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Show in my father's house/ 35 small apartment upstairs in the white house seemed so bare: by the time she spent her grocery allowance on such ambrosia for her nine children, she had no funds to furnish the house. As we ate, my father brought up a serious matter. He reminded everyone to keep the pasture gate which led to Cottonwood Creek closed at all times. "The creek is cold and higher than usual," he said. "We don't want to lose another of our babes to the water." Instinctively everyone turned to look at Aunt Elsa, the youngest of my father's wives -- scarcely half the age of Aunt Gerda when she married. Everyone knew she still grieved for little Marie, her oldest daughter who had drowned in the pond while only a toddler, because she had asked that no one wash away the tiny mud-prints on Aunt LaVona's basement window. Marie had played there the day she drowned, patting the glass and waving at her mother who darted inside and asked Aunt LaVona to keep an eye on the children while she cleaned my father's office. My father was due to return from a mission with the Mexico Lamanites (as we Mormons called Indians) and Aunt Elsa wanted everything spick-and-span for him. Marie was only a month younger than I, and from the beginning we had played together. I had watched as she reached out for the ducks sliding on the shining pond. Then my mother called me to her, and I ran, hugging her legs as she hung clothes on the lines at the rear of the grey house. "You stay here," she had admonished as she ran inside with the empty basket. |