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three. She knows she is sickly, but does not know what the word means. It is like a synonym for her name: Isabella is sickly.
    For her, although she stands often at this window looking down, the street is frightening. It is so noisy, so rough. People bump into each other, sometimes they push. The men have thick arms, and some roll their shirtsleeves up so the dark hair shows. The women have loud voices and cackle in laughter. The trolleys glide by, huge and terrifying. One time when Eddie took Bella for candy, a trolley came right up to her and she didn’t see it. Eddie pulled her back fast and yelled at her she should look where she was going. Then he hugged her and bought her two pieces of candy, but she was still crying. She hadn’t seen the trolley.
    In fact, she doesn’t see well. The cornea of her left eye was scarred by measles, but no one knows that yet. She sees well enough to be aware of the street, and to know she hates and fears it. Sometimes, when the sunlight makes everything shimmer in front of her, she pretends she is on a different street, one she saw long ago.
    Momma and Poppa took her and Eddie and the baby to visit Momma’s sister Mamie, who lives far away—two trolley rides and a long walk. Momma was fat and she carried Wally so Poppa let Bella sit on his lap; she gazed with fascination through the trolley windows at streets that had no stores at all but only houses all in a row, brown houses with high stoops and trees shading quiet sidewalks. There was a place for the children to play in this neighborhood, although no children were playing. But on one stoop, Bella spied a little girl with long yellow curls and a pink dress, sitting neatly and prettily, her figure splotched by the dancing of the unfurling buds of the tree. And Bella’s heart squeezed so hard, she almost cried out. She longed to be that little girl and live in that quiet dignified house. Her yearning was a band tying her to the little girl, stretching further and further as the trolley moved down the street.
    When Bella stands at the window looking out, she does not always see the street before her. Sometimes she is on another street, sitting on stone steps under the tips of the branches of a tree, wearing a pink dress. Her hours pass in vacancy, the vacancy of unselfconsciousness. She is unaware of much around her. But some things she knows.
    She knows she has a momma and a poppa who are always gone. Momma is already in the kitchen making oatmeal when Bella rises from her tousled bed and trots, silently and barefoot, into the dining room, and climbs onto the couch and curls up in its corner. She can see Momma in the kitchen they share with the next-door neighbors. She is holding the round fragrant loaf of Jewish rye bread in her arm, slicing it toward her breast. She cuts three slices for Poppa and one each for herself and the children. She spreads them thickly with creamy white butter and puts them on a plate. She carries the plate into the dining room and lays it on the table, but she is rushing, always rushing, and she does not see Bella curled up in the couch. Bella jumps up and runs to the table and snatches her bread and butter, then runs back to the couch, snuggles in its deep cushions, and eats. Eddie comes roaring in, pretending to be something that makes noise, and grabs his slice and jumps up on the couch next to Bella; and Wally follows, crawling. He reaches the table and whimpers. He can’t reach the plate: he can’t stand up yet. Eddie jumps up and gets Wally his slice of bread, then lifts him onto the couch. Eddie is strong. Wally tries to put the whole slice in his mouth at once, and smears butter all over his face.
    Eddie takes the bread away from him, and Wally begins to wail. “Bites, stupid, take bites. Like this.” Eddie holds the edge of the bread to the infant, and Wally grabs it and bites down. “That’s right,” Eddie says. He has finished his bread, and sits in