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tunnel of hedges to the walk and into the kitchen, catching the screen door. Without hesitation, she crossed through the dining room, where the table gleamed like a mirror. The doors to the living room holding Sherman and her mother were closed. She thought she heard her mother softly weeping. Carefully, Mamie moved toward the doors, but the sound, whatever it was, had stopped. When she heard nothing more, she backed away on tiptoe and climbed the stairs to her room. Then she changed into her pajamas and climbed back into her bed.

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    After the night she pulled Mamie down across the wicker lounger, her mother never again spoke of Sherman’s injury. She treated him like a revered guest. To her, it was no longer a question of whether he would live or die, but when he would get well, as if his condition were a disease they could conquer together.
    As the days turned to weeks, she established a regime by which she read to him from the Bible every hour on the hour as long as she was awake. This practice never varied.
    For the next eight months, she rarely left his side. She bathed him, gently turned him first on one side, then the other, to prevent bedsores; she learned to administer his injections and the intravenous-feeding device. Talking to herself, she kept up a conversation about everyday matters—the weather, the little gossip she’d heard, events Toddy and Mamie reported from their play outside—because, she told anyone who’d listen, she believed that his subconscious mind heard everything she said and stored it, so that eventually he would remember what he had missed. And, besides reading the Bible, she prayed. On the hour.
    With the passage of time, the neighbors came by less and less frequently. Only Mrs. Jackson continued to show up every so often with a covered dish. The two younger children had gone back to school—Toddy went to Mrs. Shaw’s third grade and Mamie was in the first grade with Miss Durbin—and their father was back at work full time. After the first two months, the nurse limited her visits to once a week to help their mother change the bedclothes. Their father explained they couldn’t afford her any more than that. In early October, the doctor talked about surgery to remove a blood clot and, perhaps, the bullet. He described Sherman’s condition as stable but unchanged, and stressed that the present situation might continue indefinitely. Her mother took the report in stride, but about the operation she said, “Maybe in a few weeks, we’ll see. If there’s no immediate danger, I can’t bear to think about having him cut right now.” Before the doctor could go on, she returned to the sickroom, shutting the doors.
    The desolation hung over them all; it went to school with the children and came home with them. They often walked home alone. The other kids shied away, whispered behind their backs. Just when the worst effects of the family crisis seemed to be lessening, trouble would unexpectedly crop up again. One bright, chilly morning, during recess, word reached Mamie that Toddy was in the principal’s office, crying. She thought he’d been spanked. It seemed impossible—he always behaved himself. She ran down the corridor to the office. Sitting on the edge of a chair, Toddy was weeping convulsively. His teacher was there, trying to talk to him. “It’ll be all right,” Mrs. Shaw said. “We’ve called your father.”
    â€œWhat’d you do?” Mamie asked, bending to him very close. “What’s the matter, Toddy?”
    â€œHe started to cry uncontrollably during class,” Mrs. Shaw said to the school nurse, who had come in. “It’s …” She motioned the nurse aside, speaking quietly.
    It took Toddy a little while to sob himself back to silence, and then their father arrived and Mrs. Shaw and the nurse met him with explanations. Toddy looked at Mamie as if pleading. “Sherman