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laundry.
    After lunch, Grandfather always took a ten-minute sitting-up nap in the blue wing chair in the corner of the library. Under no circumstances, not even if the house caught fire or the Japanese appeared with their drawn swords at the front door, was I to interrupt
Grandfather's nap; I was not to bang a door, shout, sing, or thump my feet on the stairs while Grandfather slept after lunch. At one o'clock he would open his eyes, stand, take his carved cane from the place where it rested in the hall closet, and walk back to the bank.
    I waited impatiently for him at the front door, caught him as he was going out, and reminded him of the autograph book. Unsurprised, he removed it gravely from his briefcase, glanced through its slippery pastel pages, signed his name solemnly on the first page, and put the book in my hands.
    "Look," I told Tatie later, as she wiped the Spode luncheon plates with a linen towel. "Blue, green, yellow, and pink. What color page do you want?"
    "Me? I don't want no color. I'm not going to mess up nobody's book."
    Sitting perched on a kitchen chair, I giggled at her, and leafed through the pages, feeling the soft leather cover.
My Friends
was the title, embossed diagonally in gold. I had seen the autograph book in the window of the stationery store next to Grandfather's bank, had wheedled gently, and now it was mine.
    "Come on, Tatie. What color? Grandfather wrote on a blue page. Look, the very first page. Look what Grandfather wrote. His bank name."
    It was his flourished signature, the one I had seen on documents and papers that occasionally lay briefly
on the hall table. I hadn't the slightest idea what Grandfather's name was. Although I had been able to read since I was four, I couldn't read his signature, which included initials and was formed with broad, magnificent strokes.
    Tatie looked, impressed. "That's real nice. Did your grandma write yet?"
    I grimaced. "Yes. On yellow. Listen, though." I sounded the words out carefully, reading Grandmother's message in a Grandmother-like voice: "'Good manners and good morals are sworn friends and fast allies.'" I clutched my stomach and did my throwing-up imitation. Tatie shrugged.
    "Here's Mama's, on the green page. I can read it all right, but I don't understand it. 'I pine fir yew, and sometimes balsam.' Do you know what that means?"
    Tatie thought. "No," she said, "but I never could understand your mama too good, not even when she was little."
    "Here's Jessica's. It's on green, like Mama's. Listen: 'Too good to be forgotten.' No, wait. You have to look: '2 good 2 B 4 gotten.' Get it? See how the numbers are?"
    She leaned over from the sink and glanced at the pale green page. "You know what
I
think," she confided matter-of-factly, "I think Jessica thinks she really
is
too good for some of us."
    I giggled again, wondering what Grandmother would say if she heard Tatie talk that way about my sister. "Well," I said, redeeming Jess a little, "her writing is nice and neat, though."
    I had to explain something to Tatie, and I was embarrassed. "I can't ask Charles to sign it," I said, finally, "because he can't write yet. After he starts school and learns how to write, then I'm going to give him one of the best pages.
    "What color do
you
want, Tatie?" I asked again.
    "Told you already. I don't want no color."
    "I'm saving one of the blues for Daddy. When he gets home from the war."
    "That's right, baby," she said, smiling, remembering my father. "You save the best ones for your daddy."
    "Come on, Tatie. Pick a page. I've got to go out and get other people to sign. Pick a page." I dangled the book in front of her. "And don't call me baby," I added.
    "Pick a page, pick a page," she mimicked in a high, baby voice, hanging up the dishtowel and ignoring my autograph book. "Not Tatie. Tatie's not picking no page. Now go on outside."
    I stood still for a moment, angry at her broad, turned-away back. "Smarty-pants," I said loudly, and stuck out my tongue. She