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that incident that my mother had sobbed, at least to the extent that she was able: She said it was more like highpitched squeals, really, and that that had frustrated her as much as anything, that she couldn’t even really have a good cry. But when she had finished crying, she decided that if this was her fate, she would use what she had left. “I could still taste and smell and hear and see,” she said. “I could still learn and I could still teach. I could still love and be loved. I had my mind and my spirit. And I had you.”

    W e have to start charging more than a quarter for our plays,” I told Suralee. I had taken her through the hole in the latticework at the side of my front porch for what I considered a staff meeting. We were sitting in the dirt, leaning against the foundation of the house.
    “Can’t,” Suralee said, scratching her arm. She looked around. “I don’t think we should sit under here. I think there’s chiggers under here.”
    “Listen,”
I said. “We don’t charge enough! We could charge fifty cents and make so much more money!”
    “Nobody’s going to pay fifty cents to see us.”
    “That’s not true! I’ll bet we could charge a
dollar
! It’s live entertainment!”
    Suralee looked at me. “How many people came to our last play?”
    I shrugged.
    “Four? Counting our mothers and Mrs. Gruder?”
    “Well, we need to get more people to come, too,” I said. “We need to advertise.”
    Now Suralee’s face changed from thinly disguised contempt to interest. “We could,” she said. “We could put up signs all over town. I could make a really nice design.”
    “See?” I said. “And we could charge more!”
    “No,” Suralee said. “I’ll advertise, but if we charge more, nobody will come.”
    I sighed. “The trouble with you is, you don’t dream big enough.”
    “I dream big,” Suralee said.
    “Not big enough.”
    Suralee scratched her arm again. “I’m getting out of here. We can’t be under here.”
    “But I was going to make it nice for us! I thought we could write under here.”
    “Let’s go and get some ice cream.” Suralee disappeared through the hole.
    I sat still for a moment, unwilling to follow her command. She was always issuing commands, and I was always following them. But then I decided she was probably right. First we needed to get more people to come. Then, gradually, we could charge more. It aggravated me, how slow fame was in coming.
    On our walk to town, Suralee told me about two boys she wanted me to meet. They were brothers, aged thirteen and fourteen, sons of a woman with whom her mother worked. Suralee had met them last weekend at an office picnic. They were blond, Suralee said. Baseball players. I imagined myself in a skirt and blouse and necklace, sitting beside one of them. “Did you ever hit a home run?” I might ask. You were supposed to ask them about themselves.
    When we got to the drugstore, Suralee and I headed first to the magazine rack stationed at the front. We sat cross-legged before it, facing each other, the better to share things we would find in the magazines, new styles we favored. Ads for things we would admit our desire for only to each other: Wigs. Nair. Frederick’s of Hollywood lingerie.
    Mrs. Beasley shuffled over to us. “How is your dear mother?” she asked in her thin voice. I was obliged to answer—these were, after all, her magazines and we were in her store. But I wondered what Mrs. Beasley was looking for, asking me this question every time I saw her. Was she waiting for some story of high drama to add interest to her own life? Was she waiting for my mother to die?
    Mrs. Beasley wore a cardigan over her shoulders even in this heat, and her sweater guard was decorated with little pearls. She seemed to fear things getting away from her; she wore a chain on her glasses, and the pen at the counter used by people to write checks was chained down, too. Suralee, her back to Mrs. Beasley, rolled her eyes and