I tried jiggling him as she had, but that only made matters worse. Now I was not only a monster, but a Monster Baby Jiggler, intent on shaking him to death. I walked around in a circle, saying, "There, there, there." The child was not soothed. Finally, in desperation, I lowered him into the playpen, forcing his stiff legs to bend until he was fully seated. I handed him two alphabet blocks and part of a half-eaten soda cracker. The howling ceased at once. He put the cracker in his mouth and banged the letter P against the plastic padding under him. I stood up, patting myself on the chest while I moved into the kitchen to see what was happening.

Blanche was just banging through the backdoor with four-year-old Josh on her hip, his legs hanging way past her knees. I could see a lump on his forehead the size of an egg and copious blood on his upper lip. One-handed, she dampened a kitchen towel, opened the freezer, and took out some ice cubes, which she wrapped in the towel and pressed against his head. She carried him into the family room and sank into a chair. The minute she sat down, he worked his way through a flap in her tunic and began to nurse. Taken aback, I averted my eyes. I thought kids his age had been twelve-stepped out of that.

She indicated a nearby chair, paying him not the slightest attention as he suckled her right breast.

I glanced down at the chair and removed a half-consumed peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich before I settled on the edge. Josh's medical emergency apparently entitled all of the children to escape the chill and dark outside. The next thing I knew, a cartoon show blasted from the TV set. Heather and Amanda sat cross-legged on the floor, and Josh joined them moments later holding the towel – wrapped ice cubes to his head.

I tried to concentrate on what Blanche was saying, but all I could think about was that even at my age, a tubal ligation probably wasn't out of the question.

Chapter 8

I glanced at my watch, a gesture that wasn't lost on her.

"I know you're in a hurry so I'll get to the point. Has Mother filled you in on Crystal's past?"

"I know she was a stripper before she married your dad."

"I'm not talking about that. Did she mentioned Crystal's fourteen-year-old daughter was born out of wedlock?"

I waited, wondering at the relevance. I leaned forward, not from avid interest, but because the whistles, bangs, and manic music from the television set were loud enough to cause permanent hearing loss. I watched Blanche's lips move, putting the sentences together belatedly like the subtitles on a foreign film.

"I'm not even sure Crystal knows who the father is. Then she married Lloyd somebody and had another child by him. That boy died when he was eighteen months old, an accidental drowning – this was four or five years ago."