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"I have all this land. Roy," she told him, land that's no use to me. I'm not going to grow cotton or tobacco. This isn't Tara." she joked.

From what she told me. I understood Uncle Roy wasn't so eager to do it. She had to get my father to talk him into it. Uncle Roy had his reasons, which according to Mommy, stemmed from his stubborn pride. Later. I would learn there were other reasons, perhaps more important and deeper reasons, the sort that start somewhere near the bottom of your very soul and make themselves heard almost daily.

Mommy loved to describe the dramatic scenes from her past for me, deepening her voice to imitate Uncle Roy's. Sometimes I laughed; sometimes. I listened in complete wonder. mesmerized by her ability to get me to see it all happening right before me. After all. Mommy had attended a prestigious London school of drama and had almost become an actress.

"Roy still wasn't going to build his house here." she had told me. "I accused him of being afraid to marry a white woman and live on the same estate with a white man who married an African American woman.

"'You're half white.' your uncle Roy reminded me.

"Well,' I countered. 'a hundred and fifty years ago I'd still be a slave. Roy Arnold. Don't try to make me feel any less or any better than you. If Mama Latisha heard such talk, she'd whip you good for it.' I told him, waving my skinny little finger in his face for a change. He had to shake his head and laugh. And then he had to give in and build the house," she told me.

A year after he married Glenda, they had a baby girl, whom they named Latisha after Uncle Roy's mother and Mommy's adopted mother. She was a pretty child, but just after she had turned three, she developed leukemia; she went so fast, the doctors nearly didn't have time to tell them there was little hope.

It almost destroyed Aunt Glenda. She nearly lost her faith. But then rather than hate God for it, she became very religious. Harley once told me his mother believed children were punished for the sins of their parents. After little Latishas death. Aunt Glenda believed if she didn't become righteous, her daughter would suffer even more in the hereafter. It absorbed her being now, and from the way he said it. I knew he was in mourning too, but not only for his sister. He

mourned that he had also lost his mother to the tragedy and left his upbringing more or less to my uncle Roy.

"You'd never know I'm an only child now," he told me. "My mother acts as if Latisha is still with us, only out there, sleeping under the stars. Sometimes, she acts as if she hears her. She keeps all her things out, even washes and irons her clothes. It drives both me and Roy crazy."

The worst kind of sibling rivalry was being forced to compete with your dead sister for your mother's attention, I thought.

They buried Latisha on the grounds of the estate, close to their house. Uncle Roy put up a pretty fence and gate around her grave and tombstone, Aunt Glenda had turned it into a sacred site and a day didn't pass when she wasn't over there praying at her lost little daughter's tombstone. I looked out my window at night and often saw a lone candle burning. Glenda's silhouette forming under the stars or under an overcast sky. Once I even saw her out there in the rain and lightning, holding her umbrella, unconcerned about the lightning flashing around her.

"A mother never lets go," Mommy told me when we discussed the things Harley told me. "even if she has to put her hand through fire."

I was too young at the time of Latisha's death, but years later, I would hear Mommy mutter to herself that she had once again brought bad luck to someone.

"I should have let Roy live far away from me, just as he had wanted." she moaned.

No one got angrier at her for saying things like that than Uncle Roy. His eyes would redden like an electric stove range: he would swell up his shoulders, which made him look even wider and taller, and then he would deepen his voice to chastise her and forbid her from saying such things.

"You're the one Mama would whip for saying that," he assured her, his long, thick right forefinger pointed at her face like an arrow.

No one wanted to be around an angry Uncle Roy, least of all his stepson Harley. These days Harley was in trouble at school and with his friends so often. Uncle Roy's brow was practically frozen with deep wrinkles and thick rolls from his constant scowling.

"The Lord left me a strange burden," I overheard Uncle Roy tell Mommy more than once. "He took my chance to be a daddy away from me when He took Latisha. but He left me with a father's responsibilities for a boy I never fathered. You talk about curses being put on you. I don't think I've done anything to deserve this burden. but I've got it."

"Mama used to say it's not for us to decide whether or not what the Lord does is right or wrong. Roy."

"Yeah. That don't seem right either," he told her.

It saddened me to hear such things. I couldn't help but think of Harley. It's hard. I thought, hard to be unwanted. I knew it made Mommy sad. too.

No one knew better than she did what that meant.

And I hoped and prayed it was something I'd never have to learn.

I

Happy Birthday, Summer

.

It seemed as if a rainbow had burst over our

house and grounds. I knew that Daddy had been secretly planning some surprises, but I was not prepared for all that he had done. The moment the morning sun nudged my eyes open, I heard the gentle tinkling notes of "Happy Birthday to You." With sleepy eyes I gazed at a precious and dazzling merrygo-round spinning a menagerie of animals around a ballerina who danced at its center.

"I hope you always wake with a smile like that, Summer," Daddy said.