In itself, that didn’t scare her; she often woke up crying. Sometimes she felt so lost, so strange … nothing seemed right anymore, not the way it had been when she was a child. In her dreams she was eight, skipping down the sidewalk in a blue dress, proud of her new black patent leather shoes. She skipped rope with Verna Henderson. The sun had been hot and tasted like lemons.

It had all been so different then, the neighborhood full of good Christian people, full of kids who weren’t afraid to play in the street or in the yard. The ice cream truck had come around every couple of days, and sold blue ices and chocolate Fudgsicles. The driver had worn a crisp white suit and his truck played popular songs like a giant music box.

Minnie looked across the room—not her room, just an apartment, she’d moved out of her room and her house five years before—and made sure the chain was still cm the door. She’d done her best with the room, scrubbed and cleaned and kept everything neat as a pin, but it just never seemed to help. It wasn’t her house, wasn’t her room.

She laid in bed and sobbed into her pillow for all the lost things, for the ice cream truck, for the jump rope, for the heavy whack of her braided hair on her back as she skipped. From down on the street she heard jungle sounds booming, all drums, no music, and remembered how her mother had always been so careful to keep the radio turned low, because the neighbors might be sleeping. Now everybody just turned their own radio up louder and louder to cover up the noise.

She felt sick, but not sick to her stomach—hot, maybe feverish. She climbed out of bed and put on a fluffy pink zip-up robe, put on her faded fraying houseshoes, walked slowly across to the kitchen. Hot tea. She’d have some hot tea and lemon and honey, and that would make her feel so much better, she just knew it would.

She put the kettle on to boil and sat down at the table, rubbing her forehead. Her skin felt like crepe paper, old and frail. She looked at her gnarled aching hands, and felt tears welling up again, useless tears, hot as the water in the kettle.

“Oh, Minnie,” she sighed, and patted her white hair back into place. She usually wore a satin cap over it at night, since she couldn’t afford to go to the beauty shop more than once a week, but she’d forgotten and now it was a wreck, curling every which way. “Don’t be such a silly billy.”