Marya was ashamed that her mother’s old blue sweater was missing so many buttons you could see her white drooping flesh just inside. And her hair hung down in greasy strands. And she was nasty to Uncle Everard when he came by. (“So where’s hot-shit Wilma,” Vera asked, “sitting out in the car?—afraid to come inside?—afraid it might be catching or something?”)

Marya had been absent from school for twelve days running when the man from the school district office drove out: and by then Vera had been gone for three or four days. Marya wasn’t sure how many, Davy of course didn’t know, they’d cried themselves sick and dry-eyed, they’d eaten all the food in the refrigerator except what was spoiled. Why didn’t you go down the road to tell somebody, Marya was asked.

Marya, chewing her fingers, didn’t answer. For a while it was thought she might be mute.

Davy, on the other hand, chattered and babbled like a parrot. He had all sorts of things to say. But he couldn’t explain why there was so much talcum powder spilled around the house, especially in Vera’s bedroom. (He and Marya had had a talcum powder war, a crazy giggling frenzy, shortly after Vera had left. Marya had started it by trying to dust him with their mother’s big white powder puff. . . .)

WHAT WERE THE games of your childhood, lovers sometimes inquire of one another.

Checkers, Parcheesi, Old Maid, gin rummy. . . . (Wilma taught Marya how to play gin rummy; it surprised her that Marya caught on so quickly.) Outside, in Uncle Everard’s lot, the games were rougher, crazier, without rules—you shouted Go! and scrambled from car to car, crouching behind the snowplow, crawling frantically beneath the old dump truck, lying flat in the dirt. Marya’s breath came in ragged gasps. She felt the boys’ footsteps thudding past, then she was safe, for a while she was safe, her face splotched with dust. In the distance voices lifted. Where’s Marya? Didn’t you find Marya?

She was credited with discovering the most ingenious hiding places.

On slow lazy winter days, afternoons following school, Wilma could sometimes be talked into joining the children at the kitchen table. She shook the dice hard, shut one eye in a shrewd comical wink, snapped her fingers, and cried “I knew it!” if the shake was good. When the cards went against her she said it was the story of her life. She played seriously, strangely seriously, for an adult; the games seemed to matter; it infuriated her when (for instance) Lee was discovered to have been cheating. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself,” she said, giving him a slap, and Lee, shrugging his shoulders, laughed and said, “Oh, who gives a damn? It’s only a game.”

“Damn” was swearing by the standards of the household but if Everard wasn’t present it seemed not to matter.