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were talking as if they were friends. I wondered if maybe death does that—turns strangers into friends for a few minutes, or an hour, or maybe even a whole day. I was also struck by how the birds kept chirping, how the traffic kept moving past our house, and how the man across the street kept right on trimming his hedge. Even the neighbor ladies kept on walking by, pulling their wire carts fi lled with groceries.
    Momma was dead, yet the day marched on as usual.
    The remainder of that Friday is forever lost to me. The Saturday and Sunday following Momma’s death are much the same—nothing but blurry bits and pieces that never quite fit together. I remember Mrs. Odell rubbing my back, and I remember waking up in the bathtub, hearing the phone ring and ring in the kitchen below. I have a vague memory of wiping vomit from the rim of the toilet, yet I don’t recall throwing up. Mostly I stayed in bed, hiding behind the black screen of my closed eyelids, listening to the tree limbs scrape a sad melody across the roof. I have no memory of eating, but one night I woke to find a bowl of cereal tipped over in my bed, the milk soaked into the sheets, and a banana squashed beneath my arm.
    But no matter how I’ve tried, those few things are all I can summon from the storehouse of my memory.
    Momma was laid to rest on a bright blue Monday morning. Other than Dad and me, the gathering around her plain wooden casket consisted of a preacher whom I’d never seen before, Mrs. Odell, and Dottie McGee, the woman who ran the Goodwill store.
    Mrs. Odell reached over and took hold of my hand when the preacher said a prayer and asked God to take Momma to heaven. Dad stood off to the side with his hands shoved deep inside his pockets, looking pale and waxy.
    When the preacher finished speaking and closed his Bible with a soft but definitive thump , Mrs. McGee sniffled into a tissue. “Camille was the best customer I ever had,” she said, dabbing her eyes. “She was so funny and full of stories. I’ll never look at a prom dress again without thinking of her.”
    Whether that proclamation angered or humiliated Dad I couldn’t say, but his lips thinned and he turned away.
    Mrs. Odell had made up a bouquet of white irises and pink peonies from her garden and tied it with a white satin ribbon. She handed it to me, leaned down, and whispered, “Here, honey, take these flowers and put them on your mother’s casket. It’s time to say good-bye.”
    As I stepped forward, a high-pitched ringing began in my ears. And though I was swollen with a sorrow I’d never known, I stared at my mother’s casket, dry-eyed and numb. My chest hurt and I could hardly breathe. I felt I might smother beneath a blanket of guilt.
    Is this my fault? Were my prayers misunderstood? Did God intervene and decide this was the only thing He could do?
    Mrs. McGee waddled away from the grave, blotting her eyes and shaking her head. I watched her get into an old green Volkswagen that sputtered as she pulled out of the parking lot. While Dad stared across the rows of chiseled gray headstones with glassy, lifeless eyes, Mrs. Odell touched Momma’s casket and whispered, “Rest well, Camille. Rest well.”
    As we headed for the car, a red-winged blackbird let out a series of chirps as he flew low over the cemetery. I watched him swoop up and vanish over the top of an evergreen tree, and I thought about what Momma had said, how she wished she could turn into a bird and fly home to Georgia. I pointed to where the bird had disappeared and asked Mrs. Odell what direction it was.
    “South,” she said.
    I looked into the sky and smiled.
    When we arrived home, Dad and I walked into the kitchen like total strangers who were none too happy about sharing the same space. Though it was only 10:45 in the morning, he pulled a glass and a bottle of liquor from the cupboard and sat down at the table. “Cecelia, I want to talk with you, and I . . .”
    I turned away and went upstairs to my