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was, however, as gracious as she was capable of being, and afterward even Elinor went so far as to say, "You could have made things very unpleasant, but you didn't."
    "There was no point," said Miriam. "They were being nice to me."
    "Sometimes," said Elinor, "I think you may be growing up."
    "The question is," sighed Miriam, "how the hell am I gone get rid of all that damned junk1?"
    Sister could not be reconciled to the wedding. She would have nothing to do with it, and she wouldn't hear it spoken of in her presence. She refused even to admit aloud that Miriam was marrying Malcolm. Queenie had been forced to desert her in this busy time, so the whole thing rankled even more. Ivey sat with Sister every day, in the straight chair beside the radio, but Ivey wasn't one for gossip, and Sister was bored and restless and stared out the window through binoculars at Elinor's house. But she never saw more than Zaddie or Elinor occasionally passing a window.
    Ivey wouldn't relay any news from next door, for her feud with Zaddie had kept up, and they were not speaking. No one had ever discovered the reason for this coolness between the aging black sisters, for it was a private affair, and neither Zaddie nor Ivey ever said anything about it directly.
    In the drawer of her bedside table, Sister kept a calendar on which she marked off the days until Christmas, and every day she would count up those remaining. This ever-decreasing figure preyed on her mind to an extent that Ivey found alarming. Ivey began to ply Sister with sweet liquids poured out of unmarked blue bottles, but these nostrums did not appear to help. Sister grew weaker—but crosser— and every morning she seemed to have sunk down deeper into her bulwark of goose-down pillows.
    About ten days before the wedding, Miriam went to New Orleans on an unexpected and unavoidable trip. When she returned at suppertime two days later, Ivey was waiting for her behind the screen door. "Miz Caskey sick," she said simply. "She want to talk to you."
    Upstairs, Miriam was shocked by Sister's appearance. "You are sick," she said bluntly. "I don't think I've ever seen anybody look worse."
    Sister seemed scarcely able to open her eyes. Her head lolled forward on her neck; her hands lay curled and helpless atop the neatly folded coverlet. She looked as if she had not moved for days, a frail puppet whose strings had all been cut.
    "Put it off," she whispered. Her lips scarcely moved. Miriam moved closer to the bed.
    "Put it off," Sister repeated, no more loudly than before.
    "No," said Miriam, finally comprehending the cryptic command. "For one thing, Elinor and Queenie have gone to a great deal of trouble. For another thing, it's too late. And last of all, I want to go through with it."
    Sister's head lolled to one side. "It'll kill me," she whispered. Her head lolled to the other side, and her eyes shut with the motion.
    Miriam sat on the edge of the bed. It was dark outside, and a single low lamp burned on the bedside table. Miriam took Sister's hand. "Sister," she said firmly, "even if I believed that, I'd go through with it."
    Sister opened her eyes slowly, and peered up at Miriam through tears. "You'd kill me, wouldn't you?"
    "Sister," said Miriam, now taking her other hand, and pressing them lightly against Sister's breast, "you are turning into Grandmama."
    "Noooo..." Sister's protest was no more than a slow exhalation of breath.
    "You are. You want to trick me into putting this wedding off. Just the way Grandmama would have done. But you're not Grandmama, you're Sister. And I'm not you, I'm not Oscar. I'm not even me when I was younger. Nobody's going to run roughshod over me—not about this, and not about anything else. You think you can get me to put off this wedding by pulling this business—"
    "Not business..."
    "Whether it is or it isn't is of no concern to me," Miriam went on. "If you're really sick, then I'm sorry, but it makes no difference. I won't let it. So you might as well