knife on his plate and hand it to me on his way out the door. We need some Polled Herefords or Red Brangus. How do you think we’re going to afford that, he’d say. What are we going to do?
When I think back on that day and finding Gloria Ramírez on my front porch, my memories are stitched together like pieces of a scrap quilt, each a different shape and color, all bound together by a thin black ribbon, and I expect it will always be this way. Come August, I will testify that I did the best I could, under the circumstances, but I will not tell them how I failed her.
I was twenty-six years old, seven months pregnant with my second baby, and heavy as a Buick. With the second one, you always get bigger faster—so say the women in my family—and I had been feeling lonely enough that I occasionally let Aimee stay home from school with some invented malady, just to have a little company. Two days earlier, we had called the school secretary, Miss Eunice Lee.
As soon as I hung up the phone, Aimee Jo started mimicking Miss Lee’s crabby old face. Some people say she’s a direct descendent, and I don’t believe it for a minute, but I will tell you this: if it is true, she sure didn’t inherit the general’s good looks. Bless her heart. My daughter scrunched up her face and pretended to hold the school’s phone next to her ear. Well, thank you for calling, Mrs. Whitehead, but I do not care to know the details of Miss Aimee Jo’s BMs. I hope she feels better real soon. Y’all have a happy Valentine’s Day. Bye-bye! Aimee wiggled her fingers in the air, and the two of us just fell out laughing. Then we started a batch of yeast rolls to eat with butter and sugar.
It was a small thing, me and Aimee standing together in the kitchen while we waited for the dough to rise, the whole day stretched out in front of us like an old housecat, the two of us laughing so hard at her impression of Miss Lee that we nearly peed ourselves. But I sometimes think that when I am on my deathbed, that Friday morning with my daughter will be one of my happiest memories.
On Sunday morning, we were playing gin rummy and listening to church services on the radio. Aimee was losing, and I was trying to figure out how to throw the game without her catching on. While I waited for her to draw the four of hearts, I passed cards and dropped hints. Won’t you be my valentine? Won’t you be my heart? I said. Oh, my heart! I can hear it beating—one, two, three, four times, Aimee Jo. Back then, I did not believe it was good for a child to lose at cards too often, especially a little girl. Now I think differently.
We listened to Pastor Rob finish a sermon about the evils of desegregation, which he likened to locking a cow, a mountain lion, and a possum in the same barn together, then being surprised when somebody gets eaten.
What’s that mean? my daughter asked me. She pulled a card from the deck, looked at it for a few seconds and laid her cards on the table. I win, she said.
Nothing you need to know about, little girl, I told her. You have to say gin. My daughter was nine years old, just a few years younger than the stranger I was about to find standing at my door, waiting for me to pull open that heavy door, to help.
It was eleven o’clock. I am sure of this because one of the deacons—one of those Hard Shell types that doesn’t believe in having any fun—gave the sending prayer. I don’t suppose any serious Baptist would think too kindly about us playing cards while we listened to church services on the radio, but that’s how it was. After eleven, it’s the oil reports, then the cattle markets. That month, you listened to rig counts and new leases if you wanted to hear good news. If you wanted to sit down in your recliner and have yourself a good cry, you listened to the cattle markets.
The girl knocked on the front door, two short and sturdy raps that were loud enough to startle us. When she knocked a third time, the door trembled. It was brand-new, made of oak but stained to