A NEW CALIBRATION

Still morning but for the worse. The quarter sun bore down on the dew, and the town sweltered and shone. To some eyes, it was lovely, dull things asparkle—hydrants and dumpsters and the trashy little signs that marked the shops around the square—but what glittered couldn’t last in such heat. What now was shining was one morning closer to rusting all the way through.

Already, May Fly felt the damp heat creeping up the seams of her shirt. The festival was in full swing, and something was flapping in May Fly’s head so that she was light enough to very nearly float above the oily asphalt. The world before her shimmered and went fuzzy, particularly when she found herself standing in the steam of the barbecue pit, the grill whereon various slabs of still-bloody meat recognizable as hips and legs and wings dripped and spat.

She’d had last night three-quarters of a bottle of cherry cough medicine and perhaps this made the day louder than it would have been otherwise. Preacherman on the corner playing his sermon songs from some strung-up speakers. A small dog barking. And there at the courthouse a lady they called the Spin-Wife telling everybody to stand up, to put their hands together.

May Fly ducked down and moved through the people, some she recognized, others she didn’t. It was a little like swimming, which she wished she was doing just now, diving under the blue water at the city pool, moving so fast, so easily against all that weight. She tried to remember the sudden chill, the sharp burn in her nose even as the edges of the iridescent world before her spun in ways they shouldn’t have. She hadn’t eaten since yesterday’s bologna.

Viva said they could go somewhere real nice once May Fly did what she had to do.

Pizza? May Fly said, and Viva said, Yeah. Whatever.

May Fly was in the front yard of the courthouse where they had hauled in some metal bleachers for the kids and the old folks. All the great and great-great grannies were down on the first couple of rows, petrified women with knitted blankets on their laps, fossilized faces nearly hidden under sun hats and black wraparound glasses.

Mama Powell, May Fly’s grandmother, was too young for this crowd. She’d be over at the church, selling her pies and changing money for the benefit sale. May Fly wouldn’t have to worry about Mama Powell. Viva had promised that.

This was the talent show, and on stage a boy in a store-bought sheriff’s costume played a plastic recorder. It was more squeaks than notes, but just to the side of the stage, Spin-Wife bobbed and tapped as if the racket was a familiar tune. When it was over, when the boy took the recorder away from his mouth in a great string of spittle, Spin-Wife told everybody to give it up for Little Charlie Whitehead.

May Fly clapped, but she kept moving. She wasn’t here to watch the talent show or listen to Preacherman or play the carnival games, though she did, for a minute, linger in front of the balloon booth—all those animals on strings, a giant stuffed dog which she liked in particular and fancied even more for the way one eye was so clearly sewn upside down. She studied that dog for some time, but then a man threw a dart and a balloon popped and May Fly flinched as if she’d been asleep standing up. She slapped her face, a bug she felt crawling there. She was back now, back to where she had no choice but to be.

May Fly didn’t have money to pop balloons, but Viva said what she was doing was a kind of game. There was a set of plastic checkers at the house, and since Viva didn’t want to play—Ain’t good at that sort of stuff, she said—May Fly learned to play herself. That is, she played a different version of herself. One May Fly was careful and thought a long time about her next play. But the other May Fly took more risks. Sometimes she moved without thinking. Sometimes she just jumped.

Viva said, You look at that board. You’re making sure you see everything, she said. Right?

Viva flicked May Fly on the ear. Hear me, girl? she said, and May Fly nodded.

That’s right, Viva said. It’s the same thing. You’re gonna look around, check things out. You’re gonna figure out when and where to move. And then, Viva clapped in May Fly’s face, you get the prize.

May Fly listened and when Viva asked if she understood, May Fly said, How come you can’t go? Why’s it gotta be me?

Viva laughed and her silver tooth caught the light in a way that made it look black. Her hair, when she had it done, fell in tight little curls but was, just now, a series of tangles and rats. Viva shook it off her face but it fell right back. Because, she said, people notice me.

