car, at the bottom of Lake Michigan. They say from the look of it, she was heading south, towards the Indiana state line. Ella asks if she crashed. Mama is quiet. Daddy says that the police say she was too far off the road for it to have been an accident. I stop listening then. I don’t understand how someone dying could not be an accident. I think about Mrs. Wilkins’ bruise. I think about the big fancy car I had never seen her drive before and about all the bags, and the shoes, and the money wrapped up in a rubber band. I think about all the times I had seen her and Krissy ride the commuter bus home from school. And about the way Krissy twisted my Barbie dolls all up. I think about Krissy. I think about playing stickball every day of the summer, and setting up the tent in the backyard, and all the mornings we spent watching cartoons, and what it sounds like when she laughs, and how much I love her. I think about Mrs. Wilkins’ body lying down at the bottom of Lake Michigan. I think about how, somehow, maybe, Mrs. Wilkins is dead because of me.
The days and weeks and months and years passed just like that, blending back and forth into each other. That’ll happen if you watch a place long enough. Nobody ever asked me what I knew about Mrs. Wilkins. Why would they? I was just a kid. uuu
*** The rain is so heavy and cold, it almost feels like ice. The clouds have rolled in off the lake, and settled like a big blanket over Chicago. The rain comes and goes through the days, but the cold is thick and close, always. The storm clouds won’t be gone for a long time now. Winter is here. I don’t think about Mrs. Wilkins anymore. I don’t think about her for a long time. Snow falls on Chicago and carpets my street in the deepest, most silent white; and I don’t think of her. The sun pokes through the clouds and melts the snow, and Madison Street becomes a great wide stream that washes away all the cold and brings up the little green from the ground; and I don’t think of her. The thick sticky heat sinks in over our city, and people stand in the street and shield their eyes with their hands and pray for rain; and I don’t think of her. The rain finally surrenders and pours down in buckets, carrying down all the bright colored leaves into the street, where they gather in gutters like a congregation. And I don’t think of her.
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