Naked, on the Edge

No Solicitors, Curious a Quarter

Across the kitchen table from Chloe sat Nannie, her right hand holding a melamine cup full of hot tea, her gnarled left hand trembling on the surface of the table, stirring grains of salt and sugar into miniature whirlwinds. Afternoon sunlight strained through the dusty window, and June bugs hummed a relentless tune in the woods beyond the side yard. Nannie lifted the cup to her lips, the nubs of the missing two fingers of her right hand beating the air. The bandage on her left elbow had begun to ooze again. Brown and red stains bubbled up beneath the gauze.

The rotary fan on top of the refrigerator rattled as it moved back and forth. Nannie’s smell wafted back and forth with the moving air.

“Stony say it’s gonna make tumors,” Chloe said. She held a cup of tea as well, although her cup was a fine piece of blue china, inherited from her mother. The steam drew a pink glow from her face. Although only seventeen, her hair was bound up and back like her grandmother’s. A handmade ragdoll sat in Chloe’s big lap, its face flopped over. “Stony say you gotta stop.”

Nannie swallowed, then looked at Chloe. There was kindness in her eyes. There was even kindness in her reprimand. “You do the embroidery?” Nannie asked. Chloe shook her head. “You do the needlepoint, and the dolls? Honey, you’ll just never understand this. We won’t never be rich, but we don’t care. We make enough from the people that come and see. You seem to be eating fine. You’s getting to be such a big girl.”

Chloe’s fingers played across her pudgy face, and then dropped to her big stomach.

“You’re my girl,” Nannie went on. “We’ll be all right. Enough talk of Stony.”

There was a click beetle on the floor beside Chloe’s foot, and Chloe stepped on it with her toe. She held the doll’s head down for it to see. “Bad old bug,” she said. Then she said, “Nannie, Stony said you being bad.”

“Child,” said Nannie. She put her cup down and swiped her lips. Some of the drips were wiped away, many were left. A small string of spit followed the hand down to the table. “You’s simple, but I love you. Trust me. Them boys’ll never have the best of me long as I live. You’ll always be my girl who needs me and I’ll do right by you.”

Chloe was silent. She watched her grandmother pull herself up from the table to put the cups away. There was no telling Nannie what to do. Stony, Chloe’s older brother, was always trying. He would continue to come over once a week after a day at the turkey plant and try to scold some sense into the old woman. It did no good. Nannie would tell Stony to go home to his wife and son and take care of them because she would be all right. Then Nannie would take the knife to her side again.

At the sink, Nannie braced herself and rinsed out the cups. It was hard for her to walk. She hadn’t gotten used to hopping on one foot yet. One cup clattered as it slipped from Nannies grasp. Chloe flinched, and grabbed the straps of her sleeveless sundress, her forearms coming up over her breasts. She said, “Break, Nannie?”

“Nah,” Nannie said. “It was my cup. Plastic don’t break like glass, honey.”

“Oh,” said Chloe.

“Goin’ to the porch?” asked Nannie.

Chloe nodded and helped her grandmother out of the kitchen and down the short hail to the barren living room at the front of the house. The doll went, too, crammed under Chloe’s unshaved armpit. A breeze blew through the screened door, lifting the stench of Nannie’s wounds and making Chloe rub her nose with her free hand. Out on the porch, the fresh air made sitting next to Nannie more tolerable. Nannie settled down on her chair, the wood barely giving under her wasted body. Chloe’s own chair creaked mightily under the girl’s weight.

“Want me to read you the funnies?” Nannie asked after Chloe had retrieved the folded Virginian Dispatch from the base of the porch step.

Chloe shook her head. She sat the doll on her lap and stroked the yarn hair.

Nannie fumbled the newspaper open with the three fingers of her good hand. “Fine then. Don’t forget to fix that sign ’fore you go on your walk,” said Nannie. Chloe nodded. “And you’ll watch out for boys?”

Chloe said, “Uh huh. But you got to tell me what letters to put on the sign.”

