Free Bittersweet by Nevada Barr

making her look younger.
    “Thee may leave anything but the textbooks.” He preceded her out into the hall. “There are thy children to think of as well.”
    Imogene spent every morning for the next several weeks immersed in the storeroom’s dusty treasures. William worked with her when he could, and sometimes Mrs. Utterback came by with cool drinks and conversation. In the afternoons, when the wet heat of July weighed heavy and the close room became intolerable, Imogene walked through the streets and lanes of Philadelphia, visiting the places she had known as a child. She spoke to no one. She went alone to the house that had been her home. The garden was little more than dirt, and one of the shutters on the gabled window hung crooked, the hinge wrenched and broken by the wind. Two grubby children, apparently untended, poked at an anthill near the gate. Imogene stopped and the toddlers left their game to stare up at her with solemn eyes. She gave each a penny and bought two smiles. As she left, one of the bright coppers disappeared into a dirt-streaked mouth.
    In the fifth week of her stay, she and Mrs. Utterback were in the backyard at a table under the spreading branches of an oak, surrounded by the glue pots and papers. Piles of mended books lay drying in the late afternoon sun, boxes of broken and torn primers were scattered under the table and around their chairs. Mrs. Utterback delicately dabbed glue onto the spine of a Webster’s Speller that had been new when she was a girl in school. Imogene had just started for the house to fetch more lemonade when the side gate banged and a disheveled Negro child ran into the yard—a little girl not more than seven years old. Gulping for air, she pulled herself up short in front of Mrs. Utterback, too much out of breath to talk coherently. Imogene stopped on the back steps.
    “It all gone bad,” the child gasped. “an’ she been cryin’ for you. It all gone bad an’ Momma sent me.”
    Mrs. Utterback took the child by the shoulders and pulled her through the tangle of boxes and onto her lap. “Melissa, sit quiet until thee can breathe.” She held out her glass and the little girl drank the last swallows of lemonade. Her thirst quenched and her excitement abated, she started again.
    “Mary Beth Ramsey havin’ her baby an’ Momma ’fraid it go bad. She go over to help, but Missus Sankey say she don’t want no nigger woman around, so Momma stay under the window ’cause she like Missus Ramsey. Momma said it all gone bad.” Melissa had worked herself back into a fright; she leaped off Mrs. Utterback’s lap and pulled at her hands.
    Imogene ran down the steps. “Quick, child, run. I can keep up.” She turned to the older woman. “I’ve got to get to her.”
    Mrs. Utterback was halfway to the house. “I’ll get Dr. Stricker and follow you.”
    Melissa grabbed Imogene’s hand and darted out the gate. It was more than a mile across town to the Ramseys’ house, and when the child tired, Imogene carried her, her long strides throwing her skirts before her. The shady lanes, with their tidy border of homes, grew ragged, the fences leaning and unpainted. Dogs wandered unconfined, sniffing at corners and poking their noses into refuse dumped in the street. The air was foul with the odor of rot, and clouds of flies buzzed over the garbage.
    “There!” the girl cried finally, and pointed to a small house near the end of the street, the unfenced yard overgrown with weeds and only the memory of paint still clinging to the weathered wood. Imogene broke into a run. Melissa’s mother, a heavyset woman of indeterminate age, was there to meet them.
    “I told you to git Miss Utterback!” she scolded.
    “She’s coming with the doctor,” Imogene intervened.
    “You better do somethin’ now,” the Negro woman warned, “or there goin’ to be no need for the doctor; Miss Sankey goin’ to kill that child.” She took Imogene by the arm and propelled her up the steps.