The sister said, “Then let’s go, Edith. The sun will be up.”
But Missy just stood there, looking at the credenza. Lila said, “Something of yours in there?” The lower edge of the door hung an inch or so below the bottom shelf. She could just pull at it and pop the door open, it was so dry and shabby. She knew this from all the times she’d tried to polish it. So she did, and it opened, and she said, “Take what’s yours.” She saw Missy pause over the sad little odds and ends and then take at least half of them, even Doll’s knife. “Well,” she said, “that ain’t yours, that knife. I don’t know about the rest.”
The sister said, “She don’t want any of it. Put it back. You don’t want nothing from this damn place, Edith, not one thing.”
Lila said, “Where you going?”
“None of your business,” the sister said. “A long way from here, that’s for sure.” So Missy left without whatever it was that had kept her lingering, and Lila had Doll’s knife in her hand again, the shape and weight of it so familiar she felt as if it had always been there. Mrs. would yell when she saw what had happened to that cabinet. The little tongue of the lock had pulled right through the wood, splintering it. But Lila just stood there thinking, I never will see that baby. I’ve been almost feeling it in my arms, singing to it, and I’ll never even see it. How could I have been so sure Missy would have it here, that she never would tell anybody where to find her damn sister? I never even believed she had a sister. Why did I think I knew how things would happen? It was because time was about to bring her back to the old life, where it seemed as though she could do what was asked of her. She had a dream sometimes that she was running along a road and there was Doll ahead of her, waiting for her, and she just ran into her arms, and she thought, It’s over now, I’m not lost anymore, and the dream had all the sweetness of a mild day in summer. If you could smell in dreams, it would be the smell of hay on the softest breeze and sunlight warming the fields. She thought that was going to be waiting for her, that life, and she never even stopped to wonder about herself for thinking that way. I been crazy for a long time, she said.
The morning Missy left, Lila found a suitcase in a closet and put a few things in it, a hairbrush and a towel and a nightgown, slipped the knife into her stocking, and left the house. She walked until the sun came up, and until there were people in the street. There was just no end to the city. So she went into a hotel and asked if they could use a cleaning woman. And then the years passed. She didn’t mind so much. It was just work. No need to smile at people you’ll never see again. The other women would tell her to ease up a little. You start doing that, they going to start expecting it. Lila heard them talking about her, and they meant for her to hear. She don’t have another job to go to when she done here. She don’t have no children to look after. Nobody going to be hanging on her skirts, fussing for their supper.
But there’s no pleasure in work if you don’t break a sweat. Out in the fields you feel any little breeze. You know it’s coming, you hear it in the trees, you almost can’t wait for it, and then there it is, like a cold drink of water. Well, when she finished with her rooms Lila went to help another of the women finish hers. She didn’t think of it as helping, it was just a way to pass the time. She’d hear them talking about their mothers and their children, so she kept to herself as much as she could. One woman gave her a jar of cream for her hands, and Lila couldn’t even say thanks. She thought about doing it, but then pretty soon it was so long ago she gave it to her that it would probably seem strange to mention it. There was a time when I just quit talking, she said to the child. I’d go a day, a week, and never
