as blurred by her, by Addie Nell, as my sight was by the veil of driving rain. I worried about Cole, but I knew what a broken leg was. Broken legs could be set and healed. Addie Nell—who had been neither woman nor man and now seemed to be my twin—I did not know.
What I had seen in the mirror just before I ran out to Cole rang like a deep blow to my chest. I had to catch my breath, to let my internal organs slip back where they should be. There was no logical, no reasonable explanation for her to look like me, no natural explanation for her transformation. My mind kept going back and forth from the seemingly faceless person I’d found in the mud to the face I’d seen next to mine in the mirror. My panic rose again. I dismounted, fell to my knees, and retched. I stayed there kneeling on the ground until long after I had stopped gagging. I was dumb, senseless as the water that streamed down my shoulders and back.
I wanted to go on past Cole’s and into town and tell Momma. I wanted the dry comfort of my mother’s kitchen. But she—Addie Nell—appeared so normal now. Would anyone, even Momma, believe me? It was unbelievable. But I had seen it with my own eyes.
I thought of her bright gaze and smile, of the sorrow on her face as she handed the photograph of the Japanese woman back to me. Another kind of panic filled me. I knew then, instinctively and with certainty, that I would not be able to tell anyone the truth. I sensed, just beyond my attempts to imagine telling anyone, a darkness and confusion, an amalgam of all the people around me—those smiling GIs in Frank’s pictures, the Thompson family sneering when the Catholic family moved in next door to them, the eyes of the white men at the gas station and the feed store as they followed the colored people walking by, the strained face of the Murray girl as she hurried her bastard kid down the street. I remembered the faces of the boys who had teased me voraciously, sometimes cruelly, simply for the color of my hair or my height.
Soon she would be among Cole’s family, then my family, then the town of Clarion.
For the first time in my life, I feared and distrusted my own kind. I saw them for a moment as an outsider might. If I told them and they believed me, how would they view her? A circus freak to stare at? Someone unnatural to be avoided? And if I told exactly what had happened and I was not believed, would I be pitied and tolerated or would they think I was crazy enough to be locked away? Away from her? I could not imagine her among the people in Clarion, the people I had known all my life. Folks who got up every morning and walked to the mill, the other kids I had gone to school with, or the congregation of the church. My head throbbed and my stomach churned violently. I fought the wave of nausea that swept through me as I lurched into the saddle.
She waited for me on the farm. I had to say something. I needed a plausible explanation for her presence and our resemblance. I needed to protect her and myself.
For a crazy moment, I imagined us boarding the train, heading for a new life in Chicago. Maybe we could find my aunt there, my father’s long-lost sister, Doris, who had run away so many years before. No explanations would be necessary where no one knew us, and surely she would take us both in as family.
Immediately, I abandoned that idea. I knew I could not run away. I could not leave the farm and my mother. I could not leave the people I loved.
Then it hit me and I stopped, stunned.
Ignorance ran both ways. If my aunt in Chicago knew nothing about us, then it was also true that no one in Clarion knew anything about her. Rather than explain Addie Nell to my estranged aunt, I could use my estranged aunt to explain Addie Nell to my family. She could be the daughter of Doris Roe and the Hardin boy Doris had run off after. Addie Nell could be my cousin, come to find her mother’s family. That would explain her resemblance to me. The thought seemed as wild as running