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she felt as though the pavement slid forward instead of retreating. The faster she traveled, the more road appeared ahead.
    The Cadillac shut down a block from her mother’s house, but Mavis managed to coast across the intersection and incline the automobile against the curb.
    It was too soon. Her mother wouldn’t be home from the preschool till the afternoon children had been picked up. The door key was no longer under the reindeer, so Mavis sat on the back porch and struggled out of the yellow boots. Her feet looked as though they belonged to somebody else.
    Frank had already called at five-thirty a.m. when Mavis was staring at Peg’s rose of Sharon. Birdie Goodroe told Mavis she had hung up on him after telling him she couldn’t think what the hell he was talking about and who the hell did he think he was, dragging her out of her sleep? She was not pleased. Not then and not later when her daughter tapped on the kitchen window looking like a bat out of hell, which is what she said as soon as she opened the door. “Girl, you look like a bat out of hell what you doing up here in little kiddie boots?”
    “Ma, just let me in, okay?”
    Birdie Goodroe had barely enough calf liver for two. Mother and daughter ate in the kitchen, Mavis presentable now—washed, combed, aspirined and swimming a little in Birdie’s housedress.
    “Well, let me have it. Not that I need to be told.”
    Mavis wanted some more of the baby peas and tipped the bowl to see if any were left.
    “I could see this coming, you know. Anybody could,” Birdie continued. “Don’t need more’n a mosquito’s brain.”
    There were a few. A couple of tablespoons. Mavis scraped them onto her plate wondering if there was to be any dessert. Quite a bit of the fried potatoes were still in her mother’s plate. “You going to eat those, Ma?”
    Birdie pushed her plate toward Mavis. There was a tiny square of liver, too, and some onions. Mavis scraped it all onto her plate.
    “You still have children. Children need a mother. I know what you’ve been through, honey, but you do have other children.”
    The liver was a miracle. Her mother always got every particle of the tight membrane off.
    “Ma.” Mavis wiped her lips with a paper napkin. “Why couldn’t you make it to the funeral?”
    Birdie straightened. “You didn’t get the money order? And the flowers?”
    “We got them.”
    “Then you know why. I had to choose—help bury them or pay for a trip. I couldn’t afford to do both. I told you all that. I asked you all straight out which thing would be the best, and you both said the money. Both of you said so, both.”
    “They’re going to kill me, Ma.”
    “Are you going to hold that over my head for the rest of my life? All I’ve done for you and those children?”
    “They already tried but I got away.”
    “You’re all I have, now your brothers gone and got themselves shot up like—” Birdie slapped the table.
    “They got no right to kill me.”
    “What?”
    “He’s making the other children do it.”
    “What? Do what? Speak up so I can hear what you saying.”
    “I’m saying they are going to kill me.”
    “They? Who? Frank? What they?”
    “All of them. The kids too.”
    “Kill you? Your children?”
    Mavis nodded. Birdie Goodroe widened her eyes first, then looked into her lap as she held her forehead in the palm of her hand.
    They didn’t talk anymore for a while, but later, at the sink, Birdie asked, “Were the twins trying to kill you too?”
    Mavis stared at her mother. “No! Oh, no, Ma! Are you crazy? They’re babies!”
    “All right. All right. Just asking. It’s unusual, you know, to think little children…”
    “Unusual? It’s—it’s evil! But they’ll do what he says. And now they’ll do anything. They already tried, Ma!”
    “Tried how? What did they do?”
    “Sal had a razor and they was laughing and watching me. Every minute watching me.”
    “What did Sal do with the razor?”
    “She had it next