The first year of her life Pauline lived on pallets when she was not being held or carried. Selma lived the first year of hers in the large cradle Leon had used before her and which still had a smell she found disagreeable, although she did not know it as his. Both little girls were early ambulatory. The one bored, the other mystified those who would pay her attention, and so both were left largely to develop as they would on their own.

At six Selma was independent. She loved the kitchen garden, and since its season was long, she played in it often, touching, looking, smelling. Tomato leaves and okra pods were like a cat’s tongue. The blossoming peas, the curling tendrils of bean vines were of such delicate and tender beauty she could bear to touch them only with fingertips. The squash and cucumbers, bumpy as a frog’s back, the clean, dry, rough rind of cantaloupe, the surprise of pulling a stalk and having a radish or an onion come up out of the ground—these drew her to the garden and held wonder for her.

In the early morning the garden was damp, and her dress would catch stickily on the wet plants as she wandered about, ignoring the kitchen girls who had been sent to gather the day’s vegetables while the dew was still on them. The plants, most of them, were a size she could feel easy with, but people were too large.

Seeing that she did no harm and caused none to be done to herself, Deborah let her alone. Now and then she talked to her, but when she did, she found herself—not herself at all, and wondered why, and forgot, or accepted it as merely one of life’s stray ends of which there are so many. Her voice sounded to her ears overemphatic and false, increasing her dissatisfaction with both herself and the child. She felt that Selma was simply waiting for her to be done with whatever she had to say, and there is nothing an adult so little understands, or wants, from a child as patience.

With her father Selma came closer. She recognized his shyness, and while it was not possible for them to feel intimate together, nevertheless their encounters were graced by an affection, almost unindicated except for a look in the eyes and the occasional touching made consciously, playfully formal by both of them in order to assure each other that there was no wish to trespass on private preserves.

Leon was as strange to her as she to him. She knew the meaning of the words “brother” and “sister,” but they carried for her no emotional bracketing. The children were seldom together except for meals. Anyway, there were always so many people about. And Leon had a friend, Floyd. He and Floyd seemed always to be together when they were not eating and sleeping.