Loose lines of snickering teenagers and mothers with strollers and bored finger-snapping men trudged around May Fly. They scratched at bugs and made faces at babies and ate meat off sticks, plodding from table to table as if in chutes, as if they too had no other place to go. The vendors were set up in stalls around the square, and there was Preacherman, and there were games, and there was a gray-headed woman from the waste water department passing out pamphlets about rain barrels. There were handicrafts—tables lined with ugly wooden toys and signs decorated with cute sayings: HOME IS WHERE THE MESS IS. And there in front of the Merle Norman was Miss Rawley, the plant woman.

May Fly knew Miss Rawley, had been to see her one Saturday afternoon with Mama Powell. Miss Rawley lived with her mother and sold plants out of a clapboard which, at one point, had been painted a patriotic blue but was now more weathered wood than anything. To her credit, Miss Rawley probably didn’t know the difference. The house might have been in pristine condition as far as she knew because Miss Rawley had a beautiful pair of smoky eyes that were like most pretty things in that they were nearly useless. One eye, jewel that it was, even had a tendency to wander back toward the bone, and when Mama Powell asked how much is this one, Miss Rawley had to feel the leaves. She had to feel the little knotted buds to know that it was a geranium.

Miss Rawley’s mother was still mobile, but she was white-haired and tiny and couldn’t have been any younger than eighty-five, and she spent most of her time in a lawn chair underneath a shade tree where every branch was hung with a homemade wind chime.

She’s blind, May Fly said when they were back in the car. The backseat was full of red geraniums, and though they didn’t smell exactly, there was what you could call an odor of dirt and greenery and living things. She’s blind and she plants all those plants.

Mama Powell looked like she was shaking her head, but she was also looking both ways not once but twice before she pulled out onto Main. Some things, she said, you don’t need to see to know.

At the festival, May Fly didn’t bother hiding even though Viva said she needed to make sure nobody saw. May Fly just stood in the middle of things, her hard flat belly sweating through the screened faces of three Disney princesses. Her eyes shifted and worked. There was old Miss Rawley selling chimes from her lawn chair, and the younger Miss Rawley feeling her way through the pots. She stooped to touch this leaf or that dirt. Some of the pots she watered from a rusting can. There was a lawn chair for her too, and underneath was the purse that held the billfold from which, May Fly saw, Miss Rawley was making change.

This place is stupid, Viva had said, and May Fly knew she didn’t mean Black Creek exactly. A place couldn’t be stupid or smart or rich or poor or black or white or good or bad. A place was only what it was, and May Fly understood that Viva meant the people. They don’t watch out for things. They don’t think anything bad’s gonna happen ever.

They were in the living room. Viva was on the couch, and May Fly was on the floor with her cheek pressed up against Viva’s leg.

They think, Viva said, everything’s just gonna be happily ever after. She made a hissing sound. Air funneled around that silver tooth. Maybe for them that’s true.

Viva had a paper party plate balanced on her knee. She was breaking up a bud, and for May Fly, who’d seen this maybe a hundred times, her mother’s hands might have been snapping peas for supper. She moved her head so that her ear was tight against her mother’s skin. In science class, they’d talked some about bodies, nothing anybody really wanted to know but just some vague stuff about bones and veins and blood. May Fly pretended she could hear these things moving and working. She could hear everything that was inside of her mother.

I used to be that way, Viva said. I used to think everything would be okay. You learn, though. And I learned that good and quick.

What May Fly could feel without pretending was the vibration of her mother’s voice. She could feel that in the knee and the bone. She rubbed her fingers against her mother’s skin. She smelled the weed, the earth in it. It was better than the other stuff Viva sometimes smoked, the junk that reeked like burnt marshmallows and a pan somebody left on the stove.

People like us, Viva said, we got to make our own good.

May Fly blinked and squinted against the brighter light. On stage, Spin-Wife was asking how everybody was doing this morning. She was yelling at them. Come on! she screamed at the grannies. You can do better than that!

