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me to help her with her exercise. I found out that Miss Lizzy don’t want me to tie no cheese. Tie cheese sound like cheese. But it ain’t. It’s the name of Miss Lizzy’s exercises.
    Miss Lizzy come out her room. She wasn’t wearing no suit like she done the day we met her. And she wasn’t wearing pants and a long shirt that’s still real dress-up looking, like she wore yesterday. She had sweatpants and a T-shirt. Miss Lizzy go into a room nextside the living room. Wasn’t nothing inside there except a big soft-feeling pallet thing on the floor. And a long pole running alongside one of the walls.
    Miss Lizzy say she gonna hold on that “bar” and do her tie cheese. All I had to do was stand close. So if she lose her balance I help her. She say I’m there as a “caution.” If she fell doing her exercise while nobody was there, she’d might not could get up. And that would put her in a pickle.
    I nod my head like this make sense. Cheese wasn’t cheese, so I don’t guess she means she really get put inside a pickle.
    Miss Lizzy put her walker by the door. She go onto that mat and hold on the sideways pole for a minute. Then she lift up her arms and look like she was holding a big watermelon in front of her stomach. “This is centering the chi,” Miss Lizzy say. I listened. She didn’t say “cheese.” She leave off the end and just say “chee.”
    Then she done other stuff. About holding up the heavens. Breaking up waves. And holding back the tiger. Little silver-headed lady putting her hands out funny and kinda squatting don’t look like she’s holding back a tiger. But Miss Lizzy was already talking about dragon dance or dragon stand or something. I watch and listen. Wait to see if she was going to tump over.
    She get done and said she need to put her hand on my shoulder so she could get to her walker.
    “Thank you, Biddy. Have you ever seen anyone do tai chi before?”
    I shake my head.
    Miss Lizzy laugh. Not a big laugh like with Quincy. “It must seem odd to you, then?”
    I don’t know what “odd” mean.
    Miss Lizzy look at my face. “ ‘Odd’ means strange, puzzling. It’s odd that a little old lady waves her arms around like a crazy person.” She laugh again like she was inviting me to laugh with her.
    I laugh back. Now Miss Lizzy done laugh twice. I don’t feel bad now.
    Then there was a knock on the back door.
    “That will be Stephen, I think,” Miss Lizzy say. “Will you get that, Biddy?”
    I go to the door all scaredy. But Miss Lizzy coming along behind me. So it’s probly all OK. I open the door and Stephen’s smiling real big. “You two wanna see something pretty?”

I chop and mix and did my job without talking for the rest of my shift. My mind was boiling. These people don’t know me and they do know Robert and they know he’s no count, but they still be looking at me like . . . well, like people look at Biddy.
    I clocked out and left without no good-byes and stomp down the street like I was squashing bugs. That got a little of the mad outta me. I got to Lizabeth’s and thought I’d pick a tomato or two and some basil. I head to the garden and, boy, did I see me a sight.
    Biddy was lying on her fat stomach, wiggling her fingers at a patch of rosemary and singing. The girl had finally gone insane-crazy.
    “Biddy, what you doing wallering in that dirt?”
    She poke her head up, smiling big as you please. “Quincy, shush and come see this.”
    I figure the girl must of found her some candy or sumpin’, she was so happy. I squat down. She point to the back of the rosemary. Through the branches I seen sumpin’ brown. I squint up my eyes and rock over a little and I saw it. A big old Mama Duck sitting on some eggs.
    “How you find this ole duck?”
    “Stephen showed us.”
    “Stephen? He your boyfriend now?” I knew I done wasted my time worryin’ ’bout Biddy and being scared of boys. When they gots somethin’ she want, she . . .
    “Quincy, I’m not going to