“Well, keep it this time.” I walked away without answering. It was driving me crazy to have her watching me all the time. Sometimes I just got into the car and drove aimlessly around town trying to put off the moment when I walked back into the house and back into her power. Daddy had the money power but she had the maid power. She had the power to make me take care of the children. He had the power to make me rich or poor. What did I have? Well, I had the bookstore.

The only bookstore in Dunleith at that time was connected to a gift shop in the old business section of town. They had cookbooks and gardening books and leatherbound classics and children’s books and a few new novels, three or four at a time. I bought a children’s book about the Arabian Nights and one about a little boy who loved horses and paid the saleslady and drove slowly home through the cold winter day. There was hardly a leaf on a tree. The dead of winter. The winter of my darkest discontent.

As I neared my mother’s house I saw Malcolm’s car parked by the entrance to the side porch. It was the old blue Chevrolet Daddy had given me for quitting Vanderbilt. That seemed a million years ago. The sight of my husband’s car burst upon Wheeler Street like a storm. As I drove nearer I could see him standing on the side porch. He had Malcolm in his arms and Jimmy was holding on to his legs. I parked the car and got out and ran up the steps and put my arms around him and began to cry. I wanted him. I wanted him back. I wanted to take off all my clothes and fuck him and tell him I was sorry. I wanted to be guilty and punished and I wanted him to fuck me. It was the first thing that had happened to me in months that I could understand.

“I’m moving to Alexandria, Louisiana,” he said. “I’ve got a new job. It’s a promotion and a raise. I’m going to be the plant engineer. I want you to go with me, Rhoda. I want us to go there together.”

At dinner we told Mother and Daddy we were making up.

“I wish you’d leave those boys here with me,” Daddy said. “You and Rhoda go on down there and get settled and I’ll bring them later.”

“No, I want them to go with me.” We were all at the dinner table. Mother and Daddy and Malcolm and I and my two little brothers and the boys in their high chairs. Usually we made them eat in the kitchen with the maids but sometimes we spread plastic cloths over the oriental rug and let their high chairs be at the table.