A higher sun, and May Fly’s mind startled into a wild starving flutter. For a minute, she wasn’t sure what she was doing. For a minute, she only saw the auras of things—a glowing Miss Rawley mottled by dark blotches, the shadows of leaves and black spots for black pieces.

And red for red, Mama Powell said. She’d been the one to teach May Fly how to play which sometimes, she said, amounted to biding your time. It might seem like you’ve got yourself stuck in a corner, but you don’t. You’re just waiting, see there. You just need the right opportunity.

May Fly opened her eyes wide, and she swallowed until the spots disappeared, and it wasn’t long—ten minutes, a half hour—before old Miss Rawley pushed herself up and out of the lawn chair. She stood without moving, and around her, the metal chimes flashed in the sun, and for a few terrible seconds, old Miss Rawley, framed in all that glare, was staring right at May Fly. But she was only regaining her balance, letting the blood back into her legs as Mama Powell did when she’d been sitting too long.

Old Miss Rawley pulled up the waist of her pants and took a few tentative steps toward the younger Miss Rawley. They reached out to each other, and stood there, the one holding up the other. Then old Miss Rawley let go and set off in a slow and painful hobble in the direction of the porta-potties.

On stage, the next act was a troupe of dancers May Fly’s own age, and if she’d looked, she’d have recognized a few of them as homeroom classmates. They gathered in formation, their little fingers on the brims of their costume top hats. The music began, and it was a loud poppy number, a voice more robot than human. The feet stomped in a kind of brigade, and up close, the song played loud enough to chatter the speakers, but May Fly didn’t see her classmates. And as she moved in, what she heard, even louder than the music, was all those wind chimes. Most of them were made of forks and knives hammered flat, and in some winds, they made a sound that was less musical than frantic, and Mama Powell, who’d spent a number of years in Oklahoma, told May Fly once that when she heard that clattering, she couldn’t think of anything but tornadoes. The way the wind blew and the sky turned yellow, and you knew you better hunker down. You knew a bad one was coming.

On stage, the children were dancing, and at Miss Rawley’s booth, a couple with a baby was looking at a nice rose bush. Miss Rawley went over to them, and May Fly knew she was telling them what a rose liked and didn’t like. Miss Rawley was talking about the rose like it was a person, like it was capable of feeling and thought and action all its own. May Fly knew what Miss Rawley was saying even before she could hear it with her own ears, even before she was ducking down and swiping the red leather billfold and tucking it into the loose waist of her shorts.

Lady Banks, Miss Rawley said, will outlive your grandchildren.

May Fly was sliding around Miss Rawley now.

She smells just like violets.

Miss Rawley knew the geranium well enough, not just by touching it but by sniffing the air, a scent May Fly had tried to catch. So maybe Miss Rawley did know that her house needed painting, and maybe she knew that May Fly was close. Maybe there was something about May Fly that could be sensed without seeing.

Suddenly, the music came to a quick stop, and there was the thud of so many bodies, seven sets of show-stopping splits. In the thin applause that ensued, May Fly nearly ran but held herself to a fast walking clip.

The Spin-Wife said, Make some noise for The Stars and Stripes!

May Fly thought she heard somebody yelling. She thought she heard somebody calling after her, but she told herself it was just Preacherman. Preacherman was calling after everybody all the time, saying the world was gonna end, and they were all going to hell unless they stood up, unless they took that first step, Lord. And he was singing now, Preacherman was. They had to ask. They had to get on their knees and beg for forgiveness! Please, Lord, Preacherman sang. Give me life!

Things were turning in May Fly’s stomach, but she kept walking. She did what Viva told her. She didn’t turn around.

On TV, when they had TV, May Fly had seen the way suicide bombing worked. She’d only caught the last half-hour of the movie, and she didn’t understand why the man did what he did, only how he did it. The way he put on a vest strapped with dynamite. How he moved like old Miss Rawley, like a person in pain as he made his way into a tall building constructed, it seemed, entirely of mirrors. The man in the movie said a prayer in another language and nodded as if in some response just before he reached inside his coat and pressed the button.

