Not for the first time, it occurred to me that sorrow could be purified into song the same way a piece of coal is purified into a diamond.

Come listen to my story
About Omie Wise
And how she was deluded
By John Lewis’s lies.

And as I heard Aunt Margaret’s voice again I remembered the Sunday mornings in church, Preacher Tilson, red-faced from shouting and pacing back and forth, the Bible raised above his head. I remembered the shouts and tears, the speaking in tongues, and how frightening it all was. Until Aunt Margaret stood beside the rickety piano and sang.

I was no longer afraid then. Her voice settled over me like a warm balm. Sometimes as she sang I’d look out the open window and see the gravestones and wonder if even the dead listened.

Randall and Jeff broke into brief instrumental solos mid-song, then let the sounds of the guitar and banjo flow back together smoothly as two streams merging while Aunt Margaret reached the song’s most chilling verses.

Oh pity your poor infant
And spare me my life.
Let me go rejected
And not be your wife.
No pity, no pity,
John Lewis did cry.
On deep river’s bottom
Your body will lie.

I thought of Ruth Kowalsky in the blackness of the under-cut, and I thought of her parents in their motel room in Seneca. Did they talk of their loss or turn on the TV or merely wait in silence? I wondered what Allen had done those first days after he’d lost his family. Had he sought solitude or friends or work? Had he gone into a bar or a church? Had he been able to stay in a house as much his wife and daughter’s as it was his?

And I thought of my own family those first weeks after Ben came home from the hospital, how, when we ate our meals, hardly anyone talked or raised their eyes from the plates, making it worse for Ben, who was already getting taunted at school. What must he have thought when it seemed his own family could not bear to look at him? It was like we were all ashamed for our parts in what had happened. Momma would try to say something, maybe ask what Ben and I learned in our classes, but every question and answer was in syllables, not sentences. Those first weeks Daddy ate quickly and left for Henson’s Store as soon as he could. When he came back, there was always beer on his breath.

One of those nights Daddy came back and went directly into Ben’s bedroom. Unlike me, Ben was already asleep. Daddy didn’t turn on the light. He woke Ben up with his voice, talking so loud I could hear him as well.

“Soon as you get that next skin graft you’ll be as handsome a fellow as Rock Hudson,” Daddy said.