What she talked of was all gone past, for that was all that was worth telling. Nothing happened day to day that we cared to stick in our memories for later, and the things that stuck we wished wouldn’t’ve. It was Virginia, south of Petersburg, and a hungry belly was at least a sign you were alive. The stories filled up the holes, made our sorrow step back for a spell, though sorrow’s maybe too grand a word, us being children then and feeling more boredom than grief at our endless captivity. Like a winter without any thaw, on and on. My own chatter I can’t explain, but I did talk too much, my mother was right. I was a boy, I liked the sound of my voice. She was a light-skinned woman who wore her hair in stripped rags, two teeth missing, and she had a pocket in her apron where she slid crusts and old biscuits for me to find. There were hills humpbacked on hills and trees so green they looked like moss underwater, like both sides of the earth were the same. But I didn’t think it was beautiful then, and she didn’t raise me.