May Fly felt Miss Rawley’s red billfold, hot and sticky against her belly. She stuck her hands in her pockets, holding up her baggy shorts as she walked—struggling not to run—the five blocks from the square, past the paper mill, and down the tracks to the little white house with the dirt yard where she and Viva stayed. Viva said it wouldn’t be any different than checkers, but May Fly felt more like the man in the movie. Like, at any minute, everything might explode.

Viva was on the porch, and, May Fly saw that Fat Greg was there with her. Fat Greg was short and fat and wore shirts and shorts of the same color so that, with his bald head and his thick wrists, he looked like an ugly old baby in pajamas.

One time May Fly said as much to her mother, and Viva snorted, but then her face was serious, and she said for May Fly not to say anything like that to Fat Greg ever.

Greg sometimes brought over buckets of chicken, and he licked his fingers when he ate and even when he wasn’t eating, and one time, when Viva was doing something in the bathroom, Greg made May Fly hold his gun even though she didn’t want to. He made her point it at a brown bird that was building a nest up under the porch, and then he said, Pow! And when May Fly jumped, when she dropped the gun, he slapped the back of her head. She was just like her mama. She’d fool around and hurt herself if she wasn’t careful.

Just now, Greg was taking up the better part of the rusted glider which was one of May Fly’s favorite places. He was smoking, and so was Viva, but when she saw May Fly coming up the road, Viva threw down the cigarette and smashed it under her sandal.

Took you long enough, Viva said. She came down the cement steps so quick she hung her shoe in a crack. She tripped, and when May Fly felt her mother’s hands on her shoulders, there was weight behind them as if some part of Viva were still falling, still trying to get her balance.

But Viva kept her feet. It was May Fly who almost went down when Viva yanked hard on her T-shirt. Viva was pulling the shirt nearly up over May Fly’s head, and May Fly felt the sticky billfold peeling off her belly and the hot sun on her bare skin. Even though May Fly was just eight, Viva kept saying they needed to get her a bra, but they hadn’t yet, and now May Fly was sure Greg had just seen her bare chest. She yelled and jerked away, pulling down her shirt so hard the neck got stretched, and ever after, the faces of those princesses were as lined and loose as the courthouse grannies’.

On the porch, Greg was laughing, a kind of gristled choke that changed to a cough. She thinks, he sputtered. She thinks she’s got something to see.

May Fly held her shirt down. She pressed her lips into a hard knot.

Viva had Miss Rawley’s wallet. Let’s see what you got, Viva said. What’s the prize, I mean. She winked at May Fly, and a muscle flinched in her neck. Viva was wearing the necklace she always wore, but something about the beads reminded May Fly of the stuffed dog, the eye that was all wrong.

Hot out here, Viva said, and when she headed back up to the porch, May Fly kicked at the dirt like she might do something. But then she just followed her mama and sat down hard on the cement steps with her chin on her hand. Her head was hurting as it sometimes did mornings after she drank the cherry syrup. She’d done what she had to do, and she was home now, and nothing had exploded, but a part of May Fly suddenly wished that it would.

You gonna say hi to your Uncle Greg? Greg said. He sucked on the cigarette.

Nope, May Fly said.

May Fly, Viva said.

He ain’t my uncle.

Greg blew smoke and squinted at May Fly. Then what am I?

Viva shot May Fly a look that said shut your mouth. From the wallet, she’d pulled out several white envelopes. They weren’t sealed, and May Fly watched as Viva took out what was inside. Several ones and fives. A ten and a twenty. One fifty even. Viva stuffed the envelopes back in the wallet and held up the cash.

She grinned at May Fly. Then she bent down and kissed her. You did it, girl. You made the good.

Can I have that? May Fly said, and she pointed at the wallet.

Viva looked at it, turned it over as if she was deciding. Then she handed it to May Fly. All yours. Go play shopper, she said. Play like you’re a lady.

