From Night Water ; an excerpt

The river flowed both ways. The current moved from north to south, but the wind usually came from the south, rippling the bronze-green water in the opposite direction.

—Margaret Laurence, from The Diviners

Now the dead move through all of us still glowing, Mother and child, lover and lover mated, Are wound and bound together and enflowing. What has been plaited cannot be unplaited— Only the strands grow richer with each loss And memory makes kings and queens of us.

Dark into light, light into darkness, spin. When all the birds have flown to some real haven, We who find shelter in the warmth within, Listen, and feel new-cherished, new-forgiven, As the lost human voices speak through us and blend Our complex love, our mourning without end.

—May Sarton, from “All Souls”

1

There had been no words for naming when she was born.

She was “Girl Owens” on the stamped paper that certified her birth, and at home, she had just been “Sister,” that was all. When asked to decide, at six, what she would be called, she had chosen “Sunday,” the time of voices, lifted in praise.

That was one piece of the story, but other parts had gone unspoken, and some had been buried, but were not at rest. She was headed back to claim them, as she had taken her name.

She could smell the burnt, sweet odor of the paper mill that sprawled across the edge of town, and as the train got closer, she remembered all that she saw. She felt herself entering the greens and reds and browns of her own paintings, pulling aside her brushstrokes as if they were curtains and stepping through. There were autumn trees on fire everywhere, and she moved beyond the surface of color and texture into the hidden layers of the past, from which she had learned to speak her life with paint.

The train passed through the part of town where she grew up, where the people were dark and the comforts slim. She watched from now and from before as they left behind the neat, compact frame houses and hollow storage buildings to cross the swift, brown river that they thought had carried their father, shoeless, into the next world. Now that Mercury Owens had left them again, she was going back to piece together their family story of departure and return.

She saw it all from the inside out, as native and exile, woman and child. From all that she remembered and all that she was.

She was Girl Owens and Sister.

She was Sunday, and she was headed home.

Waiting for Sunday’s arrival, Delta Owens stepped out onto the front porch. She waved at Mrs. Claybourne next door, who was on the ground with her flowers, pulling up the fence of frail, white wire humps that lined the beds in summer, covering freshly entombed bulbs with mulch. Delta wished she could get down on her knees and invest in spring, but she just let the bulbs planted years and years ago keep coming up. The spring before, plenty of leaves had driven through and up, shifting the thawing soil with their green, determined length, but there had been only three or four blooms all season. Delta brushed the leaves from the top step and sat down, turning away from Mrs. Claybourne, whose industry and joy in her planting seemed a reproach.

Delta hoped she would be able to find the right way to approach Sunday, with whom she had only been in touch by mail for five years. She had tried to demonstrate a persistent bond with the help of words put together by experts, choosing for each birthday and holiday an oversized Hallmark card, depending on its ornate script and polished rhyme to express what she had never been able to say. Each one she had signed “Always, Delta” before addressing the envelope carefully and mailing it off to Chicago. She had heard back irregularly, receiving wood block prints or splashes of paint on wefts of heavy paper with ragged edges or on see-through skins. Each...