Nannie smiled at her granddaughter. It was Nannie’s great pleasure to take care of Chloe. Chloe had been twelve and Stony sixteen when their mother died, the result of massive head injuries after being struck by a pickup truck on the road outside their home. Stony inherited the old family car and the gun that belonged to his long-since-run-away father. Almost an adult then, Stony had said he was ready to be on his own. He secured a cheap room with a friend and a job plucking turkeys at Plenko Poultry. Chloe, who received her mother’s set of china, an old collection of perfumes and Avon decanters, and a little pocket change, moved in with Nannie. She grew up in her grandmother’s house, quiet and obedient. Each year school classified her as mentally deficient, and her absence was subsequently ignored when Nannie took Chloe out of school in the eighth grade.

The old woman and girl sat on their porch chairs, watching the road as no one came by, squinting until the sun was gone behind the clot of maples at the road’s shoulder. Nannie sighed, then shifted down as if to fall asleep,

Chloe got the paint cans and the brush from inside the house and walked down the short graveled driveway to the large sandwich board sign. The sign was gritty and as worn as the siding on Nannie’s house. The bottom of the wood was frayed like an old hula skirt.

Nannie’s old sign had been painted over and over many times in the past weeks. Originally, large once-red letters proclaimed that here was “Blue Ridge Country Crafts.” Ever since Chloe had lived with Nannie, Nannie had been a maker of crafts. She designed marvelous cornhusk dolls, embroidered hankies, and warm, thick quilts. The entire front living room had been Nannie’s show place. Travelers from the Skyline Drive, looking for another isolated route to wherever they were heading, came down the mountain in all seasons, driving the hairpin turns and cracked pavement to view the forest in its fall-splashed or snow-shrouded beauty. At the bottom of the mountain, the road passed Nannie’s house. Nannie would sit on the screenless porch, sunning her arms, waving a gaily painted fan and wearing a homemade bonnet. The travelers, intrigued, would stop by to chat. And to buy.

Money from the vacationers’ purchases as well as a little Social Security had kept Nannie and Chloe in food, craft material, and heating oil.

Chloe stooped down and pried the top from the paint can.

She flicked a few chunks of dried paint from the bristles of the brush. She called for Nannie to wake up, it was time for the spelling. Then she began to work on the correction.

Three months earlier, on a cool spring evening, some local boys had come riding by Nannie’s house. They were loud and drunk, hooting over the roar of their trucks and throwing empty liquor bottles to smash on the driveway. Nannie had been awake at that late hour, embroidering a tea towel in the living room. Chloe had been awake as well, lying in bed and counting the allowance savings she kept in a paper bag.

The boys had crashed into the house, breaking the simple hook lock Nannie had on the front door. Hearing the screams and the laughter, Chloe stayed behind her bed on the floor. The assault was quick. The boys grunted and howled; Nannie’s demands that they leave were reduced to muffled screams. Two minutes later, it was over. When Chloe heard the boys head outside to their trucks, she got up from the floor and looked out of her bedroom door. When the trucks roared out to the road, throwing rocks in their hasty departure, she crept into the living room.

Nannie was on the floor on her side, her legs drawn up and her arm spasming. She was bleeding from holes in the left side of her body. The craft shelves were overturned, and the crafts lay among the blood and wreckage, a carnival of carnage, a slaughterhouse of Nannie’s dreams.

Chloe fell beside her grandmother. “Who done this, Nannie?”

Nannie’s head moved slightly. Her eyes seemed almost ready to shake loose in their sockets. One went wall-eyed, and Chloe thought the eye would pop out.

“Want the doctor?”

Nannie shook her head. Blood pooled in her mouth, and she pushed it out with her swollen tongue.

Chloe stared at Nannie, and was silent. She was certain Nannie would die. Nannie’s right ear had been torn from her head. Large hanks of hair had been ripped out, and numerous knife scars traveled the length of her left arm and her torso. Her leg was mauled. But the old woman weakly demanded that Chloe leave it be. She said she would mend at home.

And so Chloe put Nannie to bed in the back room. Nannie only lost consciousness once, when she was stitching herself up. Most of the time she slept or stared out of the window. Sometimes she had Chloe bring in the newspaper and hold it up so she could read it a little. Chloe changed bandages and kept the sign on the front door flipped to “Closed".

Chloe went on her walks when Nannie was asleep.

It was five days from the attack that Nannie got back on her feet. She asked for tea, and drank most of it, then pulled herself up on her good leg and said, “Enough of this. I got work to do.” She limped into the kitchen and tried to butter some toast. The severed nerves in her hand would not allow it, so Chloe tried to butter it herself. Then Nannie went out into the living room to see what was left of her craft shop.

