Dance of the Happy Shades

public when she was three years old.
    Never was ascared once, Leona said, leaning forward with a jerky pressure on the pedal, it just comes natural to her to perform. Her kimona fallen open revealed her lean chest, her wilted breasts with their large blue veins sloping into the grey-pink nightgown. She don’t care, it could be the King of England watching her, she’d get up and sing, and when she was through singing she’d sit down, that’s just the way she is. She’s even got a good name for a singer, Patricia Parry, doesn’t that sound like you just heard it announced over the air? Another thing is natural blonde hair. I have to do it up in rags every night of her life, but that real natural blonde is a lot scarcer than natural curly. It don’t get dark, either, there’s that strain of natural blondes in my family that don’t get dark. My cousin I told you about, that won the Miss St. Catharines of 1936, she was one, and my aunt that died—)
    Allie McGee did not say, and Leona caught her breath and plunged on: Twenty minutes. And that last thing I said to her as I went out the door was, you keep an eye on the kids! She’s nine years old, isn’t she? I’m just going to run acrost the road to sew up this outfit, you keep an eye on the kids. And I went out the door and down the steps and down to the end of the garden and just as I took the hook off the gate something stopped me, I thought,
something’s wrong!
What’s wrong, I said to myself. I stood there and I looked back at the garden and all I could see was the cornstalks standing and the cabbages there frozen, we never got them in this year, and I looked up and down the road and all I could see was Mundy’s old hound laying out in front of their place, no cars comin’ one way or the other and the yards all empty, it was cold I guess and no kids playin’ out—And I thought, My Lord, maybe I got my days mixed up and this isn’t Saturday morning, it’s some special day I forgot about—Then I thought all it was was the snow coming I could feel in the air, and you know how cold it was,the puddles in the road was all turned to ice and splintered up—but it didn’t snow, did it, it hasn’t snowed yet—And I run acrost the road then over to McGee’s and up the front steps and Allie says, Leona, what’s the matter with you, you look so white, she says—
    Allie McGee heard this too and said nothing, because it was not a time for any sort of accuracy. Leona’s voice had gone higher and higher as she talked and any time now she might break off and begin to scream: Don’t let that kid come near me, don’t let me see her, just don’t let her come near me.
    And the women in the kitchen would crowd around the couch, their big bodies indistinct in the half-light, their faces looming pale and heavy, hung with the ritual masks of mourning and compassion. Now lay down, they would say, in the stately tones of ritual soothing. Lay down, Leona, she ain’t here, it’s all right.
    And the girl from the Salvation Army would say, in her gentle unchanging voice, You must forgive her, Mrs. Parry, she is only a child. Sometimes the Salvation Army girl would say: It is God’s will, we do not understand. The other woman from the Salvation Army, who was older, with an oily, sallow face and an almost masculine voice, said: In the garden of heaven the children bloom like flowers. God needed another flower and he took your child. Sister, you should thank him and be glad.
    The other women listened uneasily while these spoke; their faces at such words took on a look of embarrassed childish solemnity. They made tea and set out on the table the pies and fruitcake and scones that people had sent, and they themselves had made. Nobody ate anything because Leona would not eat. Many of the women cried, but not the two from the Army. Allie McGee cried. She was stout, placid-faced, big-breasted; she had no children. Leona drew up her knees under the quilt and rocked herself back and forth as she wept, and threw her head down and then back (showing, as some of themnoticed with a feeling of shame, the dirty lines on her neck). Then she grew quiet and said with something like surprise: I nursed him till he was ten months old. He was so good, too, you never would of known you had him in the house. I always said, that’s the best one I ever had.
    In the dark overheated kitchen the woman felt the dignity of this sorrow in their maternal flesh, they were humble before this