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Show in my father's house/ 218 quility, waiting for spring. I picked up a handful of snow and touched it to my lips. It stung my teeth, but tasted clean and empty. I liked its blankness, and half-wished that the snow would never melt, for all seemed poised and perfect beneath the white blanket. My mother was in the kitchen, looking sleepy and sweet and comfortable in her old housedress. The smell of bleach bit through the odor of bread baking; it was Monday, washday- "Did Daddy call yet?" I asked, pecking her mouth as I passed through the kitchen. Ever since we had come upon a horrible head-on wreck, car twisted around the person like badly-fitting armor and blood spurting from its grip, my father called, and asked for himself, to let us know he had arrived safely. "Shhh!" my mother motioned me into the hall. "Aunt Helga is resting. She slipped on some ice when she stepped out for the newspaper this morning. Jake should have shoveled the walk after school yesterday, but he had to work. And now this has happened." "Is the baby all right? A gnawing shadow ferreted my stomach. How horrible if one of my mother's children had somehow ruined the Lord's blessing to Aunt Helga! "I think so. I hope so." She sighed and set my lunch before me. I stared at the food thinking of my father's promise to Aunt Helga given when I was a baby- Aunt Helga had leaned on that promise, never giving up hope, as though she was Sarah of the Old Testament and my father another Abraham, trying to make the barren desert fruitful. Sometimes I thought that Aunt Helga's life was |