She stopped in the middle of the room, put her good hand to her mouth. She said, “Oh, Chloe.”

The room was nearly empty and the cash box was gone.The boys had broken most of the crafts, and Chloe had swept them up and tossed them out. The shattered shelf boards lay on the floor and against the wall where they had fallen. Only a few button-eyed chickens still sat on the floor beneath the window, and painted brick doorstops lined the back wall. The braided rug had been thrown out with the ruined crafts, having been stained with Nannie’s blood.

Nannie sat down then, fell actually, onto the bare floor. She hid her face in her good fist.

Then she said, “Chloe, you cleaned up. What a good girl. But you could have hurt yourself with the bits of glass and all those splinters.”

Chloe said nothing.

Nannie sobbed a few silent tears, then said, “What am I going to do?”

“Make a craft, Nannie,” Chloe offered. “That’s a happy thing, makin’ crafts.”

Nannie shuddered then her back went rigid. She sat up as straight as her damaged body would allow.

“You’re right, honey. Get me some material from my trunk, and find my sewing kit. Bring them to me.”

Nannie spent the next hour trying to thread a needle with her dead hand.

Then she tried to shuck a dried cob for a doll’s body.

She tried to dab paint onto a brick from the pile out back, to make a flowered stop. The paint fell in large blue droplets to the wood floor. She looked at the drops and took a shuddering breath. She said, “Chloe, this is a good time for you to go on your walk. Take a stick in case you see any boys.”

Chloe took a stick on her walk, but she left it in the woods just past the side yard.

When Chloe returned, Nannie had made it into the kitchen. There was water on the floor where she had tried to fix tea, and a burned biscuit in the oven. Nannie was sitting at the table, with a knife in her hand. Chloe stood and waited for Nannie to say something.

“No more crafts,” Nannie said, finally looking at her granddaughter. “Boys took it away from me. Stole it from me. Criminals, all of them.”

Chloe was silent.

Nannie brushed bread crumbs from the kitchen table with the blade of the knife, and said, “We ain’t gonna make no more money with the shop.”

Chloe said nothing.

“Your granddaddy was alive he’d go after them boys. But we’s just two women.” She laughed. “An old crippled woman and a woman with a baby mind. But never you bother. Maybe we can’t get them boys for what they done, and maybe that’s for God, anyway, but I got an idea.”

Chloe sat down and picked her doll from the chair beside her. She held it close to her bosom. “What idea, Nannie?”

Nannie smiled, only one side of her lip going up the right way. “Fix dinner, honey. I’ll tell you how to do the stove if you’re real careful.”

Stony came over at seven thirty that evening, relieved that Nannie was up again, and not unduly surprised that she would not be making crafts again. He sat with them on the porch, holding his ball cap in his hands and alternating his gaze from Nannie’s bandaged wounds to a patch of poison ivy by the porch step.

“There’s state aid,” Stony said. “And I got a little saved up. You got Chloe here to keep the house, ’though God knows she ain’t half as dumb as she puts on. You ought to put her to work somewheres, least ways part time. Then she could take care of the house in the evenings.”

Nannie shook her head. Her hair had not been brushed in days. “You don’t know nothing ’bout your sister. She’s a poor child God gave a body and no brains. She got a home with me long as I live and I’ll take care of her. I’m making a plan. Leave us be. Go home.”

“Damn it, Nannie, you can’t work no more. I brought money, and I want you to take it.” Stony shoved one hand deep into his overall pocket, and pulled out a wad of dollar bills. Nannie would not reach for it.

Chloe said nothing.

“Don’t ’barrass me now by dying of starvation. You’re family. Take the damn money,” said Stony.

“You never tried to help before this. Just you and yourself. Then you get married and you never come over to show me your wife or your baby. That’s family, Stony? That’s how family acts? Go home.”

“Nannie, you make me look like a fool. Everybody at work asks how you are. I have to look at ’em and say, ‘She can’t work no more but she won’t take money from me, and now she’s gonna eat dog food and roots and shoe leather’? Take the money.”

“Go home.”

He went home, and Nannie sat on the porch for a long time, while Chloe played with her doll and caught lightning bugs in her fists.

The next morning, Chloe found Nannie down the gravel driveway on her face, a paint brush in one hand and blue paint bleeding into the coarse gray rocks. Chloe pulled Nannie up with much effort, but the old woman’s face, though stone-bruised, was smiling.

