The glimmering light up and I come to understand this new world, it sit on top of the trouble-less sleep world, weighing it down. And in this new world, there is two kinds of people. Kind and cruel. But in the long run it don’t matter, because how them is have nothing to do with me. With how I feel. With what I want. What I don’t want. Them don’t care. And when people turn kind, turn cruel, is nothing to do with if I behave good. If I behave bad. It don’t make one scrap of difference.

And worse, nobody is able to stand between me, and the force of the world me born into.

Me all alone.

After that, I learn fast to do what anybody ask of me, nothing more. Nothing that going make me stand out. Hide me feelings and any extra little thing I learn, keep it secret. Cover everything up. So what happening on the inside don’t match with what I show on the outside. But then I start to feel funny, like I have to stop, catch me breath. And the earth I walk on, feel like it slipping and me insides, them feel raw and frightened and I don’t know what to do bout it.

A few days later, it happen again. I start to feel more and more breathless, start to panic. It can happen suddenly, in the daytime, when I see Busha Davis coming up the path. In the night-time, inside the hut. It feel too closed in. Happening anytime, anywhere. Make me feel scared, since it get worse and worse. No way to stop it.

It called breathing sickness.

When the breath catch in me throat and it feel like me breathing through dirt, that the dirt keep pouring down me throat, that no air can get in, that me can only breathe out, can’t breathe in and all the time is nothing. No air. No air. Nothing, but dirt.

It feel like me dying.

When the breathing sickness find me, Stella turn away. It make her too fearful, so she try pretend nothing wrong. Not Calla. She afraid of nothing!

When I get sick, she wrap me up in her shawl, turn into Granny Callie. The kind one who hold me in her arms, gently rock me like me still a baby. Make me drink bitter tea she make from the leaf of the dogwood tree. And when the sickness over and I can breathe again, she teach me how to stay calm. Breathe deep. Tell me she going explain things to me, but is best she do it far away from the Great House.

Which is why, one day, we end up sitting in the middle of a cow pasture.