In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

7 Fitting In She asked me to let her nap in peace. Her head was splitting open. Worried about Mom, I stood quietly next to the bed she’d returned to shortly after breakfast. It was only early morning, not yet hot. Nevertheless, she had said to Daddy as he left for work, “It’s too hot to think about it.” When he leaned over to kiss her, she’d pretended to see something on the rug and bent down, so his lips had only grazed the air. Then she’d burst into tears. What could be wrong? “Your mother has the blues,” Daddy had explained the night before, saying what I already knew. Sunday, we hadn’t come home for midday dinner as usual after church. Instead, we’d driven to Byrd Park with Lance and Hazel Phillips. Dad and Mr. Phillips walked with Betsy and me around the lake as we fed bits of crumbled bread to the ducks, but Mom walked away from us with Mrs. Phillips, who put her arm around her. Mom was crying. “What’s wrong with Mom?” I whispered to Betsy, who widened her eyes and shrugged. But we were both absorbed by the mystery. Mom had moods that filled the house, usually at nap time, and those moods made the clocks run slower, the house fill with shadows. I had never seen her let someone outside the family walls see her cry. Now this morning, after she’d gone back to bed, I’d entered her room to ask what the matter was. Mom mumbled something about a bad dream, about living in a bad dream, but she wouldn’t say any more, so I left the room. She acted as if I were Betsy, coming to her at an inconvenient time. She never turned me away; this morning, she had. I thought about Mom and Betsy and me. It wasn’t out of the ordinary for the summer heat to make us quiet and solitary. In it everyone retreated, slowed, got quiet. Any motion was just too much. Betsy drew pictures or played jack rocks by herself. Mom read The Robe; Mom made lemonade. I could sit for hours with a book, seeing 79 the story unfold the way dreams did, in colorful pictures. The Black Stallion. Satan. Son of Satan. That summer, I was reading horse books, as many as the library would let me take out at a time. During the sultriest hours of the afternoon, I read. On the front porch. On the back porch. In the crook of the dogwood tree in Miss Anne’s secluded clump of trees. Before a storm broke, when the wind rose and the trees flipped up the undersides of their leaves—a sure sign—I’d run home to help shut the windows. On the new back porch, Mom would be moving the new chairs away from the south screen as it filled its little squares with rain spatter. Unless the lightning was severe, I’d stand on the front porch up close to the rail to see how close or how far away I’d have to inch before the rain and wind spray dampened me. I’d wait for the storm to end, then for the ten minutes more Mom required after a storm passed. We waited to make sure no last lightning threatened, then Betsy and I would run into the rivers of rainwater that coursed down the sides of the street, wading in water so deep it covered our ankles and splashed up our shins. After the rain, this release from suspended motion was thrilling. As a storm gathered, there was a concentration I relished and a stillness that was hypnotic. I didn’t know which I liked better, the time just before the storm or just after. Soon after the morning Mom wouldn’t talk to me and moped in bed, Daddy asked Betsy and me to come with him to Betsy’s bedroom after dinner. We sat down on the twin bed and Daddy leaned against the windowsill, clearing his throat. He said we must have noticed how upset Mom had been in the last few weeks. “She’s had a disappointment,” he said. He paused. “Your mother didn’t have a happy childhood,” he said quietly. His eyes, brown like mine, were dark and sad. “And she wants to make sure yours is happy.” He said Mom was better now. But you will, he...

Share