When Lou Ellen was tiny, she had been very frail and had spent more time at Glory’s house than she had at home. It was easier on her to be in a quiet place rather than in Mayleen’s house with its cold drafts in winter and swarming flies in summer, where rackety, quarrelsome people were always going at it hammer and tongs. Besides, Mayleen didn’t have the patience for helping Lou Ellen eat, and Sue Elaine had said right out loud it would be better if she just starved to death and got it over with. Lou Ellen ate very well if the food was mashed up soft, and Gloriana was good at doing that. The two of them had spent hours playing card games on Glory’s bed, upstairs, where no one would bother them. Lou Ellen was a good player; there was nothing wrong with her mind even though her body had been fragile as a sooly leaf eaten away by worms until nothing was left but lace.
One day I heard Lou Ellen ask, “Glory, are you my friend? Sue Elaine says I don’t have any friends.”
“Of course I am, Lou Ellen. What you think I’m doin’ here?”
“I thought maybe it was just you’re my cousin.”
“That too. If you’d rather have me for a sister, I could be your blood sister, just like the blood brothers in those stories Aunt Hanna tells us when she comes visiting.”
“I’d like that,” Lou Ellen whispered. “Oh, I’d like that.”
Through the slit in the door I had watched while Glory got a darning needle and cooked it in the flame of the coal stove so it wouldn’t have any germs on it, then pricked their fingers and pressed them together and swore to be blood sisters forever.
“Not just for this year or next year or the year after that, but blood sisters so long as I live,” Glory said. Glory was only in first grade then, but she could already write pretty well. She and I had taught Lou Ellen to read and write. The two of them wrote the promise out together, very neatly, and put their names on it. Glory put the folded-up promise in an old lozenge box, wrapped the box in a piece of oilcloth, and buried it at the foot of the tall, standing stone halfway up the hill toward my house. Glory had always said the stone looked like a huge, armored person, standing guard over the valley. I saw it all, and the place by the stone was a good place for a promise to be protected and safe. The whole thing was so dear it made me cry, but I never let on I’d seen them.
Instead of going below the bridge, I went up to the near end of it, toward town, crossed the road, and went down the other side on the steep path through the woods. When I got to the bottom, deep into the shadows of the trees, I saw Glory coming out from under the bridge, looking toward the old, splintery pier, gray as a goose feather. She smiled radiantly, raised her hands, and called, “Lou Ellen!”
I stopped. I was intruding on her. Everyone, even young people had a right to their private time. Still, I didn’t feel like going home. I sat down with my back to a tree and thought about having a nap. I shut my eyes.
“How long you been here?” Glory called.
I think my eyes must have opened, just a slit. I saw Lou Ellen on the pier. She shrugged waveringly, almost like heat waves rising. Her voice came like a whisper of wind.
“Don’t know,” she murmured. “A while. You look all hot. You bothered by something?”
“Me? Not much.” Glory felt her face. “Well, yes, I am. Here it is summer again, about time for me’n Sue Elaine’s birthday party, and as per usual, nobody’s invited you.”
Lou Ellen smiled, then whispered in a soft little voice I could barely hear, “Do you want to go to the birthday party?”
“Ballygaggle no, Lou Ellen! I don’t even want to have a birthday party unless I can have one of my own. I’m tired of sharing my birthday with somebody I don’t even like just because we were born in midsummer. It’s the same dumb thing every year. Grandma and Mama make a big fuss over it, and everybody gets their feelings hurt, and Grandma goes around all sad and doesn’t talk to anybody for days and days afterward!”
“Then why should my feelings be hurt not being invited someplace I don’t want to go anyhow? It’s nice I don’t have to.”
At which point I should have picked myself up and gone home, but I didn’t. I was asleep, so I couldn’t.
Glory asked, “You going to help fish?”
Another of those wavering shrugs. “You do it, Glory. You like catching them.”
Glory opened her pack and got out her fishing gear, a string tied to a piece of stinky meat, and lowered it into the shallows near some rocks. Within two minutes, a big crawdad grabbed it with his claws. Tercis crawdads weren’t earth crawdads, but Earthians had given them the same name because they had pretty much the same look to them, claws in front, legs behind. She pulled it out and put it in the bucket.
“You’re sure lazy,” murmured Gloriana
“I know.” Lou Ellen sighed. “I’ve been like this lately.”
Lou Ellen went on dreaming, Glory caught crawdads, the sun slipped down from the top of the sky.
“I’ve got twenty-one,” Glory said, yawning. “That’s ten
