Down's Syndrome girls.  She handed
the rag back to Nancy, her face down, her eyes unable, it seemed, to
meet Nancy's.  "Thank you for lunch, " she nearly whispered.  She put
up her arms, hugged Nancy in just the quickest way, her hands patting
Nancy's back only once before she let go.  But while she'd been hugging
Nancy, I'd seen her eyes cut over to us, take us in in just a moment's
time, then look back at the floor.  Nancy smiled at her.  "You're
welcome, Olivia, " she said, and Olivia turned, walked past her and out
the back door.

I looked at Wilman, saw him standing with his arms crossed, his bottom
lip between his teeth.  He was watching it all, too.  Then he saw me
watching him, and he smiled, brought up a hand and touched his chin.

He nodded, his eyes back to the girls.

Nancy did each girl this way, and we watched it all.  Three girls
didn't say anything to her Wendy, Martha and Adelaide but it didn't
seem to matter to Nancy, who still gave each girl a hug and said,
"You're welcome, " no matter what.  In a way it was funny to watch all
this going on in the kitchen, eleven retarded girls all about the same
age as Brenda Kay, give or take five years or so, parading through,
most of them short and round, some, like Olivia, a little taller,
thinner.  But each of them looked happy in her own way, even if they
weren't all loves and kisses when Nancy hugged them.  They were just
girls, each of them different, each of them dressed in clean clothes,
whether sweatshirts and sweatpants or in shorts and blouses and tennis
shoes.  They were all happy, it seemed, and I knew one couldn't ask for
anything more than that.  Nothing more.

Then came the last girl from the dining room, my Brenda Kay, who stood
behind a girl that could have been her sister, a girl it turned out was
Sammy, the girl who'd started up the whole idea of fishing.  She had
hair near the same auburn as my daughter's, but longer, and had thicker
eyebrows.  She smiled and smiled at Nancy, her teeth ragged and brown
in her mouth, but it didn't matter.  She I l held Nancy the longest of
any girl so far, held her and patted her back until Nancy said, "Now
Sammy, I think Larry's out there baiting up the lines, " and let her
go.  Sammy stood back from Nancy, then reached to her hands, took
them.

She said, "I love you, Nancy, " and still smiled.  "I love you, too,
Sammy, " she said.  She gave her hands a squeeze.

Sammy finally let go her hands, and came round Nancy, who turned back
to the water.  Then Sammy stopped in front of us.  She smiled, held up
a hand as though she were a traffic cop stopping us.

"How!  " she said, and Nancy turned quick to us.

"Oh, Sammy, " Nancy said, smiling.

But I'd already put up my hand the same way, held it out in front of me
just as Sammy did.  "How!  " I said.

Sammy dropped her hand, and laughed, her shoulders suddenly going up
and down with it, eyes all squinted shut with the laughter.  She
turned, headed out the door.

Now Nancy held the rag out to Brenda Kay, who stood with her hands at
her sides.  She was looking at Nancy's eyes, her mouth open the way she
does when she's not certain what to do.

I cleared my throat, said, "She's doesn't know " But Nancy put up a
hand to me, held it out the same way Sammy'd done.

Like a traffic cop, ordering me to stop.

"Thank for lunch, " Brenda Kay whispered, her eyes still on Nancy's.

Her hands were still at her sides.

Nancy nodded, said, "You're welcome, Brenda Kay."  She reached to one
of Brenda Kay's hands, took it in hers, gently wiped it with the warm
washrag.

I stood there, and felt myself growing smaller, shrinking away from the
world and everything I'd ever tried to do in it.  She held my
daughter's hand, and wiped it, turned it in her own and wiped it
again.

Then she let go that hand, took Brenda Kay's other hand in hers, and I
felt myself disappearing into the air around me, a feeling I'd known
would someday come, but which, now it was here, wasn't welcome at
all.

Yet here we were, and I watched as Nancy put the rag in the sink, and
bent down, put her arms round my daughter, my Brenda Kay, the child
born out of twenty-two hours of labor and countless hours of pain.  And
suddenly the pain I'd known in giving her to this earth was a simple
pinprick, a splinter in my finger compared to this feeling now, and how
my daughter seemed to be swallowed up in the arms of this woman.

Nancy's arms were around my daughter, and I felt I'd already lost her,
felt I might as well have been dead and gone already for those loving
arms round my Brenda Kay.

But then I saw Brenda Kay's eyes look to me, those deepwater green eyes
of Leston's.  Her eyes were on mine, asking, I could see in them, still
looking for me and what she ought to do.