May Fly took the wallet. She’d held it before, but now she really felt it, the smooth leather that was almost like touching something alive.

Ha! Viva said. She was counting the money. There’s more than a hundred here.

Ha! Greg said, and he was mocking Viva, making fun of her now. Which means you only need a hundred more.

It was a little porch, and when Greg reached out and took the money, he didn’t even have to get up. He stayed right where he was, sprawled across the glider, and just reached out and took the cash from Viva. Easy as that.

May Fly gripped the wallet. She looked back at her mother, waiting for her to do something, but Viva just stood there with her jaw hanging loose and her hand still up in the air, holding a bunch of nothing.

Mama! May Fly said like she was trying to wake Viva up, and Viva closed her mouth, but she didn’t say anything. May Fly stood up and took the last step so now she was on the porch too, and she said to Greg, Give that back. That’s ours.

Greg made a face, a kind of terrible grin. Or what?

Or, May Fly said, and she gritted her teeth, and Greg snorted, but this time, he didn’t choke. This time, he said to Viva, Look at your pup. She’s ready to fight!

He growled at May Fly. He showed his teeth. Then he barked at her.

May Fly pulled back, but the noise snapped something in Viva. That’s bullshit, she said. You’re bullshit, Greg, and you know it.

Greg’s eyes rolled around. What I know is what you owe. And what you owe is a lot more than this.

I paid already, Viva said.

You paid a payment, Greg said.

Viva nodded. Yeah. That’s what I’m telling you.

Don’t you know? Greg said. Every loan carries an interest.

Beside the glider was a metal plant stand. May Fly’s grandmother had one just like it where now sat one of Miss Rawley’s red geraniums. But Viva didn’t care nothing about plants. Viva, Mama Powell had said more than once, doesn’t care nothing about nothing.

There was just an empty stand and metal as it was, nothing really happened. Nothing broke when Viva reached out and turned it over. She worked her mouth like she couldn’t think of what to say. Or maybe there wasn’t anything to say.

The stand rolled around there on the porch, and they all watched it with a kind of patience, a dull curiosity that occupies those used to watching wheels and anything else that spins. When it finally stopped, when it finally got wedged up against the rail of the porch, Greg said, I know how you can settle up. Maybe even have some left over.

May Fly was close enough to hear them both breathing. She looked at Viva. The plant stand was all curlicues and whatnots, and it weighed hardly anything. Still, pushing it over had taken something out of Viva. All the sudden, she looked spent. She looked like she might fall down if somebody didn’t find her a chair.

Mama, May Fly said.

Greg stuck his thumb in his mouth and pulled it out again. You say the word.

Viva’s eyes closed, and just when May Fly thought they might stay that way, they opened again. Not now, she said.

Greg stuck out his tongue.

Viva took in air. Then not here, she said.

Greg grinned. His eyes nearly disappeared. He threw down the smoke. Between his fingers was the wad of Miss Rawley’s money. All right then, he said, and he pushed himself to standing. Behind him, the glider moved back and forth like a part of a clock. Deal.

He took one step, then two. He stopped in front of May Fly, and even though she tried to get away, he reached out and caught her chin. He said, I had me a pup one time.

Viva had her back turned. She was staring at a crack in the cement.

She was always wanting to run off somewhere, Greg said. Thought she could make it on her own. So I had to chain her up.

Greg’s thumb drew a circle around May Fly’s lips. She still kept trying to run off. Thought she’d break the chain if she pulled hard enough.

Greg, Viva said.

But all she broke, Greg said, was her own stupid neck.

Greg’s thumb was on May Fly’s chin. He tapped once, twice. Then he jerked her head in the other direction, twisting her neck hard.

Stop it, Viva said. She’d spun around and now her fists were balled up and she was hitting Greg in the back—stop it, stop it, stop it—but it was like punching a mattress, something May Fly could do until she wore herself out, and nothing changed except the next day her arms might be sore. You don’t touch her ever, Viva said, and she hit Greg until she was out of breath, until he turned around and looked at her.

