But as long as the one thing on her mind was Missy’s baby, she was just plain happy. The best of everything she remembered became the whole dream of what she could look forward to. So when the memory of some pleasant day she had put out of sight came back to her, even the taste of a clover blossom or the smell of the wind at evening, the pleasure of it was a sort of shock, and if she forgot that she shouldn’t be talking out loud, she’d say, “Yes, yes,” as if time could be coaxed into getting on with itself. She made a little garden out behind the house, a row of peas and a row of carrots, and planted some marigolds by the front steps. There wasn’t really enough sunshine, the buildings were so close, but she wanted the feel of real dirt on her hands, not just the grime and mess she was always dealing with. The dirt would clean away the feeling and the smell of it. She walked a long way to find a store that sold seeds, the farthest she had been from Mrs. since she came there. It made her light-headed. Mrs. had begun talking about attracting a better class of customer now that the place had a little polish, and she mostly let Lila do whatever she wanted, pretending she was the one who had thought of it. The other girls wouldn’t even go down the block to buy a loaf of bread because they thought people looked at them, but Lila didn’t really care about that. She always felt strange in a town, but that was all right. It reminded her of the way she and Mellie used to steal a look at their reflections in a store window, waving their arms and making faces if they thought nobody was watching, laughing at the laughing ghosts of themselves for just the minute their pride let them risk, then walking on, thinking they had done something anyone else would notice or give a thought to, and laughing. Sometimes Lila walked away from that house as if she might just keep walking, block after block after block, imagining the night when she really would leave. Then she’d turn and go back to the house again, not because of Mrs., just waiting for the baby.
She hated to remember how swept up in it all she had been, how ridiculous she would have seemed to anyone who knew what she’d been thinking. That’s one good thing about the way life is, that no one can know you if you don’t let them. Oh, they noticed that she was acting different, and they tried to guess the reason for it, how she could have a boyfriend when she was so tough and wore out and never even curled her hair now that she was just a cleaning woman. Never you mind. He’s some old bum on the street. No business of yours. Probly found him picking through a trash can. They were just mean no matter what, so she didn’t even listen.
Lila spent her time waiting, working so far as anyone could see, but really just passing the time. Sometimes, when Missy didn’t want to go downstairs, bringing a little supper from the kitchen. Missy didn’t like her any better for it, but that was all right. She was so sad there was nothing she liked, nothing and nobody. Mack didn’t come around, and she never mentioned him. She knew better than to trust him at all, but he had favored her for a long time, and she must have missed him. It got so that Lila had to open the seams of the biggest nightgown she could find, and pin up the hem of it, too, since Missy was no taller than a child. She’d bring a basin of water for her feet, thinking whatever comforted Missy might comfort the child. She tried to sleep lightly enough to hear, over the noise there always was in that house at night, any sound that might mean the birth was coming. Then one morning she came up from the cellar, and there was Missy with a coat she’d never seen before thrown over her and holding a carpetbag, standing at the door with a short, plump woman who had one hand on the doorknob and the other on Missy’s elbow. “My sister,” she said. “We’re leaving. We don’t want no part of this place.”
The sister said, “Then let’s go, Edith. The sun will be up.”
But Missy just stood there, looking at the credenza. Lila said, “Something of yours in there?” The lower edge of the door hung an inch or so below the bottom shelf. She could just pull at it and pop the door open, it was so dry and shabby. She knew this from all the times she’d tried to polish it. So she did, and it opened, and she said, “Take what’s yours.” She saw Missy pause over the sad little odds and ends and then take at least half of them, even Doll’s knife. “Well,” she said, “that ain’t yours, that knife. I don’t know about the rest.”
The sister said, “She don’t want any of it. Put it back. You don’t want nothing from this damn place, Edith, not one thing.”
Lila said, “Where you going?”
“None of your business,” the sister said. “A long way from here, that’s for sure.” So Missy left without whatever it was that had kept her lingering, and Lila had Doll’s knife in her hand again, the shape and weight of it so familiar she felt as if it had always been there. Mrs. would yell when she saw what had happened to that cabinet. The little tongue of the lock had pulled right through the wood, splintering it. But Lila just stood there thinking, I never will see that baby. I’ve been almost feeling it in my arms, singing to it, and I’ll never even see it. How could I have been so sure Missy would have it here, that she never would tell anybody where to find her damn sister? I never even believed she had a sister. Why did I think I knew how things would happen? It was because time was about to bring her back to the old life, where it seemed as though she could do what was asked of her. She had a dream sometimes that she was running along a road and there was Doll ahead of her, waiting for her, and she just ran into her arms, and she thought, It’s over now, I’m not lost anymore, and the dream had all the sweetness of a mild day in summer. If you could smell in dreams, it would be the smell of hay on the softest breeze and sunlight warming the fields. She thought that was going to be waiting for her, that life, and she never even stopped to wonder about herself for thinking that way. I been crazy for a long time, she said.
The morning Missy left, Lila found a suitcase in a closet and put a few things in it, a hairbrush and a towel and a nightgown, slipped the knife into her stocking, and left the house. She walked until the sun came up, and until there were people in the street. There was just no end to the city. So she went into a hotel and asked if they could use a cleaning woman. And then the years passed. She didn’t mind so much. It was just work. No need to smile at people you’ll never see again. The other women would tell her to ease up a little. You start doing that, they going to start expecting it. Lila heard them talking about her, and they meant for her to hear. She don’t have another job to go to when she done here. She don’t have no children to look after. Nobody going to be hanging on her skirts, fussing for their supper.