And with those eyes on me, I finally knew the truth of why we were here
in a house in Saugus, it wasn't the end of my life we were preparing
for, but the beginning of the next life for Brenda Kay.  My lives, the
long string of them that started with the death of my daddy and went on
from there, right up to and including this moment, that long string of
lives wasn't over.  My life would never be over, but would be carried
on, I saw, in Wilman here at my side, and in James in Texas, in Burton
in his big house in Palos Verdes and in Billie Jean in her mobile home
in Buena Park, and in Annie in her house in Torrance, and in all the
hordes of grandchildren and great-grandchildren to follow after me.

My life would never end, I saw, not even in my own Brenda Kay, because
of those eyes turned to me and asking what to do, the only true victory
any mother could ever hope for, the looking of a child, whether
retarded or not, to you for what wisdom you could give away before you
left for whatever reckoning you had with the God who'd given you that
wisdom in the first place.

And so because it seemed the only valuable thing I could give her, the
sum total of my life wrapped up into this moment, I gave to her all I
knew, my eyes on her own, meeting for what felt the last time, I nodded
for her to go right ahead, for her to hold on to Mrs. Tindle.  I
nodded.

Her eyes hung on mine a moment more, then she closed them, and as if in
proof to me she'd learned everything there in that moment, she slowly
brought her arms up and placed them on this Nancy Tindle's shoulders,
and she held her, patted Nancy's back once, twice, three times.

I closed my eyes.

There is still nothing out my window, still nothing, though the sun is
fast on its way down out there, just beneath it and beyond the tops of
houses the thick bank of gray fog just off the coast, ready to roll in
and swallow us all.

And so it is settled, whenever I want, Brenda Kay has a home in
Saugus.

I don't need any more visits to any more homes for retarded girls,
though I'm certain there's folly in this, in having no other place in
mind for her.  But what I took from that place is worth everything to
me, the picture, just after Brenda Kay'd left the kitchen for outside,
of twelve girls standing round a swimming pool in the hot dry desert
afternoon, Brenda Kay settled in between Martha and Sammy, every girl
with a cane pole in her hand, each waiting for a fish to bite, and the
picture of Brenda Kay's eyes on me, waiting.  That is everything.

But none of that matters, because she's not here now, and I picture
again for the thousandth time a yellow van rolled on Sepulveda or some
such street where cars drive too fast, and where it is easy to get
killed any day of the week, any hour of a day, here in California.

I let the curtain fall from my fingers again, resolved now to call the
school, though each time she's late they say the same thing, You know
traffic and Don't wowy, she'll be home soon.

But I call anyway, because there is no reason why I can't have an
answer, however lame, as to why my daughter isn't yet here.  I stand at
the wall phone in the kitchen, the receiver in my hand, and lean as far
as I can into the front room, my eyes trying to dig through those awful
white curtains even a deeper orange now, almost scarlet for that sun,
and I try to see, but see nothing.

Someone answers on the sixth ring, and my words spill out of me, a
tangled chain of them that betray how old I am, how afraid I can be at
the simple fact of a late van from the school, and once those words
have left me, the woman at the other end says, Towanceredondo Beach
run?  and I nod and nod, finally say, Yes, yes.

New driver, she says.  You're not the only one to call.  It's his first
day, she says, then pauses, says, And you know traffic.  Okay?  Her
last word is tacked on as if I am to take this reason and wrap myself
in the comfort of it, feel somehow safer, both for me and for my child,
and suddenly, as I watch my hand place the receiver back in its cradle,
my hand even smaller, even more wrinkled than twenty minutes ago, I see
myself standing at the edge of a swimming pool in Saugus.  I see my own
end there, Brenda Kay dead and gone, nowhere for me to go but there.

It's a funny image, but one I cannot laugh at, too many times I've
thought on her dying before me, and wondered if I would still wake up
early of a morning after having laid out her clothes the night before,
and make her breakfast, then lunch.  I wonder, too, if I would tape
over her lunchbox so it won't pop open, only to turn from that task,
call out her name to the empty house, and hear nothing.  Standing at
the pool seems a logical end now, where I ought to end up, and I envy
my child, envy her seeing Leston in Marlboro ads, envy the feel of Mrs.
Tindle's arms around her, envy her having a friend who raises a hand to
strangers, says How!  with all the authority one can need in this
world.

It's almost five now, and already I can feel the slow tremble of the
house, the train on its way.  It'll be here in a minute or so, and I
wonder if anyone will be in that caboose to see that Brenda Kay is not
here, is not waving to him.

