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2 You'd Be Surprised What You Can Do with What You Have What was taken by outsiders to be slackness, slovenliness, or even generosity was in fact a full recognition of the legitimacy of forces other than good ones. They did not believe doctors could heal—for them, none had ever done so. They did not believe death was accidental—life might be, but death was deliberate. They did not believe Nature was ever askew—only inconvenient. Plague and drought were as "natural" as springtime. If milk could curdle, God knows robins could fall. The purpose of evil was to survive it and they determined (without ever knowing they had made up their minds to do it) to survive floods, white people, tuberculosis, famine and ignorance. They knew anger well but not despair, and they didn't stone sinners for the same reason they didn't commit suicide—it was beneath them. —Toni Morrison, Sula The fact that she had been dead for 40 years was no barrier to the mother of Olive Parsons when she knew she was needed; she simply slipped into her daughter's spare room one night and lay down on the bed for a nap. Olive, past 80 now herself, became aware of her mother's presence when she got up to get a drink of water around midnight. She had been unable to sleep in the heat of the Arizona night, consumed as she was with "worriation" about the recent return to town of a newly divorced granddaughter. She felt the young woman would be unable to care for herself, let alone the small children for whom she was responsible. The old lady looked after the children in the afternoon and knew full well that they were not "raised." This she blamed on everything having been made too easy for her granddaughter; the girl had never really had to work and her college education had not properly fitted her for the realities of life. Now she was divorced. No telling if her former husband would help her out, though the courts had said that he must. What if he did not? How would she care for herself? And how on earth would she care for those spoiled children? A drink of ice water might help her to sleep, Olive thought. But as she went past the closed door of the company bedroom she suddenly stopped. She knew, absolutely knew that her long-dead mother was in there, lying oft the bed.She waited for a moment, 19 20 You'd Be Surprised What You Can Do holding her breath, hoping for some sort of sign telling her to open the door and go in. When none came she tiptoed on into the kitchen to get that drink of water. She carefully opened the refrigerator door and took out the bottle as quietly as she could. As she stood and sipped her water she pondered her next move. Should she wait to see if her mother would come out of the room? Should she open the door and go in? Again she tiptoed to the closed door and waited outside, longing to see and speak to her mother after so many years. Perhaps she could open the door just a crack and take a peek! But it was so quiet that she decided her mother must be sleeping. "Aw naw, I better not bother her," she said to herself, "she probably needs her rest!" Silently she went back into her own bedroom and got back into bed. Soon she was asleep. Her mother was gone when she looked into the spare room the next morning, and Olive was happy that the bed had been made up with her prized tie-quilt. Her mother had slept on her best. She was still thrilled and happy over the nocturnal visit when she told me about it a day or so later. "We had two parents, but only one of them raised us," she said. "She sure raised us; my daddy, he didn't. He fed us, but she raised us!" It was being "raised" that had helped Olive herself survive as a young mother left alone with small children many many years before—and, she recalled, there had been a visit from both deceased parents to that younger self as well. They had returned in "a dream, a vision or sumpin'," wordlessly doing laundry in an iron kettle over a roaring fire, literally demonstrating to their...

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