He could hit her, May Fly thought. He could kill her even.

Greg stared hard and said, Be in the truck. Slowly, whistling, he made his way down the stairs and around the house.

Viva and May Fly stood there, wide-legged and balled-fisted, panting on the porch, and anyone who saw them would have thought they were the ones fighting, and of course, in some ways, they were and always would be. But when Viva’s eyes lit back on May Fly, she did her best to smile. I’m gonna get us that pizza, she said.

May Fly turned her head. She looked out toward the tracks. Every day the trains came. She didn’t know where they came from or where they went when they were gone. May Fly watched them from the glider, and sometimes Viva sat with her. Viva said she’d been hearing those trains all her life. She’d been hearing them so long she didn’t even listen anymore.

Look at me, Viva said and said until May Fly finally turned her head and looked, and she didn’t want Viva to see her face, but there was no way around it. Her nose burned, and she thought again of being in the water, how under the surface, all the sounds were muffled. If she were swimming, she wouldn’t be able to hear her mother. She wouldn’t be able to understand the words, When I get back. While I’m gone. Promise.

There was hardly any softness left to Viva. She was all bones and angles so that later, when May Fly missed her mother more than she ever thought you could miss a person, she’d press her face against the edge of a table or her school desk until she cut a line in her cheek.

Sausage or pepperoni, Viva said. Be thinking.

And then she was gone, sandals slapping against the dirt yard, the pop and slam of the truck door. A plum flash in the sun and from the stereo, a thudding bass May Fly felt as a rattle in her chest. Like Little Charlie Whitehead and every other second grader, May Fly had learned to play the recorder. It was the music teacher that told the class how if you listened to music loud enough, it could hurt your ears. It could actually change the rhythm of your heart. She felt that shifting now, a new calibration that left her short of breath and more than a little dizzy.

A breeze came up from the south, and in the trees, the leaves shook and turned. May Fly sat down on the glider. She opened the wallet, took out the empty envelopes. She studied them—sniffed the glue. She ran her fingers along the edges until she felt the notches. It took her a minute to figure it out. She closed her eyes. One cut for ones. Two cuts for fives. Three cuts for tens. Four cuts for the twenties.

This and everything about the wallet made a certain kind of sense. Miss Rawley had a photo identification card. May Fly slipped it out of the plastic sleeve. In the picture, Miss Rawley was wearing pink lipstick, and her teeth were very white, and somehow when the camera flashed, she’d known right where to look.

It was more than just a breeze. The wind was picking up, and from the square, May Fly could hear someone speaking into a microphone. Clouds were rolling in, and the sun came through in rays, and if you were closer to the center of town, the words would be loud and clear, but this far away, the voice seemed to come from up above, like distant thunder, and you couldn’t understand a thing no matter how hard you tried.

May Fly had trouble sleeping, which was why she sometimes drank the cherry syrup. Then sometimes she drank the syrup just because it was what there was to do. That afternoon, though, she must have been too worn out all of a sudden to keep herself awake wondering about things like blood in the body and where her daddy was and what would happen if her mama didn’t come home. She must have been too spent to keep her eyes open a minute longer. Otherwise, she would have done more when Mama Powell drove up. She would have thought to hide Miss Rawley’s wallet. She would have made up some better lie about where her mother had gone and when she’d be back.

As it was, Mama Powell was screaming before May Fly could get her eyes open good. Mama Powell was a small woman who most often wore loose flowered shifts, but she was still dressed for the yard sale, much like old Miss Rawley in her T-shirt and stretch jeans and fanny pack. Mama Powell’s curled wig had slipped down on her head so that her face appeared smaller than it was, and overall, she had the appearance of some furious and rabid rodent shaking Miss Rawley’s ID card in May Fly’s face.

What are you doing with Miss Rawley’s things?

This was the question that, like a second hand passing the twelve, Mama Powell kept circling back to between more questions about Viva and where Viva went and who Viva went with and when Viva would be coming home.

