“Now, don’t fall asleep, Nana. Your party’s about to begin,”she whispers, and slips out of the room.
Sleep. It would be so easy to let my wrinkled eyelids droop and to fall asleep like a fat old cat in the sun. I blink several times to keep awake and turn my gaze to the dining room where a silver bowl of yellow roses graces the table in honor of my eighty-sixth birthday. The linen has been laid and soon I shall feel its crispness beneath my fingertips. The heavy silverware is in place and for a moment I wonder if my weak, old hands will handle it without embarrassing clatters on the delicate china. Theforting sound of voices and dinner preparations lulls me and I begin to caress the smooth, cool leather of Rebecca’s new shoes, which lie in my lap. With each touch, I relax, I let go. With each touch I remember another pair of shoes so long ago. Was I only thirty-nine? Impossible! I can almost hear the voice that called to me as I stood in my garden on that scorching3 afternoon in that relentless summer of 1935.
“Missus, say, Missus!”
The husky voice startled me and I turned quickly. The man at the fence was young, hardly twenty, with blond hair tousled like a little boy’s. His clothes were dusty and rumpled, and I eyed him warily. I often saw ragged, tired, solitary men pass by the house from the rail yards nearby, men off the freights, men moving about the co