Sassafrass wandered hesitantly through the kitchen. In vague ways she picked up the car keys, let the dog out, and changed the Kitty Litter. She locked the door to the weaving room, and eventually left the house. She sat in the car in front of the house for at least an hour. She had never been beaten by a man; she had sworn that whoever did, she would leave. And she had told Mitch, in the Japanese garden in Exposition Park when they had first met, “If you ever strike me, I will leave you or see you in jail.” Mitch hadn’t said anything then, just as he didn’t say anything tonight. And Sassafrass cried, tormented, and afraid she would have to leave Mitch, whom she adored. She started the tumbling-down auto and drove from the Pasadena Freeway to Santa Monica, where she stopped to watch the sun rise over the deserted beach. Sassafrass was locked, like all the barred and dingy wharf cafeterias. She was tight, and the ocean nibbling her ankles in another dawn did not arouse her spirit. Instead, the monotonous coming back, coming back of the waves reminded her that she, too, would return to her own rubble-strewn shores. She was going to go back to Mitch; she could not leave . . . not now. Sassafrass was afraid to look at the sun for fear the golden garments the moon’s daughter had woven would rot from her gaze. She had betrayed trust and prophesied inviolate independence. She was a woman, and she was strong—and she loved Mitch; had only served as an instrument for the will of the spirits. She’d been too headstrong, too sure she needed no man; and she did understand, now, that she needed Mitch of all things in the world. She needed Mitch because Mitch was all she loved in herself.

It wasn’t so far from what she remembered . . . that night it had rained something terrible in Charleston, rained so hard she and Cypress put Indigo at the foot of the bed under the covers with them, in case all the trees round the house came crashing through the roof—like they were bound to, since they were shaking and scratching and making awful noises that left children speechless and quaking. The other noises were her mama and daddy shouting; mixing in with the howling wind till the commotion on the stairs forced all the girls to creep to the door, because it wasn’t just the hurricane that was upsetting everything.