Saving Elijah

black," said my brother, who even as a child had no imagination.
    "Maybe bad blood is when you have melancholy, like Grandma," Ross said.
    "Is melancholy like bonkers?" I asked.
    Ross nodded. "Just like it. It's because she always stays in her room, crying."
    "And because she drinks gin," Cook said. "She goes through a whole quart of gin every day, our daddy says."
    I had no idea if he was exaggerating. My father had an occasional drink, but my mother never drank liquor.
    "Grandma always talks about Charlie, too," Mebane said. "Like he was still alive only he's been dead, like hundreds of years."
    "She had to be put away because of melancholy, you know," Ross said.
    "Put away where?" Now that sounded really bad.
    "Someplace where they put you when you have it. She was only there for a little while, but they obviously didn't get rid of it for her because she still has it."
    Mebane Ruth shook her head. "We weren't talkin' about melancholy, Ross, we were talking about bad blood."
    Ross seemed to know the most about melancholy, while Mebane Ruth was the expert on bad blood and black sheep.
    I stood up. "Yeah, well, I heard my mother say Grandpa Eli was a bull."
    Now they all gasped.
    "What'd you tell them that for?" Dan said.
    I didn't know where I was going, I just ran—right into my mother and father, who were strolling along a brick walkway at the side of the house. Their heads were close to each other, which meant they were talking about something interesting, which meant I wasn't supposed to hear. I tried to run in the other direction, but Dad grabbed me by the arm. "Whoa, Dinah, where are you going?"
    "My cousins are mean. They called Mommy a black sheep."
    My mother started to laugh, a loud and bitter laugh. "Well, isn't that just hunky-dory, I'm the black sheep," she said.
    "Charlotte, they're just kids," Dad said.
    "Kids repeating what the adults around them say."
    "We are going to try," my father said. "Right?" Very forceful for Dad.
    She shrugged.
    "What does that mean, black sheep?" I asked.
    She sighed loudly. "It's just that I. . . well, I don't get along so well with Grandpa Eli and Grandma Elizabeth. That's all. Grandpa Eli decided I couldn't take over his business, so I went to New York to make my own way. I'm happy for it now. Believe me, it turned out to be for the best."
    "But he let Uncle Bernard and Uncle Marshall into his business, why not you?"
    "Because I'm a woman. By all rights, I should be running this business when Grandpa retires, which he probably never will. They're going to have to cart him out of that office in a casket. I am the eldest child, Bernard is seven years younger than I am."
    "Then why?"
    She leaned down toward me, cupped her hand over her mouth. "It certainly isn't because of his brains."
    I giggled. Uncle Bernard was Mebane Ruth's father.
    "Remember," Charlotte said, "you can do anything you want, Dinah. Anything. Women are strong and smart and coming into their own, no matter what Grandpa Eli says. His ideas are a lot older than he is."
    It was 1962. My mother was way ahead of her time.

    *    *    *

    That night, in the bed next to Mebane Ruth, I couldn't fall asleep for the longest time. I tossed and turned, then woke up again in the middle of a dream where I was stuck in that tree house. My brother had taken away the ladder and I couldn't get down.
    Moonlight was streaming in through the sheer curtains at the window. I went over to the window, drew aside the curtain, and looked out over the expanse of lawns and fields. The willow tree was a tall hulking form against a brilliant dark sky, its branches swaying and bowing gracefully in the night breeze, a full moon illuminating the scene. My eyes scanned the field and sky and gardens, lingering on the rectangular camellia garden. It was pretty, but it seemed so weird—to fill in a pool and plant a garden. Such a big space, and all of it planted with the same species of flower, row after row of camellias—I blinked. I noticed then there was a very old woman standing at the side of that garden, ghostly and pale in the moonlight. Partly hidden in the shadow of a tree, almost indistinguishable from the white expanse of flowers, she was wearing a white bathrobe, white ankles poking out of the robe, white feet on the grass. Her robe was made of some silky material, rippling like water in the breeze.
    With her head bowed that way, it looked like she was praying.

    *    *    *

    Grandma Elizabeth finally made an actual