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In one of the drea the boulders They are large and white, and the creek is flooded, just roaring, and I know I’ve left a baby out there I thrashoften to listen, hearing nothing but the roar of the water I feel frantic until finally I see her in thelike a Cortland apple, little and red and bright I wade in and pull her out and she lies naked there on the bank without so much as a surname, her umbilicus tied with a ht wear I see her and think, "It’s a ht is the truest part of the drea about a baby being born in secret and put into a creek But to pull one out, that would be a surprise A newborn has no fat yet; it wouldn’t float It would sink like a stone

Loyd Peregrina was an Apache He took me out four times Our football team was called the Apaches, but Loyd was also a real Apache, and the kind of handso down the road like bad news When he first asked ht he’d made aNobody was Four Saturdays in a row, for exactly one lunar nant out of that were predictable, but I was unfathoirl I’d learned the words puberty and ;dia Britannica The rest I learned fro to me when they said what they did

Loyd wouldn’t remember For me it was the isolated remarkable event of a tenuous life but for Loyd-with his misspelled name and devil eyes-it was one in a hundred, he was a senior and ran around with everybody Also he was such a drinker in those days that I was frankly surprised to hear he was still alive He never knehat he’d spawned, much less when it died Even Hallie didn’t It’s the first time I understood that even with a sister I could be alone At night I lay feelingnear the truth, and I feltdistant and stolid I was the wo her child’s jacket, her teeth like a third hand clarocery list, as preoccupied as God Someone important and similar to others I was lured and terrified I couldn’t help but think so to blood of its own accord, its bones liquefying, leaking out And then one evening ranted

I never did tell Hallie I kept quiet, first to protect her fros, and later to protect myself froe

It divided me from the people I knew, then and later, but in broader hureat way A e is a natural and common event All told, probably more women have lost a child from this world than haven’t Most don’t o on froine that a woman in this situation never really knew or loved what she had

But ask her sometime: how old would your child be now? And she’ll know

Chapter 7

7 Poison Ground

Emelina was up with the chickens I heard her out in the courtyard pulling honeysuckle vines away from the old brick barbecue pit They ca sound, like threads from a seam in rotten cloth "You can see we haven’t been festive for a while," she said She was organizing what she called a "little fiesta" for the Saturday of Labor Day weekend It was a faoat (Not John Tucker’s)

I found a broo up the pieces of a broken flowerpot I’d come to think of as part of the decor Eood mother would ask, if I’d been up to the school yet I’d received nu

"I know about the one up there yet," I confessed School would begin the following Tuesday I needed to get organized and see what kind of shape the labs were in, but I kept putting it off, on grounds of terror I hadn’t actually taught school before When Eh School it had seemed sensible to apply While Carlo slept I’d sat up in bed withcoanize the probleories: I had no real attachoing off the deep end; Carlo was Carlo; Hallie would be leaving at summer’s end, and without a destination for ot this job I could spend tenabout Doc Ho I reasoned that I wasn’t qualified and didn’t have a chance of being hired, and so I felt bold enough to apply