At first I thought this was merely interesting. But soon I began to worry. I was as bald as she was. Suppose I didn’t grow any hair. Suppose that was why Aunt Becka didn’t get along with men. I confided my fears to Aunt Jane.

“Law,” said Aunt Jane, “hit’s just the way she’s made, child. And you’re too young to be fretting about sprouting hair. Hit will sprout when the time comes.”

We were in Aunt Jane’s root cellar, picking preserves for supper, for I would be eating with her. The jars gleamed in the lantern light. They held peaches, pears, sauerkraut, green beans, tomatoes, jams.

“Pickled corn,” I suggested.

“If hit’s sour, I’ll eat it,” she agreed.

She didn’t say any more about Aunt Becka then, but when we were eating she said, “Your Aunt Becka is funny turned, but she’s a good woman. And she’s kin. Aunt Becka cant help the way God made her, and she has a right to be the way she is. I should never said things about her to you before, and I wont never say them again. As for you, you just be like your own self. And ifn Aunt Becka dont like it, you and her might not git along. But God help the stranger tries to hurt you, cause Aunt Becka would tear them limb from limb. Whip anybody tried to harm a hair on your head. Dont never forgit it.”

I remembered her words after I spoke to Flora, and was sorry. I thought of them again the night before Flora’s wedding. It was Old Christmas Eve, and Aunt Becka sat us before the fire, as she always did, fed us roasted apples, and told us how the animals in the barn, the cows and mules, knelt in homage before the Baby Jesus on that night, and spoke to one another. I had not noticed before how wrinkled Aunt Becka was becoming. She sat beside Aunt Jane, placid, and they were like the lion and lamb reclining together for a time. It pleased me to think of our animals in the barn waiting together for Old Christmas, kin like we were. We were flesh of one another’s flesh, and we would live together until we died, then we would be together in Heaven. Mother would be with us as well. Heaven would be a place very much like Grapevine, lacking only an angel of death.

I couldn’t sleep that night for thinking about it, and of Ben and Flora, soon to be wed. When I was certain everyone slept I crept from bed, pulled on my wool dress, and wrapped myself in a quilt. Outside, falling snowflakes struck my cheeks. It was a pitch dark night but I knew my way to the barn and never once stumbled. I lit the lantern hanging inside the door. The animals shook their heads and their gargantuan shadows leaped like a flight of blackbirds.