It’s all right, DJ said. It’s not that bad.
It’s not that, she said. I was thinking of something else.
Mama? Dena said.
She went on cleaning his knee, squeezing antiseptic ointment from a tube and taping a bandage over it, and then did the same to his elbow. All the time she kept wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand.
Mama. What’s wrong?
Don’t bother me, she said.
But will you look at me too?
Why? Are you hurt?
Yes.
Where?
Here. And here.
Her mother turned to DJ and Emma. You two go on out. Now, she said to Dena, let me see.
DJ and the younger sister went out to the front room and stood beside the piano where the light came in from the front window. The little girl looked up at his face as if she expected him to do something.
What’s wrong with her? he said. What’s making her cry like that?
Daddy.
What do you mean?
He called last night and she’s been crying. He said he’s not coming home.
Why not?
I don’t know why not.
Didn’t he say?
I don’t know.
Mary Wells came out with Dena from the bathroom. You kids go outside now, she said.
I don’t want to, the little girl said.
Why don’t you?
I want to stay with you.
All right. But you two go out. I’m not feeling very well, she said. She had begun to cry again. They watched her out of the corners of their eyes. Go on, she said. Please.
I want to stay too, Dena said.
No. One’s enough in here. Go on now. You and DJ do something outside.
OUTSIDE, THEY PUSHED THE BIKE AROUND THE CORNER of the house to the backyard and stood by the garden looking at the alley. Let’s go someplace else, Dena said.
I don’t want to go downtown. I don’t feel like seeing anybody right now.
We don’t have to see anybody, she said.
They walked out into the alley in the tire tracks running on either side of the weeds that grew down the center of the gravel like a low hedge and passed the backyards of the old widow women and the vacant lot next door and then his grandfather’s house and the vacant lot beyond. At the street they crossed over and entered the alley in the next block. On the left was an old blue wooden house, its backyard overgrown with lilac bushes and mulberry trees. Nobody had lived in the house for years. The porch screen was hanging loose and there were scraps of metal scattered under the bushes. An old black Desoto had been shoved under a mulberry and its pale-green windows had been starred and shot through by boys with pellet guns. All the tires were flat. At the alley was a small unpainted shed.
They peered in through the little window, the panes old and wavy, coated with dirt and brown cobwebs. They could only make out a push mower and a garden tiller. The door creaked open when they lifted the metal latch and they went in through long strings of cobwebs. The shed was dark and shadowy inside, with a dirt floor black with oil. There was a shelf along the back wall. Beneath it a whitewall tire. There were woven baskets with wire handles stacked one inside the other, and a rusted hand saw, and a carpenter’s hammer, both its claws broken off. Below the window was a dead house sparrow, dry as dust on the dirt floor, weighing nothing. They looked at everything, lifting the tools and setting them back in their outlines of dust.
We could make something of this, Dena said.
He looked at her.
This place here.
It’s just dirty in here. It’s dark.
We could clean it out, she said.
He looked at her and she seemed dim and shadowy in the thin light coming through the window. He couldn’t see her eyes. She had lowered her face. She was holding something in her hands, but he couldn’t see for sure what it was. We could bring things here, she said.
Like what?
I don’t know, she said. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.
She was looking down at whatever it was she had in her hands.