25

It’s the path I always take when I’ve been up to my thinking rock. It follows the wet-weather spring down behind the house. In the dream its slippery as April and I grab at saplings to keep my balance.

For some cause I’m in a big rush and when I run up on the porch and find the front door locked, I don’t even stop to wonder, just tear around to the back. They can’t have all gone off. Maybe there’s a bedroom window open.

I squeeze between the snowball bush and the house but it’s no use. The window is shut tight. And I can see the house isn’t empty. There’s a heap of quilts on the bed and Mama under them. There’s the cradle within arm’s reach. And between the bed and the window, all across the bare floor, is a dark pool.

“Mama!”

I scramble from behind the branches right into a little rose bush. Get free from that, scoop up a rock, and climb the porch rail. There’s no latch. I have to break the window in the door. I have to make it big enough to get through.

Glass scrapes my wrists.

“Mama! Mama!”

I smash the glass again and again.

Hands are on my face, smoothing back my hair.

“There, Mandy.”

Someone’s sitting me up, holding me close. I push at the arms.

“I have to get through. There’s blood.”

“It’s all right—”

“No, it’s Mama. There’s blood—”

“It’s only a dream, Amanda.”

Omie’s voice gathers me back. “I’m right here. It was just a dream.”

“But it wasn’t a dream! It really happened—”

“I know it seems that way—”

“It did happen, only not to me. It was Mrs. Skidmore who found her and broke the window—”

“Mandy, what are you talking about?”

I’m wide awake now.

“Mama, when Willie was born. Daddy and Doc Bailey left, and if Mrs. Skidmore hadn’t come and seen the blood—”

“Slow down. What blood?”

“All over the bedroom floor. She saw it through the window, thought it was water leaking from the icebox, but I knew in the dream and I broke the doorglass, just like she did, but I couldn’t get through.”

I feel frantic again. There’s a big hurt in my throat; it’s hard to breathe.

“There, there, honey. It’s all over now.”

“But if Mrs. Skidmore hadn’t found Mama and sent her husband for help, Mama would have died, locked up in that house. And maybe Willie, too. And all I thought about was having to quit school—”

“What?”

“How it was unfair, me having to stay home and take care of them.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“I didn’t tell anybody.”

“I mean I didn’t know you stayed home.”

“You didn’t? I thought that’s why Mama asked if I could visit. I’ve not had a day of school since Willie came.”

“Well, this is the first I’ve heard about that or the hemorrhage. Jim just wrote that Rena was weak, needed all of you to help with chores.” Omie’s voice thickens. “That child would die of thirst before she’d ask for a drink of water.”

“What do you mean?”

“I would have come, child. I could have taken care of her and that baby, too. Lord knows, I’ve bottomed enough babies. But Rena wouldn’t ask, or Jim Perritt. Proud as poplars, the two of them.”

She draws herself up, pulls her flowered robe around her.

“So you’ve looked after a baby and nursed an invalid and run a household, and Opie and I have been treating you like a child. We must have tried your patience, Mandy.”

“No, it’s fun to be a child again.”

We both laugh.

“Would you like some hot milk? I don’t think I can lie right down after such a tale as this.”

I follow Omie into the night-lit hall and down the staircase. It’s much longer in the dark. On the landing the full moon peers through the window like a face.

“The first thing I remember about you,” I whisper to Omie, “is when you held me up to that window. ‘It’s an oculus window,’ you told me, ‘like your eye.’ I thought you meant that’s where the house looked out.”

Omie smiles as she turns on the kitchen light. We both blink.

“That sounds like one of Laura’s notions.”

“Or Helen’s.”

“It just goes to show we’re all related.”

“I guess so.”

I think about that while she heats the milk. Mama and Omie, Aunt Laura and Helen and me. Like a crazy quilt stitched and bound together, not the same pattern, not even the same cloth. Old tie silk, velvet, scraps of wool—

“Here you go.”

Omie sets two night-blue mugs on the table.

“I added a little honey.”

“It smells good.”

The bubbles make me think of fresh milk, how it froths at the rim of the pail. And how this time tomorrow night I’ll be home.