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head and make me wear one of Ma’s old dresses. We’d drink sugar water from plastic teacups and play Visitor on the porch. Sometimes Ma would join us, her legs crossed in slacks, feet in slippers, and pretend to sip tea, too, joking how much I must like my big sister cause I let her put me in a dress. And I’d make them laugh, walking around the front yard on my tip-toes with a teacup in my hand, pinkie extended, eyes crossed. And you could catch Anna at any age lying there for hours drawing in her sketchpad, and later, smoking cigarettes in a mini skirt or a tie-dye sundress at sunset.

Sometimes, Anna’s daddy, before he left, would get all generous with us and he’d bring home ice cream, and Ma would get out of bed for it and we’d eat it right there on the front porch to keep Carla from fussing at us about the mess in the kitchen. Those ice cream nights made you forget awhile the stench from the swamp, that Momma was sick, that Carla at sixteen was running the show. Anna rarely left Ma’s side then. I guess she needed her more than any of us did. And now here Cassidy Penelope needs Anna.

Or somebody.

At one point during my duck walk, I noticed I messed up my mow line. I looked at the child. Her knees are bent, her bottom extended, hands on her hips. Looking like a duck herself. And it hit me that maybe Cassidy Penelope just needed someone who would play with her. She needed something fun like duck walks and maybe ice cream, so she’d know that the people in our family aren’t a bunch of angry idiots who leave each other on people’s porches. So I cut the engine again and called her over to ask about the ice cream situation, her scowl shifted to a grin after a minute and she kicked barefoot at the grass clippings.

“Wait. Does a grin mean, ‘No Uncle Andy, I don’t want ice cream?’” She shook her head like it would fall off, still grinning.

“I see,” I said. “I figured a girl looking as pretty as you couldn’t be deaf.”

Instead of returning to the porch, the child followed me as I pushed the mower. After a while, she skipped in big steps, holding her duck by its wing, trailing me as I completed my Square-in-aSquare mow pattern. She turned a few somersaults that stained her dress and showed her underwear. The grass covered her in clippings 48 | PHOEBE 49.2