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Abby smiled. “It seems your daughter has donated her spice rack to the making of mud pies.”

Leta wondered, “I wonder if she knows she’s donated it?”

“Oh, look closer. Look at the corner of the house.” Indeed, there at the right corner of the house, right at the very edge, stood LaVerne, barely peeking around the corner to watch what the girl was doing. For a moment, she looked out at the land around her and it was as if she could see Leta and Abby watching her watch them. But then she shook her head and switched her attention back to the girl who was now gently mixing the mud with the spice. Her hands were dirty and the mud began to dry on them. She began rubbing her hands together and sent knots of mud onto the concrete patio. Making a mess. LaVerne turned away, knowing she would have to sweep the walk before she would be able to sleep that night.

The girl finally went to the side of the house to rinse her hands from the spigot there. In her way, she sprayed water on the side of the house, along with the dust and the dirt. She took her small hand and tried to clean the side of the house with it, only leaving muddy smears on the once immaculate house. She turned off the water, and walked away, obviously hoping that no one would notice what she had done. She sat next to her drying mud pie with her feet in the grass. She looked out at the road and counted the passing cars, never noticing the house or the women who sat inside.

Abby looked back to her sock, she had misworked some stitches and now set about removing them. She thought for a moment and then said, “It was hard to lose your father when I did.”

Lena sat up with a jolt. Her mother never spoke of her father. She had kept one small photo of him out where the girls could see him, otherwise, there was no mention made of him.

Abby continued as if she had not noticed that she had startled her daughter with her words. “While you said that you never thought that losing the babies hurt, I never thought of how old our ancestors were when they were dealing with real life until I lost your father.” She focused on the stitches, never looking up at Leta while she spoke. “I was 18 when I married him, The same age you were when you married your Charley. Two years younger than your LaVerne when she married her Charles. Two years older than my own mother when she married my father. I was 19 when Glennie was born and 21 when she died. I was 21 when I had Grace, 26 when I had you, and 28 when your father died and I had Josephine right after he died. Twenty eight years old and I was a widow with three children. It was seven years before I decided to marry Bud, never imagining that I would have Bob at the age of 42. Forty two! You made me a grandmother when your brother was four years old! I never thought I’d have children in different generations! But then, I never imagined a lot of things that happened in my life.”

Leta sat and digested this. She had never thought much about the ages of her mother when these things happened. Leta thought that being 31 with a sick child was a lot of God to ask her to handle. The way her mother was so expressionless as she listed off the ages at which she had been handed much much more to deal with made Leta contemplate her in a new light. Again. She found that her relationship with her mother was ever changing, it was never simple, never black and white. Which was odd considering Abby showed the world a face that never allowed you to consider shades of grey. Actions were either Godly or not Godly and there was no middle ground in the house of Abby.

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Leta watched Abby’s face. It was different that before. She felt an honesty there that was usually lacking. Not to say that Abby had ever lied, but she had always kept the part back about feeling that failure, feeling that despair. This was thing that Leta had always needed to hear. Leta had felt a touch of that failure before, when LaVerne was stricken with the Polio on her 9th birthday, as she grew up with a crippled leg. Leta had felt that failure of not protecting her child well enough. She’d always wanted to share that with Abby, but always felt that her mother would only speak to her of God’s will and faith, and chide her for ever doubting what was happening in her life.

Leta let out a sigh of relief, there was no way she could quickly find her words, to tell her mother that she had finally said what she needed to hear. She only nodded at her mother and tried to let the light in her eyes say what she could not find the words to express.

She started slowly, wandering down another path of thought. “I remember looking through Grandfather’s Bible at all the names and dates. I remember seeing all the babies who died so early and I thought they didn’t matter. I thought that because it happened before I was born, and because there were just so many babies, that somehow the babies weren’t loved until they were older, that they weren’t valued until they could do work, that they weren’t real until you got to know them. It took holding my own babies to even begin to understand that those little babies mattered. That they meant something from the time you could feel the quickening, through their birth and their life and their death. I never understood how much it must have hurt to lose Glennie. How hard it was to be pregnant and mourning and baby at the same time.”

Abby nodded. “I do understand that. We don’t think of the humanity in the stories. In the dried ink on the brittle pieces of paper in some musty book. We don’t think that those names drew breath, that they cried, that they breathed their sweet breath onto the necks of their mothers. I didn’t understand either until I watched your Grandfather write the date of Glenna’s death in that very Bible. Then I understood with ever fiber just how much my own mother must have grieved for my siblings.”

“May I ask her about it when she comes in next?” If Abby was tricky to question, then Elizabeth was the Sphinx of Egypt.

“You watch me, if I nod at you, then you may feel free to question. I can not assure you that she will answer you, but you may attempt if you feel necessary.”

This was the best Leta could hope for. That Abby had not shut her down with a thin lipped, stern glare, was nothing short of amazing.

They sat in silence and watched the girl in the yellow sundress. Leta’s great granddaughter. Abby’s great great granddaughter. The girl was walking in and out of the house, carefully setting small glass jars on the steps of the while house, where there were 6 jars, she returned with what appeared to be a metal pie pan. She carefully walked in her bare feet to an area of the lawn that had soft mud in it. She scooped the mud in her hands and walked it back to the house where she set it in the pan with a soft “plop”. She opened the small jars one by one, sniffing at their tops until she found one that suited her. She went to sprinkle a bit of the contents onto the mud in the pan, but seemingly overshot her sprinkle and created a cloud of dark brown powder around her that she tried to sweep away with her hand in front of her face, but not before she let out a sneeze.

The breeze carried the smell over to the wood slatted house, through the window to the women. Leta was confused. “Cloves? What on earth….?”

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