Don’t know, May Fly said until she finally covered her ears and just screamed it with enough force to stop even Mama Powell. Mama Powell looked down at May Fly, and May Fly looked up at her, and it was true that Mama Powell was too young to sit with the great-grannies, but that afternoon, she did look aged in ways that May Fly hadn’t noticed before. Mama Powell’s wig slipped sideways, and her eyes were dark hollows, and when she was finally quiet, her lips sagged as if whatever she was stopping herself from saying bore an extraordinary weight.

She left with Fat Greg, May Fly said. I don’t know where.

Mama Powell put her hands on her hips and looked down the street, up and down again, always twice, better safe, she said, than sorry. It was an easy kind of movement, a habit, as if she’d spent a long time looking for Viva to come around a corner. I remember when Greg Ross sold candy for the band, she said.

May Fly watched her grandmother. It seemed like just another thing Mama Powell said that didn’t much matter.

Mama Powell let her arms go loose and she sat down beside May Fly in the glider.

You ate something? she said.

May Fly scratched her face. In a corner of the porch was a smear of mud where the nest used to be.

Mama Powell breathed. In her lungs, there was a kind of hum. She was full of odd words and sounds. She smelled like moth balls and the butter lotion she used. I got an extra pie at the house, she said. She patted May Fly on the knee. Mama Powell couldn’t sit anywhere very long. Come on, she said. She looked at the wallet but was careful not to touch it. And bring all that mess with you.

Mama Powell’s car was still cool from the air conditioning. The carpets had been vacuumed two or three times since they brought the geraniums from Miss Rawley’s. There wasn’t a trace of dirt anywhere.

It was late in the afternoon, and there hadn’t been rain yet but the wind was still up. The clouds were still building. Mama Powell drove back down around the square where most of the vendors, including Miss Rawley, had already pulled up and gone home. Preacherman’s speakers were gone, but he was still talking to a few people. He raised his hand, waved as they passed.

I heard him talking, May Fly said, about how the world’s gonna end. How it’s already ending.

Mama Powell blinked. She rolled her lips.

You think it’ll just go dark like nighttime? May Fly said. Or will it explode all of a sudden?

Mama Powell’s head sort of trembled, and she reached up, adjusted her wig. You shouldn’t be listening to all that, she said. You ought to come to church with me.

He said everybody knows the truth. He’s just brave enough to say it out loud, May Fly said.

Loud is right. Loud and proud and flashy. Bad as your mama. That’s what he is. Wearing that hat and playing that music. Wants everybody looking at him when we should be looking at the Lord.

Mama Powell glanced at May Fly, and May Fly was staring back.

Mama Powell shifted in her seat and got a better hold on the wheel. What I’m saying is, she said, we got to pay attention to young folks. Young folks ought to be the hope of the nation.

The United States.

Mama Powell hummed. That’s right.

That’s in the Bible?

Mama Powell held her head high so that her chin pointed at the dash. Something like.

They were off the square now and into a neighborhood. May Fly held Miss Rawley’s wallet. She pressed it tight against her stomach. She was hungry. She knew she was, but she didn’t feel it anymore. She didn’t feel much of anything.

Makeisha, Mama Powell said, you’ve got to give this up right now. You can’t be taking what isn’t yours.

May Fly reached for the dash. She wanted to turn on the radio. Sometimes Mama Powell let her turn on the AM. May Fly didn’t care what kind of music it was as long as it was loud, but Mama Powell slapped her hand. Girl, she said, you better learn to listen.

They were pulling up to Miss Rawley’s now, the falling down house that looked even worse than it did just a few months ago.

Mama Powell sidled up to the curb and cut the engine. Things inside the car popped and hissed and sounded like the workings of Mama Powell herself.

You’re gonna give back what you took, she said. You’re gonna say you’re sorry.

May Fly didn’t move until Mama Powell slapped her leg. March! she said.

So May Fly opened the car door and got out and shut it. She held the wallet. She stood there long enough for Mama Powell to flap her hand around and say something May Fly couldn’t hear through the glass. Then she turned around and made her way up the busted brick walk and onto the porch.

