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hours straightening that hair! But they grinned.
    â€”And when I bring her, for God’s sake don’t insult her!
    Ruben tried three rooms where everyone pointed where she should go, agreeing—Yes, Emma should go—and finally walked into the room where Emma worked. Emma came, impressed. They walked down the stairs together. Ruben had pre-tended to be a certain kind of person and everyone had believed she was. As they walked down, Ruben asked, Why don’t you let your hair go natural? But now she’d gone too far.
    Emma still couldn’t read. Ruben was exhausted that night. Maybe it was a mistake. Emma couldn’t do it.
    The next time, Ruben was afraid to look, but when she did there were five women at the table. She threw her bag onto the table to celebrate and the table shook and everyone laughed. Emma kept coming. She hugged Ruben often. She couldn’t learn.
    Deborah was huge. She hugged Ruben, too. In the cold, Deborah and her girls came to Ruben’s house and they ate grilled cheese sandwiches. Deborah took over the stove because only she knew how to make the sandwiches so her girls would eat them. She made sandwiches for herself and Ruben, too. She buttered the bread inside and outside and Ruben could feel them both grow fatter. Deborah said, Toby, you aren’t fat, you’re gorgeous.
    â€”Nonsense.
    â€”It’s true.
    Ruben considered herself. Red hair, center parted. Slightly fat. Glasses. Not beautiful, not that it mattered, not the sort of thing she thought much about.
    â€”Did you ever sleep with a woman? Ruben said.
    â€”No, did you?
    â€”Never. Did you ever think about it?
    â€”Of course. Let’s, some day, said Deborah.
    Deborah stood behind her as she ate at her kitchen table, and Squirrel lay back in his white slanting plastic chair and roundly looked at them from the middle of the table. Rose and Jill played with pieces of sandwich and talked to slimy babies that were apple slices, dancing them up and down. Deborah kissed Ruben’s scalp and ate a bite of Ruben’s remaining half sandwich. Ruben did not turn around. She could feel Deborah’s pregnant belly against her head, warm and firm. The window faced south and the winter sun came in behind her and around them both, through a stained-glass yin-yang sign in green and blue, coloring a white macrame hanging she’d tacked above the table. She felt sun on her arms. Rose climbed into Ruben’s lap and jumped apple slices over Ruben’s arm. Were Ruben and Deborah becoming each other? Toby Ruben hugged Rose and noticed the grain of her own oak table, which lay in such a delicate curve that she had to trace it with her forefinger. Something else beautiful: Rose’s ear in the sunlight.
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    A brace of ladies, they walked, that fall and into winter. It grew dark and Rose wept. Once, miles from home, Squirrel cried unceasingly in his stroller. Ruben stuck her hand down his pants to check his diaper pins.
    â€”Use Pampers, said Deborah. You tape them with masking tape.
    â€”Yuck. Ruben hated the feel of Rose’s plastic diapers.
    â€”You want pins sticking in him?
    â€”They’re not. Squirrel kept screaming. Deborah shrugged as she stretched past her belly to propel a long stroller made for two, in which Jill was asleep and Rose sang mournfully to herself.
    â€”When we walk, said Ruben, where will you put the baby? They laughed, not that anything was funny: it was cold, twilight, they were far from home with their backs toward home. Partly their laughter was guilty. Squirrel still cried. The houses leaned at them, wooden simple houses with three stacked porches. Skimpy wreaths hung on doors, early, or could they be from last Christmas?
    â€”We ought to turn around, Deborah said.
    â€”Are you tired?
    â€”No.
    â€”Nobody else would do this with me, said Ruben.
    â€”Everybody else would call the Child Abuse Hotline. At last they turned. When they reached