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she could help them. Sometimes they touched her arm, or brushed past her clothes, and Jessica knew it was so they could get something of Ashleigh into themselves. Some kind of hope or healing. Jessica wanted Ashleigh to settle down to a normal life, as much as she could offer the child while under her roof.
    One evening Jessica asked Ashleigh to sit with her out on the porch.
    â€˜Sweetie, I know what you’ve been saying at the school.’
    â€˜I know, Mrs Lawson, I saw you.’ Jessica lit up a cigarette. She hadn’t especially wanted to discuss the matter. It was Ashleigh’s personal business, and soon the child would be gone from the house and Panama City anyway. But after seeing how people were with her in the store, how they looked at her on the street and in the bank, Jessica felt she had to speak up.
    â€˜This has got to stop, honey. You don’t realise how people can react to this kind of talk. It’s dangerous.’
    â€˜You don’t believe me, Mrs Lawson?’
    â€˜It’s not about whether I believe or don’t believe. Look – Eric – you remember Eric from the hospital?’ Ashleigh nodded.
    â€˜Well, Eric said you and Olivia need to come by one day soon. He’d like you to speak to someone. Counselling it’s called. You know what that is, Ashleigh?’
    â€˜I’m not crazy, Mrs Lawson. I already spoke to doctors.’
    â€˜You did? When?’
    â€˜In the ’dome. After a couple of days they had doctors talk to the children who lost their folks. They thought I maybe got hit on the head. But I didn’t.’
    Jessica looked long and hard at this skinny girl with the white braids and grey-blue eyes. She was convinced now that the loss of their parents had caused Ashleigh and her sister such inestimable pain that they were, most likely, as Eric had said, suffering from some kind of delayed reaction.
    â€˜Pineville is a long way from New Orleans. How’d you get to the Superdome?’ Jessica asked.
    â€˜Red Cross picked us up on some dirt track,’ Ashleigh replied.
    â€˜By then your parents had…’
    â€˜Yes, Ma’am.’
    â€˜The house went too?’
    â€˜Yes Ma’am. See, it came real early in the mornin’. I remember the air filled up with grey and dark, and pieces of our rooms, my dolls, my books, were swirlin’ around, gettin’ flung down onto trees and other houses. We ran out of the house and just as we did it folded up behind us like firewood. Olivia cried for Beau, our dog, and Ma and Pa went lookin’. They were just gone a couple of minutes when the river burst out of the earth and swept everythin’ forward. We all got separated so quick. I remember my breath – coz it got took clean out of my body, and my nightdress swelled up and I thought I would take off and fly. But then I got swept along so I clung tightly to Olivia. We seemed to be in the water hours and hours. But nothin’ fell on my head, Mrs Lawson. I just made up my mind to pull the strength out of myself, and I did.’
    â€˜And all of this “daughter of God” business?’
    â€˜Olivia got pulled to the other side of the river and this force started to build up inside the water and I couldn’t cross. I tried and tried. That’s when I heard a voice, and I recognised what it was sayin’. It was from Exodus: And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground: and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left. So I just did what Moses did, which was what the voice told me to do.’
    It occurred to Jessica, then, that maybe Ashleigh was right. Maybe nothing had fallen on her head. Maybe she just hadn’t been well to begin with. After all, what did Jessica really know about these young people now living in her home? So much data had been destroyed by Katrina; Ashleigh could be just as ill as her sister for all Jessica