After her last escape, the rest home took to tying her in a rocking chair. My parents had signed the release—“For her own protection, really.” The one nurse strong enough to manage Auntie was a heavy young black woman. Muriel now complained about her. Oddly enough, she was named Muriel too. Aunt told me how, once both her arms had been lashed to the chair, once a shawl had been tucked around her so that others’ visitors would not be disturbed by the sight of “restraints,” Aunt’s chunky jailer had bent over to pick up bedclothes mussed during the latest thrashing struggle. “Then, you see, by accident, she showed her whole backside to me, His Owl, and it just proved too much for resisting. My hands were bound but, you understand, she’d foolishly left my feet quite free. One good swift kick sent her flying face-first flat onto the floor. She made quite the undignified grunt, going down. Sounded a perfect pig, she did. Must weigh three hundred easily. ‘Uugahh!’ like that. Rome will give me hell for doing it, but, oh … extremely satisfying, I must say. Then she was very slow to turn around but she looked back up at me, still tied. She said, ‘Does you really hate me so damn much, ole lady?’ And I said then, ‘It’s nothing personal. But I’m afraid I must admit that, dear me, yes. Yes, “Muriel.” I fairly despise you.’”

I brought the topic back, of course, to me, my painting. Aunt acted peeved as some person tied up all day. I might have seen that I was asking for it.

“You know?” she started. “I expected you to get better at your pictures considerably faster, I fear. There’s something terribly flat about your figures. It appears they aren’t so much painted as carved. They seem to have no choice. No ‘inner fire.’” Muriel’s brogue now sounded dense as some new immigrant’s; her sentences flecked flying spittle. “Really?” I studied my long white hands. “Not enough ‘inner fire,’ hunh?”

“Well—I believe back then I claimed that you were quite the little masterpiece, am I no’ right? I’m saying that any lack of progress is not due to any lack of encouragement on my part, now, is it, now, Owl?” “No, ma’am,” I agreed, but explained that I’d only just turned fourteen in June and, to be fair, the week before I’d made—what?—$457.30 from my painting. “Now he’s onto the money of it, is he? Because we lost everything, this generation thinks it’s going to show up in the cash drawer or none of it is real, am I right? Don’t you dare bring money into this. You have no idea. Fourteen might sound young to some, but you’re presently a-speaking to the person who’s been expecting something from you, and I mean daily. Now in he waltzes with cash receipts. We needed art, you little ribbon clerk!”