I stand at the kitchen window, waiting for the train to come, for the
tremendous heave and rumble that used to wake my grandchildren when
they spent nights, and that used to wake me, too, my first months here,
Leston warm in bed next to me, Brenda Kay settled in her own room and
asleep.  Those first nights I would sit up in bed and listen to the
huge and shambling sound the train made passing by, a black animal high
on the dirt platform above the bushes at the back of the yard.  How big
that sound seemed then, how important and lonely and dangerous there in
the middle of the night, those first days when all my children were
grown and gone, married, making children of their own.

I wonder at all these things, me standing at the window, and hear,
finally, after what I only then realize is perhaps the second or third
time, a horn honking in front of my house, the sound of it nearly lost
to me wallowing here in my kitchen.

I make it to the door and down the steps.  There are things I want to
say to this driver, words I don't yet know, but words I want to utter
nonetheless.  Brenda Kay is already stepping off the van and moving
fast up the driveway.  She just brushes past me, her mouth closed
tight, her eyes to the ground as she moves quickly, her arms swinging
away, in one hand the lunchbox, the other her pink knapsack.

For a moment I turn to her, watch her moving away from me, and I can
see there, above the garage, the train moving fast past us all and I
see how dark that eastern sky really is, and how late in my life all of
this is coming, all of it.  Brenda Kay is headed to the back yard,
where she will stand with her face pressed to the small space of chain
link fence Burton still keeps cleared for her.  She'll stand there, do
as she has for more than twenty years now, peer up at the train passing
by, and wave.

I turn to the van, still a few yards off, and for a moment I hesitate,
not certain there is any call for my anger toward a new driver.  I
think on when I was driving the station wagon myself, the children
hollering and crying and throwing up and the mothers coming out to you
when you are late only to damn you for having been stuck in that
traffic.

So the only words I have forming in my throat, in my head and heart,
are the words Thank you.  Brenda Kay is home safe, standing at the back
fence and waving while round us the air is filled with the rhythm and
scrape of the train.

I make it to the van, place a hand on the rail up, and lean in, only to
see the driver, a man who looks Chinese to me.  He has on gold
wire-frame glasses, and he is smiling, already nodding, though he
doesn't know what I am about to say.

Sowy, he says.  Sorry for late.  New route.  He leans over in his seat
toward me, puts out a hand, and says a word, what I take must be his
name, Nuyen perhaps, and it occurs to me he is one of these Vietnamese
people I have read of in the paper, and who I've seen at the market and
at the pier and everywhere now, and suddenly I miss Lupe and her gold
tooth, and then I miss Laqwanda, the colored girl who was the bus
driver before Lupe, and I miss Mr. White, who disappeared back to
upstate New York soon as the children were taken up by the school
district, his mission here completed, and then I miss, finally, Cathe
ral, a name as strong and steady and clear as any I have ever known.

And, as with every day since he has died, maybe even every day since
he'd helped me fold sheets on a night in Mississippi, I miss my
husband, my Leston.

Okay?  this Nuyen says, and I have to swallow, blink, nod my head.  I
glance back into the van, see Dennis there, him the only child left.

He smiles at me soon as he sees I am looking at him, and pushes his
glasses up higher on his nose.  He's forty-eight or so now, an old man
himself, his hair gone gray, his face gone to thick flesh.  Yet still
he smiles at me, remembers who I am.

I wave to him, say, Hey, Dennis.

He waves, then stands, points to the seat across the aisle from him.

He says, Brenda Kay sit over there, and nods at me, sits back down.

I look at him a moment longer, smile at him.  I say, Dennis, you're a
fine boy.

He smiles, nods, pushes his glasses back up.

I turn back to this Nuyen, nod at him, step off the van onto the
street.

I say, You better get a move on, and I point down the street ahead of
him.  Head out to Crenshaw and turn right, I say, then left at the
third street, four houses down.  That's the quickest way to Dennis'.  I
hear my voice in the street, hear how loud it is, the train long
gone.

His face is all concentration, his eyebrows together, mouth pursed.

I swallow, slowly say, Crenshaw right, third street left, four houses
down.  I say, Be careful.  I say, Thank you.

He nods again, this time a hard quick move, his face still working on
my words, trying to record them as best he can.  He pulls closed the
van door, gives it the gas, and he is gone.

Brenda Kay is already at the kitchen table, back from waving at the
train, she's turned on the kitchen lights, and is pulling out today's
papers from her knapsack, the lunchbox already left in the sink.

