yelled.
âNuisance broke down the door,â shouted Etta. âYou better lock him up good.â
Galen burst into tears, and Helen sank to her knees beside him.
âThere, there, honey lamb. No oneâs going to hurt you. Helen will lock the doors and windows.â She held his head against her neck. âAnd Iâll let you play with my Old Maid cards.â Galenâs shoulders stopped shaking. âAnd Iâll even let you touch my new lampshade.â
âCan I go down cellar and see your chest?â Galen said in a sodden voice.
Flicking the switch by the cellar door and taking each of us by the hand, Helen led us down the steps, dimly lit, past a clothesline sagging with diapers, to a big brassbound chest.
âCan I open it?â snuffled Galen.
âGo ahead,â said Helen.
So Galen lifted the lid very slowly. It was like a thing from dreams, this box, big as a coffin, full of bedspreads and blankets and dishes. This is the way I would like to keep my whole past, I thought, folded away where I could take out last yearâs Christmas or my first birthday and play dress-up whenever I liked. Resting carefully on top of a platter painted with turkeys, the lampshade waited. It needed a light to show clearly the man and woman walking in a garden painted on the front.
âI got it for seventy-five cents at a rummage sale,â Helen announced proudly. âItâs not paper, either. Itâs real satin, and all clean.â
âToo bad itâs purple,â I said thoughtlessly, and then, seeing Iâd hurt her, I added, âbut I like the two people in the garden.â
âWhat comes after the garden?â asked Galen, pointing to the edge of the picture.
âNothing. Donât poke at it,â said Helen crossly.
And she herded us upstairs.
Etta had gotten control of herself and was crocheting as if nothing had happened, but her face looked like bleached flour. The lower half of the screen door was hanging out, torn in twoâI touched it, awestruck. Helen went to the sink and started snapping the stems off the beans heaped on the drainboard.
âEtta,â I said, and I felt my tongue thicken in my mouth, âDid you ever see Godâs face?â
âNobody has ever seen Godâs face,â said Etta. âOnly His hinder parts.â
Helen touched her buttocks absentmindedly.
âHis what?â said Galen.
âHis hinderparts,â repeated Etta. âNobody will ever see His face till the last day.â
Etta knew the Bible better than any of us, but she didnât know I gave God the head of an ass.
âHow do you know which day is the last day?â asked Galen.
âWhen all the signs have come to pass, that will be the last day,â said Etta mysteriously. âOh, they wonât all come at once. Theyâll be spread out over the centuries, for a thousand years in the Lordâs sight are but as yesterday when they are past.â
âSomethingâs burning,â exclaimed Helen. She peeked into the soup pot, pushed the chicken legs down, clapped on the lid like a jailer, and turned off the stove. Then she said to Etta, a little sadly, âAll those things are mighty hard to understandâââ
A crash outside cut her off. For an instant none of us moved.
âThe raccoon is rummaging through the garbage pail again,â Helen squeaked. âHe comes pretty near every night.â
We all exhaled.
âGo on about the signs,â I urged Etta.
Etta smoothed a finished snowflake across the back of her hand.
âWhen my grandfather was a little boy, he saw the darkening of the sky. Thatâs one of the signs. The cows came home and the chickens went to roost just like it was night. And stars fell out of the sky. People thought they would get burnt up, and some folks killed theirselves.â
âIs this a ghost story?â asked Galen nervously.
Etta scowled at him over the