“What’cha happy about?” Chloe asked.

Nannie pointed at the old sandwich board sign by the road. Large, runny blue letters were painted in bold strokes over the faded “Blue Ridge Country Crafts.” The new sign read, “Victim of Violent Crime. No Solicitors, Curious a Quarter.”

Chloe shook her head. “What’s that say?”

Nannie’s smile did not fade. She tapped the bandages on her left arm, and on her hip beneath her cotton dress. “Crime gonna pay this time, honey. It’s gonna pay for us.”

On the way back into the house for breakfast, Nannie flipped the “Closed” sign on the door back over to “Open.”

At first nobody came. Nannie told Chloe the local folks were not ones to peek too soon, but after a few days there was a trickling of women and men and children, slipping up the driveway and coming hesitantly to the door. The first of the curious pretended to be on church work, bringing along homemade pies and fried chicken. They were anxious to see, but didn’t want to appear anxious. The hands which held the pies and chickens were sweaty hands, and the pockets on those dresses and trousers were full of quarters.

Nannie sat on a stuffed chair in her living room where once her dolls and toys had sat. She wore a loose skirt and blouse. When the quarter was dropped into a can by the door, Chloe would pull up Nannie’s blouse and the curious would ooh and ahh at the ragged, red scars of Nannie’s violent crime. After an uneasy start, the flow became steady for more than a week. People came and paid, acting as though they were embarrassed to be there, making Nannie promise not to tell anyone about their visit, hurrying down to their cars as if they were afraid they would be seen and chastised. Everyone wanted to see; no one wanted anyone to know they wanted to see.

Chloe took the money on her walks. She would be gone a while, and would pick up groceries at the little country store on her way home. Half of the time she bought what Nannie had asked her to buy, the other half she got an odd assortments of pretty shapes and brightly colored boxes and cans. She and Nannie ate well.

Then the money slowed and nearly stopped. Nannie’s scars weren’t so bad anymore. Kids even scowled and rolled their eyes after they saw what their school lunch quarters had bought them.

So Nannie gave the proof of her assault a little boost.

With a keen kitchen knife, she opened several of the healed wounds, making them a bit bigger than they originally were, and the curious came round again. Nannie upped the price to fifty cents, and displayed the red, draining cuts to those who would make crime pay.

Chloe watched the money clank into the can, and she helped Nannie undo her blouse and lift her skirt. In the late afternoons she took her walks. And after supper she sat and played with her doll while Nannie put on the nighttime dressings.

When Nannie took off her first finger, Stony was back in a rage. He would not come up on the porch, but stood at the bottom of the front stoop steps and shook a fist at the woman and the girl.

“You’s crazy! No wonder Chloe ain’t right upstairs, she got it from you.”

“Go home, Stony,” said Nannie.

“They are talking ’bout you at work now. You’re the bathroom talk, Nannie. You’re the lunch room talk! You can’t do this to yourself. Take some money. I can’t handle this shame.”

Nannie licked her lips and patted Chloe’s face with a four-fingered hand. “Go home, Stony. We don’t need you.”

“There’s openings out at the turkey plant. Let Chloe come work there. She might be crazy but she ain’t dumb like you think she is, Nannie. She’s fooling you in a big way.”

“She can’t, Stony. Don’t fool yourself. Go home.

“And why the hell’s she getting so fat these days? She got bad glands or something? Won’t take yourself to the doctor, won’t take her, either, I guess.”

“We’s eating good,” said Nannie. “Chloe’s just a healthy girl. Go home.”

“You pregnant, Chloe?” asked Stony.

Nannie stepped down to Stony. Her good hand shot out and cracked her grandson on the side of the face. “You speak trash on my porch?”

Stony almost exploded. “You ain’t my family!”

“I always knew that. Go home.”

Stony went home.

And so it went. Nannie cut herself in the daytime, while Chloe held a cloth to catch the blood and sometimes put a rag in Nannie’s teeth so she wouldn’t groan so loudly. At night, Nannie wrapped herself up good so as not to bleed to death.

Stony didn’t come back when Nannie took off another finger, nor did he show up when the left big toe came off. Nannie upped the price to seventy-five cents. The locals knew it meant more gore, and coins filled the bucket again with new fervor.

“What’s a ‘r’ look like, Nannie, I forgot,” called Chloe from the sign.

