“The next day was the snow. I went on down to school in the morning, even though my face was all purple and swollen from where Daddy hit me. And I was so thankful for the blizzard. I had to spend two nights there at the college, sleeping on the floor with all the other girls. It was the only time in my life where I got to be just one of the girls. White girls, black girls, we all just lay there in the dark, talking about our families and our boyfriends, and I even acted like Lamont was my boy … Well, anyway, when the snow ended and I got back home, Lamont was gone. No one ever saw him again, not that I knew. And I couldn’t go to Johnny Merton. Someone would have told Daddy, and I couldn’t take another—”

Another beating, I filled in silently when she clipped off the sentence. “Did you ask any of Lamont’s friends about him? Anyone who might have known why he was talking to Merton?”

“I did, but not till later. At first, when I didn’t see him around, I thought Lamont was avoiding me. I thought God was punishing me. I was so confused in my head, I couldn’t decide if God was punishing me for not going off with Lamont when he asked me that past September or if He was punishing me for letting Lamont touch me.” She gave an embarrassed snort of laughter.

“I finally asked Curtis Rivers, but that wasn’t until maybe a month or six weeks went by, and he was just as puzzled as me.”

“Was Curtis Rivers with the Anacondas, too?” I asked.

“I never did know for sure who was, who wasn’t. I was the preacher’s kid, I was the stuck-up girl, they didn’t talk to me the way they did the other girls in the neighborhood. I don’t think Curtis was—he shipped out to Vietnam, anyway, round about May of ’sixty-seven—he was just the boy everyone trusted. Gang, straight, whatever … Curtis, he didn’t play sides. Should have been him I broke my heart over, not a no-good street boy like Lamont.” She laughed again, less bitterly this time.

“So is Miss Ella right? Was Lamont dealing drugs?”

“Not the way she meant. I mean, she makes it sound like the South Side was floating on Lamont Gadsden’s heroin sales. But she’s like my daddy: you move a quarter inch off the straight and narrow, you’re Satan’s child for sure. And after Lamont disappeared, Sister Ella, she carried on as if nothing had happened. Just held herself straighter, if any back not made out of cast iron could be held so straight. But Sister Claudia, Lamont’s going just about broke her heart.”

“Miss Ella says she and Miss Claudia went to the police. Did you ever hear anything about that?”