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Show 39 Mama was always afraid Revo would die after that. She had bad dreams about it. Sometimes the gypsies came through Joseph and the women went from house to house telling fortunes for anything of value. "Let me see your hand, lady, " but it was not the hand these clever people needed to ferret out the fears of their customers. "You have a sickly child. (Every woman those days had a sickly child.) This child will never live to grow up! But I can put a charm on her. " Because by this time, led by the mother's eyes, the sickly child was easily identified. There was always a lot of mumbo-jumbo about wrapping various items in bags, sleeping with them under the pillow, or burying them in the ground, to cure warts and warn off evil spirits. Mama had the Gospel, but she also had a wide streak of superstition, and Revo's threatened death was like the sword of Damocles over her head. When she painted the pantry door and Revo left her baby fingermarks in the wet paint Mama wouldn't sand them off, but wept sometimes when she saw them as if Revo had already died and this was all she had left. Papa had more faith, or less superstition. He was not worried about Revo dying, and she didn't. This always set Revo a little apart from the rest of us. She was our angel child; we stood a little in awe of her, didn't fight with her so much, and that is how she grew to be an angel grownup with thousands of friends, a school teacher, a missionary, and didn't marry until she was past forty. She had one child then, a perfectly beautiful angel baby, who died in fifteen hours, and there, at last, came the tragic death. |