All around, the chimes rang like so many odd bells. Somewhere, there was thunder.

After a minute, Miss Rawley opened the door. She stayed behind the screen, and May Fly said what she was told to say. She said something anyway, but she was thinking about tornadoes, about a story she’d heard Mama Powell telling some of her church friends. Mama Powell got quiet as soon as she saw May Fly was listening, but May Fly had already heard how the tornado had come right down the interstate. A family had taken shelter up underneath an overpass because that’s what they tell you to do if you’re in a car and such a disaster strikes. You don’t have a choice. You get out and you get in the ditch, and that’s what this family did, and when it was over, the mother opened her eyes, and all that was in her arms was a blanket. The baby she’d been holding was gone.

Gone? one of Mama Powell’s church friends had said. Just like that?

And Mama Powell said that it was. That it was just like that. The baby was gone, and they looked everywhere, and finally they found the poor thing, some fifteen miles away, up in a tree.

Was it alive? the lady said, and Mama Powell said they thought it was. It looked all right, not scratched up or anything, but when they got it down, they saw that the baby was dead.

The church ladies covered their mouths and shook their heads, but they leaned in closer. Was it a head wound? one said. A contusion?

A hematoma?

Mama Powell nodded. Might have been, she said, and she was nearly whispering now. But that wind. It gets so strong. It’ll rip off the roof of a house and suck everything out the top.

That’s when Mama Powell had seen May Fly watching and she’d gone real quiet real quick, but May Fly had heard the worst of it. Sometimes when she closed her eyes, she thought about her mother and she thought about her daddy, and she thought, too, about birds and wind chimes and babies in trees. And standing there in front of Miss Rawley, she thought she knew what it might feel like to have everything inside of you ripped right out.

Maybe Miss Rawley knew something about that too. She listened to what May Fly had to say. Then she opened the screen and took the wallet back, and she didn’t say much of anything besides thank you, but she looked at May Fly. She stared right at her, and it wasn’t just the color of Miss Rawley’s eyes that made a person feel like she was seeing through to the bottom of something deep and dark.

You hear that? Miss Rawley said.

They stood there together, and neither one of them moved, and they were quiet as people are when they are listening, and there were the chimes, but there was also, from some distance, the rumble and then the unmistakable blow of the train.

Miss Rawley smiled. It’s on its way.

She stepped back inside and closed the screen door, and by the time May Fly turned around and walked back down the steps, the train was already that much louder, so much closer. She got into Mama Powell’s car, and Mama Powell started the engine, and they drove away. They drove not back to the white house by the tracks but over to Mama Powell’s on Quinby Place.

They didn’t have pizza. Mama Powell never ate food made in a restaurant, and she wouldn’t dream of making something so foreign herself. But she cooked macaroni and cheese and there were collards and there was bread and for dessert, pecan pie.

Mama Powell made May Fly take a bath and gave her an old nightgown to sleep in and rubbed her elbows and her knees with the same butter that she herself used. May Fly stayed in Viva’s old room. There wasn’t much of Viva left in it, just a few pictures and some dresses in the back of the closet. But there was a certain and strong sense that Viva had been there, had so often slept in the very bed where May Fly lay now. Viva was so much like a ghost in that room that May Fly had to remind herself her mother wasn’t dead. Her mother wasn’t dead.

It was dark outside, and finally, the rain had started to fall. It came gently at first, and then grew into a steady drum. May Fly had eaten everything Mama Powell had put in front of her, but there was still a distinct sinking, an empty place that would growl for good. May Fly wondered if Miss Rawley had gone through her wallet yet, if she’d noticed what was missing.

Like Mama Powell said, you didn’t always need to see to understand. So maybe Miss Rawley knew what May Fly was just figuring out as she laid in bed feeling the sharp cut of the identification card against her hand. You had to give up a lot. Most everything, May Fly saw now. But there were some things you couldn’t let go.