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as my father had said, regretful to the point of bitterness. But those feelings passed, and now I accepted my small, quiet life. It suited me; everyone in our neighbourhood knew me, and there was no need to explain anything. I was Sidonie O'Shea: I had survived polio and I helped my mother care for the house on Juniper Road, and grew perennials so magnificent that people walking by stopped, gazing in delight at them.
I loved our little house, which we rented from our next door neighbours, Mr and Mrs Barlow. For me the house had a human quality: the watermark on my bedroom ceiling looked like the face of an old woman with her mouth open, laughing; the boughs of the linden tree brushing against the living-room window sounded like soft-soled shoes dancing on a sandy floor; the cellar where the potatoes and onions and other root vegetables were kept for the winter had a rich and loamy smell.
As my mother's arthritis continued to cripple her, I took over the running of the house. I cooked and baked, I did laundry and ironed and kept the house clean. The piecework ended when a new sewing factory was built on the outskirts of Albany, and although I knew it meant a smaller income, I was secretly relieved, as I found the piecework terribly boring. I was glad for the old sewing machine, though, since I had begun making all my own clothing. I still had to get my father to borrow Mr Barlow's truck to drive me to buy fabric and notions, but at least I didn't have to go into the local dress shops, where I might run into the young women I had once known — either as they shopped or as they served customers.
In fall I cleaned the garden of its dead and frost-blackened leaves and stems, heaping straw over the roots of some of the more fragile plants at rest for the winter. I planted more corms and bulbs, anticipating the new growth the following spring. Through the winter I studied gardening books, painting my visions of new designs for the garden, which had now filled most of both the front and back yard. As soon as the last of the snow melted in the spring, I walked among the pebbled paths I had had my father lay, exulting over the first crocuses and snowdrops, and then the hyacinths and tulips and daffodils, willing the first tiny pink shoots of the peonies to stretch into the warming air.
In the summer I persuaded my father to again borrow Mr Barlow's truck to drive me out to the marshes of nearby Pine Bush, where I sketched the flora and wildlife, so that I could create watercolour paintings from my charcoal renditions.
And through every season I kept my vow. I had promised, in my endless prayers, that in return for being able to walk I would have no unclean thoughts. After a number of years had passed since that first prayer, and I knew that much of my recovery had to do with my body's strength and my own determination, a small part of me was still superstitious enough to believe that should I not keep my promise, I might be forced to pay in some other way.
I managed to quiet the desires of my body, but it wasn't easy. I wanted to know a man, know what it felt to be touched, and be loved.
I knew I would never meet anyone, living the way I did, and yet I wasn't sure how to change that. And it certainly wasn't as though a man ever came to the door of our house on Juniper Road, looking for Sidonie O'Shea.
Shortly after my twenty-third birthday my mother became ill. First it was bronchitis, and then a virulent strain of pneumonia that would clear up but kept recurring. I nursed her as she had once nursed me, feeding her, brushing her hair, gently massaging her hands and feet to help with the pain, lifting her on to the metal pan, making plasters for her chest. Occasionally, on the days when her breath came easier, she still tried to sing her French songs, in a hoarse, low voice, and my father and I couldn't look at each other at those times.
Once more my father brought the daybed from the. porch, only now it was my mother who lay on it,