Though I need to start dinner, need to get us ready for the night ahead
of us, need to start thinking about running water for the bath, about
laying out her clothes for tomorrow, and about what she'll bring for
lunch tomorrow, too, though there is all of this to think about, the
only thing I can see myself doing right then is sitting down at the
table with her, and looking at her, taking her in.  Not long from this
moment she will be up from the table and in the living room, the
television popped on to reruns of shows she's seen a hundred times
already but which she'll laugh at all the same.  She'll sit there in
the recliner and slather her hands with hand lotion, then wipe them on
the towels I've draped on the armrests for just that purpose.  Not long
from this moment I will be cooking up the box of macaroni and cheese,
slicing up bits of ham to toss in with it, boiling up snap beans.  Not
long from this moment we will none of us be here.

She pulls from the knapsack a purple sheet of paper, a flyer from
school.  She holds it up, says, Dance, Momma!  and hands it to me, her
face in its smile, her eyes alive with the prospect of going to one of
these events.

I take the paper, read it.  Snoopy is on it, there in his ranger hat
and grinning.  He holds a placard, on it typed DANCE!

For those with Developmental Disabilities, Their Friends, and Family.

When, Friday April 14 Where, GARDENA COMMUNITY CENTER 1600 W. 160th St.
TIME, 7, 00-9, 30 P. M. COST $1.00

I look at her, expecting her to be watching me, but she is only digging
in her knapsack for something else, her mind on the next thing she has
to show me.  She pulls it out, smiling again, shouts, Bingo!  and hands
me the next sheet.  This one is yellow, the words on it set off in a
square border decorated with butterflies and flowers, FAMILY BINGO FOR
PERSONS WITH DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES, THEIR FRIENDS, AND FAMILY
MEMBERS.

I quick read through it, see that this event, like all the others, is
at the Center, the Friday two weeks from now, and that I have to call
Jennie or Dawn to reserve a space.  At the bottom of the sheet, in big
balloony letters and with a smiling sun coming up behind it, are the
words Have a Happy Day.

And again I turn to Brenda Kay, expecting to see her watching my face
for whatever might come across it, evidence of whether or not we'll go
to either of these events.  They're at night, I am ready to say, l and
I don't like driving all the way out there.  I can offer that reason up
to her, something I know she can understand, and I ready myself for
what she might say, whether she'll cry or pout or push her knapsack off
the table, and I start to smile, look up at her.

But she is still digging in her knapsack, and I say, How much more,
Brenda Kay?  and tilt my head to one side, ready and waiting to be
annoyed at how the girls down to the Center organize too much for these
children, too many events in lives already jammed and overflowing with
the simple and giant tasks of making it through a day.

Then she pulls out the next sheet.  Look, Momma!  she shouts, and it
seems her voice is louder than it has ever been, louder than me
shouting into the school van, louder than my wailing in the delivery
room, louder than the cries of my children at their father's funeral,
or the sounds of treefrogs on a night in Mississippi.  Louder than
anything I have ever heard, her small words filling the world, Look,
Momma!

She holds up only a sheet of paper, a thin sheet of lined newsprint
paper torn from a tablet not much different than I'd had when I was a
girl, when the world was ready and willing to be filled with all I
could teach it, she holds up a sheet of paper torn from a tablet like
those she's had all her own life, too, tablets she's been filling for
more than thirty years now, she holds up a single sheet torn from a
tablet like the one I'd taught Cathe ral to write on, a woman who'd
portended all this, who'd told me the truth all the way back then on an
evening in Mississippi, the first day I'd known Brenda Kay was in me,
this baby I've carried my entire life is my hardship in this world, my
test.  And the way God has smiled down on me, too.

She holds the sheet up for me to read, holds it in front of my face, a
hand on either edge, those short fingers of hers gripping tight the
paper, what is written on it everything that could ever matter to her
here in this world, N 2 13 AB S Only letters, rows of them, the first
letter of her name.  She's written thousands of these before, filled
tablet and tablet and tablet, but on this night, they are enough.  More
than enough, the sky now black outside the kitchen window, the train
tracks gone quiet until sometime late tonight, when the house will
shudder once again, and God might wake me from my sleep, bring me to
the bedroom window to see the train moving outside, that black shadow
moving forward on into the night and leading me away from here, from
Brenda Kay alone and asleep in the next room, from the rest of my
children, from the ghosts of the lives I've been blessed enough and
cursed enough to have led.

Only letters, labored, indifferent, yet full as she can make them of
herself.  Letters, I finally hear, singing with all they have, scores
of them swirling round me in voices I'll never understand, but
beautiful.

the end.  all the same, God smiling and smiling and smiling.