Nannie made broad strokes in the air to show her granddaughter. “Take your time, now, you’ll get it.”

Chloe put the paintbrush to the sign and formed a lopsided V. Then she sat back and painted the length of her forearm with the paint. She held it up to show Nannie. “Pretty!” she shouted.

“Chloe, honey, now you got to wash that all off.”

Chloe brought the can and paint brush to the stoop.

“All done,” she said to the doll on the porch floor.

“That sign looks right nice all done over again,” said Nannie, raising her one good hand and squinting out at the sandwich board. “Now with me asking a dollar, they’ll know they got some real crime to look at.”

Chloe sat on the stoop and rubbed the doll’s face in the paint on her arm.

Nannie turned awkwardly in her chair. Severe shadows shadows cut down the side of her face. She stroked her throat and pulled at the wrinkles. She leaned over and pulled at the end of the sock on her left foot. The sock was orange with drainage. “Threads catching on that gone toe,” Nannie said. “Ought to get me a prop-up chair.”

“Nannie, Stony says I crazy like you.”

“Stony don’t know crazy,” said Nannie. “You and me, we’s just practical. Give me a hug.”

Chloe leaned into the rancid dress and gave her Nannie a hug.

Nannie sat back. She said, “Stony tells me you can do more than I think you can. In a way, he’s right.”

Chloe put some of the yarn doll hair into her mouth to suck. She strummed the now-blue doll’s face.

“I know you can do many things. You can help me move ’round the house. You help me do a little cooking in the kitchen. You paint the signs for me, don’t think I don’t love you for it. But there is something else…” Nannie’s voice trailed. Chloe licked the palm of her hand, and watched her grandmother.

“Want you to do my eyes,” said Nannie. Chloe blinked, and rubbed her own.

“I can hold still I think. If I cry don’t stop.” Nannie scratched at a curly eyebrow hair. Then she took a butter knife from her skirt pocket. “Dull one’ll do better.”

Chloe flinched and she drew back from the knife offered in her direction.

“George Stewart lost a thumb in his thresher last Thursday,” said Nannie, her voice thoughtful and sad. “Mrs. Stewart told me when she come ’round with her money. Ain’t nothing to see gone fingers now.”

Chloe squinched her nose and shook her head.

“Honey, crime got to pay. We got to eat.”

“How I do it?” asked Chloe.

“Just a little twist, like scooping oleo margarine from the tub.”

Chloe put her doll down. She gingerly took the knife.

“Like oleo?”

“Yes,” said Nannie. She leaned over to Chloe and kissed her on the forehead. “I’m the tub, honey.”

Chloe licked the knife once, for luck, she told Nannie.

Stony thundered into the living room, knocking over the can and spilling all the change. Coins rolled in a flurry through the dust bunnies on the floor. Chloe ran around behind Nannie’s stuffed chair. She grabbed her stomach with one hand and the top of Nannie’s head with the other.

Nannie, on her chair, buttons of her blouse almost all done back up but all done wrong, straightened and snorted.

“You!” Stony screeched, and stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the crusted holes where the eyes had been. “Oh, my God, you’ve really blinded yourself. I prayed the folks at the plant were lying to me, trying to get my goose for all this nonsense!”

“Weren’t lying,” said Nannie. “Chloe done it for me. Guess you was right, she can do some things.”

Chloe looked around the back of the chair. Stony glared down at her. His face was red and his ears were sweating. He pointed his finger at Chloe. “You little bitch! How could you do this?”

“Don’t talk like that in my house. She’s my family. I asked her to do my eyes,” said Nannie.

“And you’re crazy!” shouted Stony. He spun on his heel and picked up the empty

coin can. He shook it in Nannie’s face, but her empty sockets could not see. “I ought to put you out of your misery. It would put me out of mine!”

“Go home, Stony,” said Nannie.

“Home,” said Chloe.

Stony hurled the empty coin can to the floor, and it bounced loudly. He clawed at his face. “How can I stand this? They didn’t give me the promotion I was gonna get, since they said you is nuts. Said it must run in the family!”

“Go home, Stony,” said Nannie.

“It ain’t fair. I gotta ruin my life for my crazy grandma!”

“Show Stony the door, Chloe,” said Nannie.

Stony stood stock still, with nothing but his eyelids twitching. Then he reached into his jacket and took out out his pistol.

