Black Dove, White Raven

MOMMA HAS FOUR SISTERS (she’s the oldest one), and her parents run a riding school called Blue Rock Farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Teo and I lived there for three years after Delia died, and that is where we learned to take care of ourselves. Momma was too busy crying to pay much attention to us the first year we lived on Blue Rock Farm, and then she went away to Africa without us for the next two years. When Teo and I came to Ethiopia for the first time, it really felt like we were coming home. Because that was when, finally, after three years, we were back with the Momma who we knew and loved.

But when we first came to Blue Rock Farm in the summer of ’27, Momma mostly stayed in her room till Christmas. We’d only see her if we went in there looking for her, or met her in the hall on her way to the bathroom.

“It’s like living with a ghost,” Aunt Connie complained to Grandma. She was still in high school at Fox Friends in Lambstown, the only one of Momma’s sisters not already grown up and married. “I don’t believe Rhoda could be more miserable if her own husband died!”

“She couldn’t be more miserable,” Grandma agreed. “Don’t judge her, Connie. She has lost her soul mate.”

I loved that phrase: soul mate. We asked Grandma what it meant, and she said, “Two people who understand each other without talking about it. Two halves of a whole.”

“Like being married?” I asked.

“No,” Grandma said. “It could be anybody. Father or mother or sister or friend. A teacher or someone you work with. Anybody. Any two people who understand each other so well that one of them can fly blindfolded and the other will stand unafraid on the wing of the plane.”

We have never been sure if she was exaggerating or if Momma and Delia really did that once. But soul mate. You would trust your soul mate with anything, so they might have.

Now Momma was alone.

Teo and I learned to take care of ourselves during that first year, but we learned to take care of Momma, too. Together. We’d figure out what we were going to pester her with, and then we’d let Teo do the pestering. He can be very persistent and very patient, and she’d wake up a little for Teo. She couldn’t ignore Delia’s baby.

Here’s the kind of thing Teo would do. He’d shove an open book under her nose and say something like “Momma, you have got to tell us why this tree has fallen on the boy and if he’ll be okay Momma, how come he’s only got one hand? He only has one hand in all the pictures, not just this one here, where the tree is squashing him.”

The fallen-tree picture is the most terrifying and intriguing picture in Freckles by Gene Stratton Porter, and neither of us could read yet.

“I’m sleeping now. Come back later and I’ll tell you.”

“I’m going to leave the book here by your head, okay, Momma? Don’t lose the page,” Teo would warn. “And it’s one of Aunt Connie’s books from her special shelf, so don’t throw it. She’s already mad at us for getting the cover wet.”

“Please go away, kids.” Momma would turn her back on us and pull a pillow over her head.