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Avenue was the actual name of the street we were on, a big two-story brick on a five-acre plot that me and Momma moved into after the wedding. Momma was in her glory those first couple of months, I have to say, Ray Bob could not do enough for her, and the rest of us might as well have been invisible. She got rid of her old Ford truck and drove around in a yellow Mustang convertible that had belonged to the first Mrs. Dideroff and that Ray Bob had kept nice and clean in his garage. I had myown room and on the other side of the wall was their bedroom, from which nightly I could hear them going at it, which even at nine I knew what it was. I guess he had not got much nooky since Louellen had left, him being a pillar of the church and all and Wayland being a small place, so he was making up for lost time and Momma was certainly willing enough. However, around six months into the marriage, when I guess Ray Bob’s tank had been pretty much drained to normal, I noticed a change around the place. There was a night when the sounds from the other side of the wall were not what they had been, Momma yelling real loud and high not the kind of words you would expect from a saved church lady and the low rumble of Ray Bob’s voice. (I never heard the man raise it once, he was the kind who you do what he says without him ever having to.) Then her voice went up real high and cut off and I heard some thumps, not the thump of the bed but other kinds of thumps. Momma stayed in bed the whole next day, and the day after that she walked kind of stiff and didn’t say much. Ti Joe had whapped Momma once in a while when they were both drunk, but this wasn’t like that. There was not a mark on her I could see and I peeked at her in the bathroom. So I was mystified, but they did not have the answer in the World Book that I could see.
    I started fifth grade with a new name, Emmylou Dideroff, since Ray Bob said that we were all one family and should have the same name. Two weeks after school started, on a Friday, I came home in the afternoon and Momma was not there, and the yellow convertible was missing from the garage. She was still gone when Ray Bob got home. He was real calm about it and gave me one of his looks that you better not lie to me and asked me if I knew where she was and I said no sir I do not. Then he made some phone calls. Later that night I heard sirens.
    They found Momma down in Dixie County, she was speeding and a local cop pulled her over and called Ray Bob because of the registration and he went down and brought her back.I didn’t see her then or for a while after, because Ray Bob said she had a nervous breakdown and it was sad but we all had to pray real hard for her to get better. Ray Bob’s uncle Doc Herm Dideroff ran a kind of rest home in Wayland Beach, they called it a rest home, but what it was was a place where rich people could kick the habit while not running into anyone they knew, one advantage of it being in a no-account place like Caluga County, Fla. So Momma was put in there for her nervous breakdown and got the electric shock treatments to straighten her out, or so I overheard, and I imagined Doc Herm making her stick her finger in a light socket with her feet wet, a picture I kind of cherished because I was pretty mad at her for running off and not taking me and didn’t think even for a minute about what might have been the reason for her to do a stunt like that. What I was thinking about then, may God forgive me, was how I could turn this event to my profit, and at first I was worried that because Momma was no longer around I would lose my position in the family.
    But the next day, Ray Bob took me aside, actually he came into my room and sat on the frilly rocker Momma had bought, and said that God sometimes sends travails into our lives to test us to see if we be worthy for the kingdom, and that he wanted me to know that whatever happened he would be there for me just like I was his own natural child. Then he