–Besides, I thought you were afraid of him.

Those soft lids, the blood inside them quickening.

–Mrs Claudette? I thought you were afraid of your brother?

She settled back into herself, into her heels. The whole of her lengthening. Still looking away from me. I could see her neck, tautening.

–You just let me know if you see him.

I was leaning forward on the porch. I made sure my shoulders looked soft, made sure my voice matched hers.

–I surely will.

Another deep breath and then she was turning on the step, but only halfway. Looking down at her belly, she said

–It never felt wrong to me, you know.

The wood under my elbows was itchy, suddenly. Itchy and hard.

–I’d have stopped, if it felt wrong.

–I don’t know what you mean.

Slow smile. Still looking down at herself. The spit on her teeth shining.

–I would have. I’d have stopped.

Her smile like a slice in her face. As always, so pleased with herself. Nothing could stop her from feeling pleased with herself.

–Sometimes our feelings aren’t the best indication of what we should be doing.

I knew right away I’d made a mistake in speaking.

She laughed, loud and fully, looked up at me smiling before turning to go.

–So long, Miss Ada.

The look on her face resounding clear as her laughter that carried on smarting my ears in the hot buzzing day.

Pot kettle. Look who’s talking. Hypocrite.

Liar.

She knew enough to suspect he’d told me what she’d done.

Enough to suspect he might be here.

But she didn’t know everything. Not by half. Nothing was wrong. Nothing had come undone.

Father came outside and started sniffing at the air,

–Who was here?

–Mrs Claudette.

–Woman is highly strung. You said she was an easy Cure.

–She was. Must be the baby doing things to her. Sending all the wrong sparks to her brain.

Wiping his hands, moving up to his elbows.

–She didn’t mention her brother?

–No.

Her smile as she looked down at herself, looked down at her belly. The way she looked at the high hard mound.

–No, I said again. They don’t get along.

Maria Claudette

My son was a good man but he was an innocent.

We begged him not to marry that girl.

If ever there was a girl with a snake inside …

Like I say; we begged him.

And then he got sick, and he died.

We couldn’t take his name away from her but we could take the house.

One thing I could not abide was her staying on in that house.

Chuckling and slithering around.

The next day: more unexpected visitors.

Another young boy Cure.

Just as the sky started to colour with evening and the patio stones were turning cool.

I was in bed, trying to stop thinking about Olivia, trying to think of a way to keep Lorraine out of the house. To stop her from wanting to come to the house. Wondering when it was Cure women started taking up so much of my time.

So when I heard the car, I didn’t move. When I heard Father’s heavy steps in the hall, I didn’t move.

When he called to me, it struck me that his voice was full of rattle.

They were coming through the front door before I reached the bottom of the stairs; two men, one of them carrying a soft, yielding body. Behind them came a younger man holding a woman by her elbows. They were all of them dressed in grey and black, and this last man was wet and hiding his shivers.

I didn’t know the boy’s name. I wouldn’t know until later, when it seemed likely not only his name but his face would come to haunt me later.

Oliver James.

They rested him against the cushions of that same lagging couch that had seen so many bodies gone to sleep. The woman had knelt and began to rearrange the boy’s hair so that it more evenly framed his face. She was looking at Father who was kneeling beside her, and with eyes on his face she touched her son’s small jacket, the lapels made heavy with water.

Without preamble the men gathered themselves in an orderly line on the couch’s far side. I thought They might be at church, and then scolded myself for thinking in mocking terms.

Mrs James had set to rocking now, gently bumping her forehead onto and off of her son’s sodden chest. Her hands were knotted and pressed into the midriff of her dress. From under her clothes I heard the creasing of soft, maternal flesh.

He was not her only child, but he was the youngest.

One of the older men was speaking: the boy had left the field where he was helping his uncles and brothers, and he had fallen into Sister Eel Lake. It was the wet man who had heard the splash of interrupted water. Of course, we knew without their saying what had happened; there was such a stench of the lake, and beneath their talk I could hear the wet smack of drowning.

–Ada, come look at the boy.

It was the first time I’d worked with family present. I knelt between the weeping Mrs James and Father with all of the men looking down at my hands, all of them milky-skinned. They must be from the valley, the valley which was on the far side of the fields and held some thirty people. They had a close way of living together, and the positioning of the hills put most of their days in the shade. Hence the churned look to their skin, rather than the scrubbed complexions of those who lived in town.