“I can’t ruin my life for no crazy woman,” he said. His eyes teared up, and he blinked the tears away.

“Chloe, honey, you hear what I said?” said Nannie.

“Show Stony the door.”

Chloe stood up slowly. She and Stony stared at each other. Chloe held up her doll, and showed her brother. The doll’s eyes were dug out.

“Christ Jesus,” said Stony. He aimed the pistol at Nannie’s head.

Chloe reached for Nannie and patted her arm. She did not look away from Stony. “I love my Nannie,” said Chloe.

The pistol began to shake in Stony’s grip. Chloe leaned down and kissed her grandmother’s mangled left hand.

“It’s a sin!” Stony cried. “It’s a sin! Goddamn it, you witch, won’t you stop this?” And he dropped the pistol. He turned, and holding his throat, stumbled through the door. The screen clapped behind him. He stopped on the stoop and put his face into his hands.

“Stony gone, honey?” asked Nannie.

“Yeah, Nannie,” said Chloe. She picked up the pistol and held it to Nannie’s temple. “He’s all gone.”

She bent to kiss the hand again, and then pulled the trigger.

Nannie’s eyeless head jerked and fell forward. Blood spattered Chloe’s hand, her face, the stuffed chair, and the doll tucked under Chloe’s arm. The red was hot and thick, like paint on the sandwich board. The wound was round, like Nannie’s empty eye sockets. Chloe licked the blood from her hand. She licked the barrel of the pistol.

“For luck,” she said.

“Oh, Chloe,” whimpered Stony from the stoop.

Chloe looked out the screen door. Her brother was pressed against the screen like a

monkey caged in an outdoor zoo. His face was a mask of disbelief, his eyes white and huge.

“Chloe,” he said again.

Chloe put the gun back on the floor. Then she crossed the bloody floor to the door and put her hand flat against the screen where Stony’s face was pressed.

“Nannie hated them boys,” she said.

Stony closed his eyes.

“But I like boys. Like ’em for a long time. Since before Mama died. Mama didn’t like me to see boys, but I did. Seen ’em on my walks a lot. Boys is pretty. They say pretty things.”

“Chloe, you ain’t dumb. You never was dumb.”

“They give me pretty things, Stony. Things Mama never give me. Things Nannie never give me.

“Mama?”

“Boys do things for me if I give ’em my pussy. They call it that. Pussy! Like a cat!”

“Wait…did you say Mama?” whispered Stony. “Oh dear God.”

“Boys didn’t do it right this time, though. They didn’t do it like they did Mama with that truck. And Nannie didn’t die.”

Stony looked at Chloe. Her lopsided smile was coated in blood. She pointed at Nannie. “Bad Stony, you killed her.”

“Chloe, you can’t do that to me.” Stony choked, and looked at the gun on the floor. “Chloe, I tried to help you!”

“And you give me a baby.” Chloe rolled the palm of her hand around on her bulge.

“Shit! What?”

“Bad boy.”

Stony said, “You wouldn’t do that, Chloe.”

Chloe chuckled. She tore the head off of her ragdoll and went over to Nannie’s chair, where she dropped it onto her dead grandmother’s lap. When she turned around, Stony could see her face clearly. She was silent.

And her smile was no longer lopsided.

The sale of Nannie’s house made a nice profit for Chloe.

The money was put into a bank, and because of the trauma Chloe had survived it was a flexible trust which allowed her to buy something nice when she wanted it. Stony was put away where the sun don’t shine, promised a life sentence and lots of attention from muscular men who liked to do a little turkey plucking themselves. Stony’s wife and child moved away.

Chloe was taken in by a charitable, elderly widow who had once brought canned peaches on pretense of seeing the marks of a violent crime. After all, it was not Chloe who was insane, it had been her grandmother and her brother. Chloe was a poor child, with hardly a thought in her head. At her new home, Chloe played and ate and listened to the widow chat about church meetings and the neighbors. When the widow didn’t know, Chloe handled the pretty glassware in the pie safe and played with the silver hidden in the cellar trunk.

When the baby came, Chloe gave it up to the state and didn’t even cry.

“She’s can’t keep a baby,” said the widow to the nurses.

“It’s not that she’s crazy, she’s just slow as snail in the sun.”

Chloe was quiet and obedient.

And in the early spring, she began talking long walks again.