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Show in my father's house/ 141 still he did not get well until Aunt Rachel phoned from Mexico. She had met a young Indian doctor who gave her a prescription for their wasting babies. My father took the name of the drug and bought some for my brother, who improved overnight. Everyone seemed surprised that Aunt Rachel initiated the break-through, as though she was incapable of intelligent contact with other human beings. My father, perhaps feeling that Aunt Rachel had proven her capacity for discretion and her worth, phoned that they should come home. Soon we were complete, a family again. Once the baby recovered, life settled into a dreary sameness. Though glad to be home, I missed the color and excitement of traveling and the brief buoyancy of my mother's spirits. And I missed seeing strange people. One day, while swinging on the rope from the hayloft, I saw a battered blue pickup truck storm down the driveway. Somehow I knew it was the LeBarons'; my father said they were in town. A shiver of curiousity traversed my spine and I walked to the barn door, gaping, as the truck crunched to a stop. Now, looking back, I think of that visit as a harbinger, a reminder that our reprieve was temporary. A visit from the exiles pointed up the irrevokable banishment from our home, our church, our Zion, reflected alienation like a warped mirror or a disease. As usual when someone came to visit, the whole family erupted from the house, spilling from doors into the gravelled |
