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there and nobody likes them anyway and if you turn them upside down they make a lady in an evening dress. Look on the steps. It's not a flower store any more, it's a beauty contest."
    She went with me to the back porch and looked patiently at the rows of upside-down hollyhocks, ladies in pink, red, and white gowns, standing on the steps, curling quickly in the sun.
    "Be the judge, Tatie. Be the beauty contest judge."
I was prancing again. "Which one should be the winner?"
    "Can't pick. They all alike, except for them colors. Boy, would I like to have me a long red dress."
    She and I both looked at her carefully ironed blue uniform, her starched white apron, and at my tightly sashed yellow sundress, and chuckled. "Me too," I said, gathering up the wilting beauty contestants. "I will, too, someday. So will you. I'll buy you one."
    "Ha." She went back into the kitchen, moved the ironing board to one side, and began preparing lunch. On the staircase landing in another part of the big house, a clock chimed twelve times. "Your grandpa be home soon. Throw away them flowers and you can help set the table."
    "Okay."
    "You better not let your grandma hear you say that."
    "Say what?"
    "Okay."
    I shrieked with laughter. "You said it, now! Wait'll I tell Grandmother
you
said it!"
    She swatted my rear, lightly. "You not going to tell your grandma
nothing
except lunch is ready in a minute. Help me set the table now, and then you can go ring the bell."
    "Wait!" I will, but wait. I want to tell you something. Guess what Grandfather's bringing me. An
autograph book! He promised. He's bringing it today."
    She made a face at me. "What kind of book is that? You can't even read good yet."
    "It's a book people write in. Your
friends
write in it. Then you have a book with messages from all your friends, just for you. And I can too read good. I can read very, very good."
    I tossed my head, wishing for long, thick curls like Jessica's instead of skimpy too-tight braids. Following Tatie into the large, dim dining room, I trailed behind her around the oval table, placing the napkins in their silver rings beside each plate. Then I pranced off to the hall to ring the delicate, hanging chime that signaled lunch.
    Grandfather arrived home from the bank, walking, each day at fifteen minutes past twelve. In the summer he wore a white suit and carried an intricately carved cane. Winters, his suits were dark blue and dark gray, and the cane that he carried had an icepick on the tip, to disarm the slippery sidewalks. In February, shortly after we had come to his house to live, I had played with the icepick cane, marred the front steps of the big house, and been reprimanded.
    Grandfather sat at one end of the mahogany table at mealtime. Grandmother sat at the other, her tiny imperious feet resting on a cushioned footstool underneath; she would stretch one leg down, pointing her
toe, to the buzzer concealed under the Oriental rug, with which she summoned Tatie from the kitchen. My mother sat on Grandmother's left, beside me, her eyes and face in a listening look, always, for sounds from the fretful baby upstairs. Directly opposite me was Jessica, flawless and ringleted. I made hideous faces at her, across the table, under the prismed chandelier, and she ignored me with disdain.
    Ritualistic and precise, Grandfather ended lunch each day by rolling his folded napkin into a tube, fitting the tube into the monogrammed ring so that it extended to the same length on either side, commenting graciously on the quality of the meal to Tatie as she removed the plates, and rising from his chair. Somehow, no one except me ever seemed to dirty the napkins; I always folded the soup stains, which were on top of the breakfast egg stains, which were on top of the previous evening's gravy stains, into the center so they wouldn't show. Tatie wrinkled her nose and shook her head at my napkin when she unrolled them all every other day so that Lillian could include them in the