The Helen we’d met in autumn was a lopsided top, spinning off-center. I could hardly coax her to string three words together, let alone to admit she could use our help or our friendship. She’d insist she was going back to Seattle, then just stand there looking at us to see what we’d say. She didn’t know what she knew. But now here she was barging into our cabin, didn’t call ahead, just showed up swinging a Dutch oven of raccoon stew, talking like talking and breathing were the same thing. Her hair was cut blunt and uneven in the front, tucked back long behind her ears. One deep line right between her eyebrows. She looked like she hadn’t seen mirrors much. She’d lived off the drakes, she told us, but when the meat was gone, she’d used her .22 to shoot raccoons and possums. She set the stew to warm on our stove, then wedged herself in to take measure of Perley, who stretched out naked and red on Karen’s lap, his feet curved into each other, his eyes attempting to focus. Helen looked long and hard.

“He’s certainly a baby boy,” she said.

“You can hold him if you want to,” I said.

“Thanks for the offer, but no,” Helen said. Then she got right to the point. “Look at those testicles,” she said. “You’ll have to leave this place. The Women’s Land Trust doesn’t allow those.”

We knew it way better than Helen did. We knew the bylaws. We knew the board. They were obsessed with anatomy, with who was in and who was out. We knew we’d soon be on the out list. Karen and I had placed a vague bookmark there in the days after Perley was born, but it was hard to remember the reality of anything other than sleeping, nursing, and thick white spit-up.

“If I were you, I’d get out now,” Helen said. “Why wait?”

“There’s no rush,” I said. “The Land Trust bylaw says that we can stay until Perley’s five.”

“Heavy burden for a five-year-old,” Helen said. “He asks why you have to leave the only home he’s ever known. You tell him, It’s your fault, boy. It’s because of your balls.”

“Where would we go?” I asked, but I might have guessed that over the course of that long winter, Helen had learned the answers to all the questions, and she was more than ready to share them.

“Come live with me,” she said, unsmiling. “I’ve got twenty acres. Plenty of room. My boyfriend’s not coming back. And I’d be glad to have you. I need some help. You need some help. It could be a good arrangement.”

“You want to be our landlord, is that it?” asked Karen.

“Karen,” I said.

“Let’s just call it what it is,” Karen said.