My uncle came and woke us early in the morning. He said that there was a truck going into the town, and if we packed up now, we could have some breakfast and then get a lift. We would be there in time to get the bus, he said. When he left, my mother said that she was disgusted at him coming into the room like that while she was in bed. He was a pig, she said, just a pig, and he lived in a pigsty. I made a grunting sound from the bed, and suddenly the two of us began to laugh. He has piggy eyes, my mother said, and we laughed more. I grunted as I lay there with my hands behind my head. A fat pig, my mother said.

It occurred to me as we walked along the dirt track to where the truck was waiting that my mother had not changed her clothes in the three or four weeks we had been there. Perhaps she had changed her underclothes and her stockings, but not her blouse or her skirt or her cardigan or her shoes. Pedro and my aunt came with us to carry the bags, and as we were helped up into the truck I noticed that my aunt and my mother had the same pursed lips and long-suffering look. I knew that my mother must have been given enough money to pay the bus fares, she also had a bag of food, but I hoped that she had some extra money for when we arrived in the city. And I hoped that she had a plan. As soon as the bus started on the way to Santa Rosa, I began to grunt like a pig, and my mother put her arm around me and shook with laughter. He was smelly, like a pig, too, wasn’t he, I said. My mother nodded. Yes, smelly, she said, he certainly was.

WE HESITATED AS we opened the door of the apartment. Once I stepped inside, I found that I could not hold back the tears. For the first time I felt all the grief about my father’s body lying in the dark earth, and fright at the idea that his eyes were closed and his body was slowly rotting. I ran into my mother’s bedroom and put my arms around her. I was sobbing now. She held me and said that she would make cocoa and then I would go to bed and she would sit with me until I was asleep.

In the morning, she came into my room and whispered that she had to go out, but she would be back soon, and I could stay in bed, or I could get up, and there were things for breakfast on the dining room table. I did not ask her where she was going, and I did not find out until later that day when the Anglican clergyman Mr. Walters, whom I had seen at Sunday school and at church, came to the apartment and sat with us. He was a thin, gray-haired man with a large bottom lip. We should have consulted him much earlier, he said, and of course he and his congregation would be only too willing to help. It was a small community, he said, and something could be arranged. He left my mother an envelope full of money.