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Show in my father's house/ 161 "How can people be so messy!" she declared and disappeared behind the curtain around her bed; "What's wrong with Aunt Helga?" I asked my mother. My mother stared at her hands. "Time is passing. She's getting older - we're thirty-six, now - and she hoped she would have a baby here. But it was a mistake." "A mistake? You mean, like our leaving home?" She nodded. "There is no baby. Just as there is no going home." At last came a letter from Aunt Sarah, reporting on the others. My father and she had stayed together one night longer on the white house grounds, she to assuage his loneliness, he to keep his practice going and money coming as long as possible. The next morning a woman in the group offered to keep house for my father, so Aunt Sarah drove off with her children to Blackfoot, Idaho, to stay with my father's sister. The woman who kept house for my father was most willing in her labors for him. (Later, we realized she had fallen in love with him, for she asked to come into his family.) One morning the police presented her with a summons for my father. She refused the summons and refused to let them search the house without a warrant. As soon as they were gone, my father hid on the gritty car-floor while she drove him beyond the county. When he had dropped her off, he left the state. Meanwhile, Aunt Gerda and Aunt Rachel settled in an Idaho city. Aunt Gerda began work almost immediately and |
