a blanket over my face, and I had no energy to throw it off. Nights, I lay awake next to Adam in the un-air-conditioned house, the mid-spring air already thick with moisture. As spring turned to the full heat of summer, it seemed we slept in the mouth of God, the air already breathed by some huge being. I tossed in the heat, listened for the relief of rain. I thought of everyone in North Carolina: Joe and the rest of my family, Marge and Freddie, and Wallace. I longed to see their faces, but my longing for the land surpassed all other desires. I ached for the sunrise view down the hill. In the swelling heat of Florida, I lusted for the crunch of fall leaves underfoot, the hard grip of the cold under my nightgown as I went out to milk in the morning. I hungered to take that curve where the road dipped to the mill-village houses and Momma’s. I would have given almost anything then to press myself into the farm’s embrace, to match my contours to hers.
I tried to turn my heart to the living, to the place I was, but putting seed in land not owned by me or my family seemed alien. The sandy, gray-white soil looked like dirty beach sand, not fit for growing anything. It smelled like dust. Yet weeds and trees and wildflowers grew along the roads. When we drove into town, we passed dense, impenetrable woods and fields of corn, peas, and peppers. Such new combinations of seemingly poor soil and happy flora puzzled me. Everywhere I went, I picked up the dirt, examining it for clues. Bringing anything out of such soil would require a whole new language on my part. I imagined that there must be something richer and darker under the gray sand, or some trick the farmers all knew. Trick or no trick, what I had always been able to do well now seemed inaccessible. Still, I searched the yard around our house for the best spot to plant my fall garden.
Meanwhile, with my hands and a good part of my days literally empty, I found myself turning again to Momma’s revelation. I circled the question of how could she have kept such a secret from me for so long. Often a second, unbidden, question followed: How could I? My daughters did not know their father’s origin. A dark, tender anxiety filled me.
One Saturday morning, I found Sarah sleeping next to a family portrait she’d drawn, a stair-step line of bright dresses and toothy smiles. Her nightmares were rare now and she could go to sleep without a light on, but she still slept with her art supplies and drew each night. In this newest drawing, I counted six of us girls and assumed she’d included Jennie. Since our move, the bloodiness had disappeared from her drawings, but so had Jennie, though Lil sometimes appeared outlined in ways that suggested a shadowy figure behind her. I was relieved to see Jennie whole and smiling among us. But I wondered why Sarah had left her father out. Then I saw penciled in below the two largest figures “Momma” and “Daddy.”
My gasp must have awakened her, for she stretched, then sat up to peer over at the portrait. Pointing to the tallest figure, she said, “This one is Daddy when he used to be a girl.” She regarded my startled face, then made a face at her drawing. “Should he have brown hair?”
I hadn’t heard Adam in the hall, but there he was, listening. He came over, searched her blankets, and held up the orange crayon. “This is what I remember having, Sarah. Orange hair, like yours and Momma’s, when I was a girl.”
“I remember, too, Daddy.” She nodded solemnly at him. “I like your hair now. I like you being a boy.” She took his hand. “Can I have oatmeal this morning with syrup?”
They both looked at me.
“Sure, oatmeal.” I felt dizzy as she rushed past me down the hall.
All children, when they are very young, confuse the male and female. Joe’s son had once asked me if I’d liked fishing when I was a boy. But Sarah was seven years old now, past the age for such confusions. She was correct, not confused.
In ways I could not pinpoint, she’d always seemed the one most like Adam, or rather Addie. She often seemed to know things she had no discernible way of knowing.
One evening, not long