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"As the days dragged on, Aunt Queen , Russia, to rejoin two cousins she had left waiting there at the Grand Hotel She prevailed upon o with her

"I was a, Russia

"She said in a very sweet and winning way that it was either go to college or see the world

"I told her plainly I wasn't ready for either I was still hurt by Lynelle's death

"I said that I wanted to go, and in the future I would go with her if she called me, but for now I couldn't leave home I needed a year off I needed to read and absorb htaround the house I wanted to help Pops and Sweetheart with the guests Mardi Gras was coo with Sweetheart into New Orleans to see the parades from the house of her sister And ays had a crowd at Blackwood Farm after that And then there was the Azalea Festival, and the Easter crowd And I needed to be ho the world

"When I look back on that time I realize now that I had slipped into a state of profound anxiety in which the siuests seee vases of flowers frightened nora of consolation or coray days when there was no sun to be seen

"Perhaps I had a premonition that there were terrible times to come "

Chapter9

9

"NOT SIX MONTHS had passed before Little Ida died in ht, and it was Jasmine who found her when she ca why her mother had not coestures and su me out of the bedroom And I, a spoilt brat who had just woken up, was furious

"Only an hour later, when the doctor and the funeral director caone down Little Ida was the angel of my youth as surely as Sweetheart was, and she had died so quiet, just like that

"She looked tiny in the coffin, like a wizened child

"The funeral was in New Orleans, where Little Ida was buried in a tomb in St Louis NO I, which her family had had for well over a hundred and fifty years A host of colored and black relations were in attendance, and I was thankful that it was all right to cry, if not even wail out loud

"Of course all the white people -- and there were plenty from out our way -- were a littleshed tears

"As for my mattress back at home, Jasmine and Lolly flipped it over And that was all there was to that