This is the dangerous time: alone in the house with your uncle. As soon as you realize, you leave the house also. You walk swiftly, you can walk for miles. You break into a run, exhilarated. Recalling how desperately you’d run to your grandfather’s funeral. And how futile the effort.

You are not wanted. Go away!

You wonder if it is time for you to go away again. You wonder if Aunt Irma will ask you to leave. Or if you must remain with her, since she loves you.

In all the world, it is Irma who loves you. Yet, you understand that Irma has no idea who you are and if she knew, she would draw back in disgust.

Oscar has fallen into a pattern of returning home late after work. Even on Saturdays he disappears for hours. Irma is helpless to confront him. Irma is stunned, baffled. You think of a cow that has been struck by a mallet, led to slaughter. The brain is annihilated, the legs collapse. Irma holds herself upright by an act of will.

You hear Irma on the phone speaking with relatives, friends. You have the idea that she doesn’t speak with your mother, however. A faltering hurt-female voice. A voice that invites sympathy, pity. But also impatience.

It is your fault, you are thinking. Dirty girl.

And your aunt had tried so hard to love you. You!

Away for hours and when Oscar finally comes home after 11:00 P.M. his unsteady, heavy footsteps on the stairs remind you of your father’s footsteps you’d heard as a little girl, lying in bed wide-eyed.

The stricken look in your aunt’s face reminds you of the stricken look in your mother’s face, you have not recalled in a long time.

Fleetingly it occurs to you, the man could hurt you if he wished. Very badly.

If he has been drinking and is fortified by drink. Not often that you are alone together in the house but sometimes it happens, despite your vigilance.

In your room with the door locked you would be protected (you think) but the door has no lock. Dragging a chair in front of the door is just too pathetic, you are thinking. (Or is it?)

The bathroom door has a lock but it is a loose lock, not reliable.

His footsteps, his presence outside the door. Can’t concentrate on calculus. Is anything so absurd as calculus—figures on a sheet of paper, that might be crumpled in the man’s hand.

You are beginning to sweat with the possibility that he will repay you for laughing at him. It is the unforgivable insult—laughing at the man, the maleness of the man, unbearable to him.