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peeking from her purse, pretending to be salvation.
    The morning school bell suddenly rang, hallowed, wailing. Ed watched his niece. Her face turned, trained and alert, her eyes on the children who had just appeared at the end of the block, covered in bright yellow and green jackets. Helene took in a quick breath as the clatter of shoes grew nearer. They peeled past Uncle Ed and Helene—a sea of arrogant children, satchels clapping against their knees. She watched on, helpless, angry, remembering the tight ring of third-grade children singing with brutal mouths, “Ain’t got no mama, ain’t got no daddy, you twice as ugly, and you hair is nappy.”
    â€œChildren is a blessing,” Uncle Ed said, looking at Helene’s lonely face.
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œBout your mama. Ain’t gone be nothing but heartache.”
    â€œYes, well. Let’s see how she likes a dose,” she said, envisioning Queen Ester’s reaction to the news of Annie b’s death. Helene slid into the car, wresting the door closed.
    She meant her last words to Ed. How would her mother like to live a life satisfied with secrets and bits of stories? Helene remembered once when she tamely searched for her family’s history, turning shiny when a couple who visited Uncle Ed claimed to come from Lafayette County and carelessly recalled having a meal at her grandmother’s café. The aged and muddied southern voices rose to her memory. “Liberty, you say? Liberty Strickland? Oh, you know Liberty Strickland, Minyas. Died in ’fifty-nine, remember? Taller than a tree, your grandmama was. Oh, come on, Minyas. We went to sermon with the woman for damn near three years. Put the pie down, Minyas. Had that baby girl that was…” And then an uneasy trail into silence. “Your mama was so sweet and kind—Minyas, put that pie down—never did … Well, look at us wearing out the welcome. Come on, Minyas.”
    Their embarrassed getaway checked Helene’s efforts but hadn’t stopped her from looking for a nappy head at her college graduation, knowing if she found one she would have called, “Where have you been?” But the only head she saw was Aunt Annie b’s—her aunt’s hair shaved as short as Uncle Ed’s.
    *   *   *
    The way to Lafayette was crooked and full of treachery. Places in town felt like objects snatched out of a sack and thrown down randomly. Barren churches and convenience stores sat at the dead end of farm market roads. No bank or gas station—the nearest bank in Bradley, the gas station in McKamie—just two general stores built side by side. Roads that seemed to know their way suddenly plunged into trees, only to reappear as backyards full of dead cars: a 1962 Plymouth without the fenders, a ’59 Ford Edsel with the trunk folded in on itself like a sheet. Ed’s map led Helene to shotgun houses empty of everything except decayed wood planks, a half-eaten tin roof, and a table in the backyard with a cloth held down with cinder blocks. What should have been a one-hour trip was doubled because of the lack of street signs. Helene didn’t think it took that long because she lost her way but because Uncle Ed had drawn a map that took her to her mother’s house the familiar route, as if she should know Lafayette County by touch, like the lining of her pants pockets.
    Twelve backyards later, Helene thought perhaps her uncle had drawn the map the way he himself had stumbled upon her mother’s house: as an errand gone awry. His way—tinged and overcome with the urge to have a meal, to look civil, and then go to the bathroom—was what had led him to Queen Ester’s, for as far as Helene could tell, not a single house of the eleven she saw was home to a toilet.
    And while she herself fought the urge to pee, Helene thought about how she could not ask Queen Ester why they had never fought over having her