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things got moved over to our place. I don’t think Mae even realized he’d moved out. She’d work over there in her flower garden and not so much as glance over to our yard. Guess that’s why your daddy is so special to me. It’s like I raised him myself.”
    Aunt Verdella wrapped Grandma Mae’s picture in newspaper and set it in the box next to her feet. “She was cold. That’s all I can say about her. Cold, long before she went to her grave.” I put my head down and rolled a little vase in newspaper, and I thought about those people who are cold before they get put in a grave. One night I woke from my sleep because I heard arguing, and I heard Daddy say to Ma that she was as cold as a corpse. So the next day I reached out and touched Ma’s arm to see if it was cold, and it was, a little.
    When Aunt Verdella came to Aunt Betty’s picture—a little one that sat on the buffet—she showed that one to me too. Aunt Betty was pretty. Not the kind of pretty like Freeda Malone, but pretty in that churchy sort of way. “How come she died?” I asked, wondering that for the first time.
    â€œWell, Button. She was gonna have a baby, but things didn’t get that far. The poor thing, she wasn’t far along when she lost it. Bled to death right on her bed while your uncle Rudy was taking your grandma into town to see the doctor because she had a bad chest cold. Oh, that must have been so awful for Rudy,” she said, and tears squeezed out of her pale gray eyes. “Losing his pretty, young wife and his one chance to become a daddy at the same time. He don’t talk about it, but I know it still pains him to this day.”
    â€œMaybe you could have a baby for him,” I said, and Aunt Verdella smiled a sad smile, then said, “Well, that’s it for this box.” She leaned over to fold the four flaps of cardboard so that the box would stay shut.
    â€œAunt Verdella?” I asked, still thinking about Aunt Betty bleeding to death in this house. “Is that bed she died in one of the beds upstairs, or the one down here?”
    â€œGood Lord,” she said then, slapping her skinny knees. “You’re such a serious little thing that I forget sometimes that I’m talking to a little girl. I shouldn’ta said that about her bleedin’ to death. You just put that thought right out of your head, Button.”
    All the talk about dead people made me think of Winnalee’s dead ma. “Aunt Verdella,” I asked, “is that really Winnalee’s ma in that jar?”
    Aunt Verdella was leaned over a box, her belly hanging low, bumping up against the top of her legs. She was still tipped over when she said, “Yes, it is, Button. And what a pity it is, a little one like that losing her ma, then carrying around her ashes because she can’t bear to part with her.”
    â€œThey burned her ma up?”
    â€œYes, Button. It’s called cremation. It gives me the shivers to think of a body being burned up like a trash heap, but I guess some people don’t mind such a thought. It about breaks my heart, though, seeing that little girl carrying her ma around like that.”
    â€œShe ain’t gonna carry her around forever, though. She told me that when she grows up and gets money, she’s gonna buy her a nice stone and a final resting place.”
    â€œBless her heart,” Aunt Verdella said, and she looked about ready to cry. So then I thought about dead mas, and mas that aren’t dead, and I realized that maybe I had just found one of those clues about life. So I made a place in my mind to keep it till I could tell Winnalee Bright Idea #85:
If your ma liked you, then even if she’s dead and burned up in a jar, you can still talk to her. But if she never liked you, then even if she’s across the road, you can’t.
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    For three days, Aunt Verdella and I worked hard. We packed up all of