Kids idled on the broken sidewalks and played in the muddy yards. Skinny dogs prowled and nosed through the heaps of trash in the gutters. Broken-down cars sat in the street and in the drives. A sense of despair painted the community with the colors of dejection and defeat. And I wondered again, how does a child possibly escape from this?

Sandy led the way up the cracked and broken walk to the porch. At the door she stopped and looked up at me with what I took to be hesitation, or perhaps uncertainty. I reached across her shoulder and rapped my knuckles on the door frame.

A faint voice from within said, “Y’all come on in.”

I turned the doorknob, and we went inside. As the door swung open a wave of hot, stale air gushed outward and washed over us. We had entered into the living room. In the right corner of the room a hallway led to the back of the house. In the middle of the right wall a door led into the kitchen. And in the far left corner of the room, under the pale light of a small lamp, a human face was turned in our direction. Sandy hesitated in front of the door, as if reluctant to cross the room. I stepped past her.

As I approached I realized that the face belonged to a young woman. She was lying on a daybed with a stack of quilts and an old-fashioned chenille bedspread pulled up to her chin. Only her face and arms were exposed above the bedcovers. She smiled as I came near and nodded to a nearby chair.

“Pull up and sit down,” she said in a voice only slightly louder than a raspy whisper.

I brought the chair close to her side and sat. Leaning over I took both her hands in mine. They were cold and no larger than the hands of a child. Her arms were like skin-covered sticks, and her face had the emaciated and skeletal look of a concentration camp victim. The whites of her eyes were a sickly thick yellow and her dark brown skin had a yellowish cast also. The girl was dying, and her end was not far away.

“Hello, Amber. My name is Kennesaw,” I said in a soft voice. “I really thank you for allowing me to call on you. It appears you haven’t been feeling too well lately.”

Her face and eyes burned with an inner heat, one that seemed to be consuming her from within. Her small hands moved within mine as she entwined several fingers between my own.

“Kenny-saw? That’s a funny name—Kenny-saw. But I like that name, it different—and you handsome, too. You got a wife, Kenny-saw? You got a woman? I bet you got plenty a women.”

I shook my head and smiled. “No, Amber. No wife, no woman. It’s just me.”