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the Atlanta victims, typed in alphabetical order and bold print. I felt as if I might faint. The names were too numerous to fit on the front page but spilled over to another page, one after another, husbands and wives, a few children, and almost every one was a name that I recognized.
    I saw Mama’s name before the others did, and I let out a little sob. There it was, right after Mrs. William Merritt of Peachtree Battle Avenue and right before Mrs. Lawton Miller of Argonne Drive: Mrs. John Jason Middleton of Andrews Drive. Somehow, seeing her name in black-and-white made it final and sure. There was no way to fantasize that she had somehow escaped, especially when I examined the photo of the remains of the plane.
    One of the main articles said that Mayor Ivan Allen was heading for Paris late that afternoon. “With this much of Atlanta there, I think we ought to be on the scene,” he had said. And then the mayor had spoken on behalf of the whole city. “Atlanta has suffered her greatest tragedy and loss.” And Mr. Carmichael, who was a close friend of Daddy’s and the chairman of the board of the Atlanta Art Association, was quoted as saying, “It’s like an atomic bomb has hit Atlanta. It’s the most tragic thing for all of us. At the Art Association, it has simply wiped out our basic support. These were the hard workers, the people we depended on.”
    Mama and Daddy had always been very involved in the Art Association. I had grown up seeing my parents off at the door, me clinging to Mama’s leg and then to Ella Mae as they left for some fundraising affair, both of them looking elegant. And now Mama would never dress up again, wearing the tight-fitting luxurious satin gowns for which she was known.
    I couldn’t bear to read anything else. I left the paper in the middle of the hall, ran up two flights of stairs and into my bathroom, and vomited. Then I fell on my bed. I was still lying there, in the same clothes and the same position, when I woke up late the next morning.

Chapter 2
    T hose first two days were nothing but a constant flow of people, of radio and television announcements and newspaper articles, all talking about the crash. It was as if Atlanta was a walled-in city of medieval times, taken siege and oblivious to the rest of the world, so consumed were we all by what had happened. It was everywhere, and we were terribly drained. The hardest article to read was the one in the Atlanta Constitution that talked about my family. “Two young teens would have been orphaned by the Paris plane crash if their parents had not decided to take separate planes home from abroad. . . .” It sounded like Daddy was a hero in the article—the fact that he had decided not to fly with Mama for the sake of us kids. I really can’t explain how strange I felt reading about myself and Jimmy in the paper and how we still had a daddy. It seemed to me like the reporters went too far, telling something so personal, something meant to make the readers cry, something sentimental to pull at their hearts. Well, everyone’s heart was already breaking. It struck me all wrong. If Daddy was a hero, then there should have been some sort of celebration, but it was simply the blackest time in the world, the blackest time in my whole life.
    For most of the day Monday, Jimmy and I just sat around the house waiting for Daddy to return and wearing our darkest clothes, since we were in mourning. Trixie and Ella Mae stayed at the house all day, helping Grandmom and Granddad. They spoke with all the callers who came, literally by the hundreds, bringing flowers and casseroles and custards and all kinds of delicious, mouth-watering goodies of the South. But none of us had any appetite. Somehow it seemed sacrilegious to enjoy something that tasted so good when Mama had just perished in that awful plane, burned to death in an explosion of heat.
    And all during that day, we’d look out from the