Love and Lament Read Online Free PDF Page A

had gone wrong when she said this, and her lips would tighten, as they would when she didn’t approve of things.
    Mary Bet still thought of her family as the ten fingers of her hands—her father was her right thumb, her mother the left. Then there was eldest sister Ila (a beautiful young woman engaged to be married to the eldest son of Robert Gray) and big brother Tom (the tallest finger), both on her right hand, then Willie and Annie—the weak fourth fingers who were in heaven. Myrtle Emma and Siler were younger, so they were on the left hand; Siler was special because he had come to replace the other Siler who was in heaven, and he was also deaf. O’Nora and Mary Bet were the baby fingers.
    She still prayed for Willie and Annie in her prayers at night. It felt to her as though something were missing, her own fingers or her hand. She felt as if God had robbed the family, but she didn’t like to talk about sad things, because it made other people sad.Everyone wore black for a long time after the funeral, and the person who wore it the longest was Mary Bet’s mother. It seemed as if she had always worn black and always would—long black dresses and black high-shouldered jackets on Sundays and black pleated skirts and blouses around the house. So that it came as a surprise to see any bit of color at all—a navy blue blouse, or a bit of purple in her scarf, as if a long winter was finally thawing and the crocuses were coming out again.
    Willie had brought home a crow with a broken wing. The bird would hop along a perch Willie had fashioned from a green stick and nailed to an eave in the hen coop. It would chortle at the hens, eyeing them with its head tilted. Sometimes it would flap down for some grain, scattering the chickens, and then use its beak and feet to climb the wire mesh back up to its perch. It was given a separate, smaller enclosure. Since she was now six years old, Mary Bet inherited the job of taking care of the crow, which merely meant giving it fresh water, because whoever grained the chickens would toss some grain over to the crow.
    She was afraid of the crow, but she tried to be brave because it was an honor to do something for her departed brother. The crow would see her coming and would watch her out of one beady black eye. She discovered that she could wait for several days before adding more water. When the crow sickened and lost its luster, no one said anything but that it missed Willie and, anyway, they never expected a wild bird to live long in a cage.
    She spent a night at her grandmother’s and when she came back she was busy with her new hobby of threading needles and sewing patches together for a doll quilt. When she went near the coop, the bird gave her an accusing look, and she was afraid even to use the stick to turn the old water out.
    After a while the water turned stale and green. The crow sat on his perch and no longer squawked at her or at anything. Sometimeshe rustled his dull feathers in the sun. She decided that the crow was sick for some other reason and that when he hobbled about his cage, eyeing her with his now milky eye, he was blaming her. Then one night she heard a long low caaaaw . The next day she thought she might have dreamed the sound, yet when she went out to the crow’s enclosure it was empty. No one said a thing at breakfast, but later on Siler told her, in his back-of-the-throat voice, “Ya caw’s daahd.” No one had ever called it hers before.
    “Do the chickens need fresh water?” she asked, thinking that he would never guess why she was asking.
    He looked at her, his dark brooding eyes piercing her, and pointed to her lips. She repeated it while he held her jaw, then shook his head in confusion. He touched his open palm, “Show me.” He was five years older than Mary Bet and already skilled with his hands. He could repair chairs and tables and fashion toy tops and soldiers as quickly as anybody. His tutor had given him some basic signs so that he could