Then, Aunt Jewel told me to follow her into the hallway. She led me to a narrow closet. Pulling open the door, she revealed clothes hanging so tightly together they seemed to form a solid wall. I could smell mothballs. She told me that was where she and her cousins all hid when they were children. She reached through the wall of clothing. I heard something pop and above the hangers, I watched the rear wall give way, falling inward a few inches at an angle. Aunt Jewel told me to step into the space behind the wall to see if I would fit.

I pushed my way through the sea of clothing. The false wall had opened a bit like a door, allowing me to squeeze through the opening and into a suffocatingly narrow, dark space I imagined was teeming with spiders and who knew what else.

Aunt Jewel told me to push the wall back in place. I hesitated. I wanted to ask if she planned to leave me in the closet all the time, but thought better of expressing any doubt. Gulping, I pushed the wall back in place. Then I stood in the narrow pitch-black space, hardly able to breathe. Seconds passed and my breathing quickly grew shallow. Panicky, I tried to find a knob or something that would allow me to open the false wall again, but my hands felt only smooth wood. I called to Aunt Jewel, pounding my fist against the wall.

The wall tilted inward again and I let out my breath. “Scary in there, ain’t it?” she said with a laugh. I asked if there was a way to open the wall from the inside on my own, thinking ahead. What if the police came and no one was home to let me out? They’d find my skeleton in the wall someday, generations from now.

Aunt Jewel showed me how to dig my fingers into the edge of the door to pull it open again. She helped me step through the forest of clothing. She said finding me a hiding place was the easy part and I asked her what the hard part was.

“Telling Abe and Agnes—Jesse’s mama and daddy—you’re stayin’ here for the next seven months,” she said.

At that very moment, I heard the sound of voices coming from downstairs and my heart leaped into my throat. I reached for the knob of the closet, but Aunt Jewel set her hand on my wrist. She cocked her head to listen. It was just the family, she said. She told me to go back in Nellie’s room and stay there. She’d talk to them.