44

Later that night I come out to the kitchen, looking for a new Band-Aid for my toe. Agatha is sitting at the table, holding the tiny sweater.

“You think I don’t know what it feels like to be alone, Cornelia?” She doesn’t look up. Her voice is low, hard. “Felt every winter blow right through this old house for forty years, all alone ever since my baby died.

“I know plenty about standin’ alone, Cornelia. I know about havin’ a husband and I know about havin’ that husband run off before our baby cut her teeth because he couldn’t take havin’ a baby that wasn’t right in the head. I know about doctors who told me a woman all by herself couldn’t take care of a baby as sick as that and I know about letting them put her in one of those hospitals. She died there.”

She pushes the sweater in front of me. I look at the soft woolen stitches that hook together in tiny, orderly twists and I think that I may not know much about losing a husband or about having a baby die, but I know a lot about being dumped off by your mother.

“In a hospital? You mean for good? You left her there?”

She looks at me, furious, then picks up the sweater and storms into her bedroom and slams the door.