``Well that whole family can fly,'' she said, ``that's a well known fact.''
She sat by the window in her rocker with the bright Afghan across her lap. Her face was a terrible thing, ground down and beaten in by nine decades of hard living. Eyes angry and bright as a caged eagle. There was no one else in the room. No one listening.
``I went with them once,'' she said. ``They took me with them. I was a girl then and not strong. I got the Spanish flu and I couldn't move. I was all dried up and I hadn't peed in two days. My aunt soaked a sheet in vinegar and hung it over the door and they didn't come in to care for me they thought I'd die for sure and maybe they wanted me to. I did their housework you know.
``Then they showed up, that family, the four of them. `Come with us,' they said and it was a cold night but I didn't feel cold and I went with them out the window and they took me with them to the tropic places where people live under the sun and eat fruit from the trees and swim in warm blue water and I walked on a white beach of warm sand and I picked up shells and I danced in the waves and I never got tired. In the morning I felt so strong I yelled at my aunt you bring me a pot of tea and she did and I got better.''
The old woman turned herself stiffly to look around the bleak room. ``I had a shell,'' she said. ``I had a shell I brought back with me. I used to hold it when I gave birth. I don't know where it went. I lost it. That family though, they hold their secret fast. I'd tell them sometimes `I know your secret' and they'd look at me funny. They look at me funny to this day.''
She put up a huge, gnarled hand to touch her cheekbones.
``I believe they're coming for me now,'' she said.