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When she saw that I was shaking, she put an arm around me, but she offered no advice.

“Tell me what to do,” I pleaded.

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Birds sang in the trees, crickets chirruped in the grass, bouncy doo-wop music came from a phonograph at the house next door, three laughing children played some game on a porch across the street, and it all sounded like doomsday music to me.

“Tell me what to do,” I said again.

“That’s one thing I can’t do, Jonah. I’ve already given you all the help I can. You’ll have to decide yourself what to do as things happen. But you know what?”

“What?”

“You already know what to do.”

“But I don’t.”

“You already know,” Miss Pearl insisted, “and whatever happens, good or better, bad or worse, you’ll know what to do step by step.”

I buried my face in my hands.

She sat silently beside me for a while. Then: “If you trust me, believe what I’m about to say, it’ll help you in the darkest times.”

Speaking into my hands, I said, “What is it?”

“No matter what happens, disaster piled on calamity, no matter what, everything will be okay in the long run.”

I spread my fingers to filter my words. “You said you can’t see the future.”

“I’m not talking about the future, Ducks. Not the way you mean. Not tomorrow and next week and next month.”

Frustrated, I said, “Then what are you talking about?”

She repeated, “No matter what happens, everything will be okay in the long run. If you believe that, if you trust me, nothing that might happen in the days to come can break you. On the other hand, if you won’t take to heart what I’ve just told you, I don’t expect things will turn out as well as they could.”

I didn’t mean to cry, not out there in public, not on the front porch steps for just anyone to see who might pass by, tears flooding from me as if I were a baby. I was past ten, going on eleven, more than halfway to being a man, or so I thought, and if I had to carry a weight, I should be able just to shut up and carry it already, but I felt small and weak and confused.

In the most tender voice, Miss Pearl said, “Ducks, I’m going to do something I’ve rarely done before. But you are special to me, and I’ll give you this.”

Despairing at my weakness, I wiped tears from my eyes with both hands. “Give me what?”

“A peek inside my purse.” She patted the black handbag between us. She picked it up and smiled at me and set it in my lap.

“Your purse? What could be in your stupid purse that’ll make any difference?”

“You won’t know until you look. Mind me, you can’t have the purse, only a peek inside it.”

“I’m a boy. I don’t want a purse.”

“Then take a look right now. Much as I love you, Ducks, I can’t sit here all day. I’m a city, and a city is always busy, busy, busy.”

In spite of my having heard pure truth when she had told me what she was, you might think that I would at some point, given sufficient provocation, reverse myself and decide that she was a crazy lady. But I never did.

The handbag was large enough to carry a bowling ball and bowling shoes and maybe a tenpin. I folded the braided handles down, pressed the black clasp, opened it, and stared in bafflement, at first unable to understand what lay within.

“Put your face right down close to it, Ducks, right down close. Then you’ll see.”

I did as she said, and I saw. I don’t know how long the whole experience took. At the time it seemed to go zoom, all unfolding in a few seconds, but in retrospect, I thought it might have been an hour or more.