But Marya never thought about Lee when there was no reason to think of him, her mind backed away, broke, and scattered like milkweed fluff being blown in the wind. It was easier to think of Alice gone, then Wilma and Marya shopping at Loblaws together, Marya pushing the rickety shopping cart and Wilma reading off from her list, sending Marya off to get things to drop in the cart: a big heavy box of laundry soap called Tide, Campbell’s soups in the white-and-red-labeled cans, Wonder Bread, canned peas canned beets canned applesauce, those big salty dill pickles Everard loved.

Wilma was boss, Wilma was in charge. You had to please her or watch out! Her changes of mood made Everard laugh ’cause as he said he knew how to handle her. But her changes of mood frightened Marya. It all meant so much! And it was confused in Marya’s imagination with the wild crackling bushy frizz of Wilma’s hair—a mixture of browns, blond, even silver—so pretty!

While Marya’s hair was dark and heavy and inclined to be oily. And always snarled.

Like her own mother’s hair, wasn’t it. That was the shame.

But Wilma was pretty, Wilma liked to look in mirrors tilting her head pursing her lips letting her hair fall over one eye like somebody in a movie poster, these were the times she didn’t want Marya spying on her.

“For Christ’s sake don’t you have anything to do? Go play with your brothers, go on right now.”

And one terrible Saturday morning in town, in Woolworth’s, Marya had been invited to come along with Wilma and Alice shopping for a new lampshade for the floor lamp in the living room and there was some woman friend of Wilma’s and the two of them got to talking, laughing, the woman asked about Marya and Wilma said sharply, not lowering her voice so that the girls couldn’t hear, “Her? I told you she’s not my kin, she’s my husband’s niece.” Marya edged away pretending she hadn’t heard but she thought about what Wilma had said for a long time afterward, that day and days following. She knew that what Wilma had said was true but what did it mean?

She’s not my kin, she’s my husband’s niece.