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Aunt Patty is fed up with me.
She told me so last night. When I got into bed, there was a sick feeling
that stayed with me through my sleep. I came out here to breathe deep
of the fresh air but that sick feeling has not yet gone away.
And then Mrs. Garber ran by. Who would think somebody fifty years old
would be up and running down the road before daybreak? She ran by
and then she ran back and stared at me from the road, her knees all the
time pumping up and down. I didn't say a word to her.
She came up to the house and rang the doorbell. I heard the doorbell
and I heard her sneakers on the flagstone patio, pum, pum, pum. My
stomach started to hurt.
No answer.
After a couple of minutes she rings the doorbell again. A light comes on.
I see a pale yellow square in the grass, like a shadow in reverse. Pum,
pum, pum. The front door opens. Aunt Patty's voice breaks the silence of
early morning.
"Mrs. Garber, is there something wrong?"
There are whispers. I wrap my arms more tightly around my knees. Pretty
soon Mrs. Garber is on her way down the road again. She does not look
back once.
The front door closes.
My heart feels like there is a string tied around it, with something heavy
hanging from the string. I don't like it. But the sky has broken pink and is
stretching pale lavender fingers toward heaven. So I make up my mind to
watch those sky fingers fade to nothing, to be burned away by the sunrise.
And here it comes.
A thin rim of orange-red, so deep and strong my heart almost breaks with
the fierceness of that color. Moment by moment, there is more of it to see.
So hot and bright, I cannot look but at the edges. Even when I look away,
look clear away to the waning edge of darkness, I can see that color in my
mind's eye, feel it beating in my very blood. I breathe color.
Below, the front door opens again. "Willa Jo Dean, what do you think
you're doing up there?"
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