Thirty-eight years of Sundays.
Some things did not come back.
The investment accounts my father drained are gone — restitution is a word, not a check.
The six months I spent in a chair while my sister was “slammed” are gone.
And the eleven minutes — I have decided to keep those, because they are the only ones my father ever gave her at the end, and somebody should.
I live in the house now.
I didn’t sell it.
Mr. Okafor thought I might; the store building on Fenton Street pays the taxes and then some, and I could have gone anywhere.
But I had spent six months learning every sound that house made at 3 a.m., and it seemed wrong to let strangers learn them.
The yellow curtains were in a trash bag in the garage, where my mother had left it on her way out.
I washed them.
They are back up.
The afghan was at a consignment shop on Fenton Street with a price tag on it — thirty-five dollars — and the owner, who had bought hardware from my grandmother for two decades, took the tag off and handed it to me and said, “I was hoping somebody would come.”
Bernadette comes on Thursdays.
She says it’s to check on me.
She beats me at gin rummy and eats my grandmother’s pound cake — I have the recipe now; it was in the safe, on an index card, under the deeds, because Adele Caldwell filed everything by importance and the cake outranked the bank — and she tells me stories about the beds she’s sat beside, which is, I think, her way of telling me I did it right.
Uncle Ray comes on Sundays.
