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Blind wet sheets flapping on the lines... sun in your eyes, dark gold sun full of little black spots, you have to blink and blink... round eyes of Jimmie....  Jimmie’s blue jumper... blue shadow of wall... all the world holding still as when a clock stops... streets still... people still... no streets... no people... only sky and wall... sun glaring bright as God down at you and Jimmie... shadow like a purple cloth trailing off the wall...

Wild wet sheets flapping in the wind... big slippered feet flapping too... big-balloon-face rushing up the alley... houses closing up again... windows looking round... ...  Mabel pulls you in the gate and shakes you and tells you not to tell your mama...  And you wonder if God has spoiled Jimmie.

III

MAMA

Mama’s face is smooth and pale as tea-rose leaves.  That ivory oval of aunt Gem you sucked the miniature off had black black hair like mama.

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Pit-it-ty-pat, Mama walks so fast, street lamps jig without bending a leg... lights in the windows play twinkling tunes on crimson and blue bottles like bubbles big as balloons...  Faster and faster... and pink light spurts over cakes doing polkas in little white shirts, with cake-princesses in flounced white skirts.

Pit-pat—­ mama walks slower... slower and... slower...  Eyes... lamps... stars... acres and acres of stars... bells... and sleepily flapping feet....  You’re glad mama walks slow.  It’s nice to be carried along up high near the stars that look at you with a grave, great look.

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Every night mama sings you to sleep.  When she sings, O for the light of thine eyes Dolores, there’s a castle on a cliff and the sea roars like lions.  It leaps at the castle and the cliff knocks it down but always the sea shakes its flattened head and gets up again.  The castle has no roof so the rain spins silvery webs in it, and Dolores’ face floats dim and beautiful the way flowers do when they are drowned.  Step by white step she goes up the castle stairs, but the stair goes up into the sky and the sky keeps going up too, and none of them ever get there.

When mama sings Ba ba black sheep, the stars seem to shine through her voice so everything has to be still, and when she has finished singing her song goes up off the earth, higher and higher... till it is only as big as a tiny silver bird with nothing but moonlight around it.

IV

BETTY

You can see the sandhills from our new room.  Butterflies live in the sandhills and lizards and centipedes.  If you keep very still lizards will think you a stone and run over your lap.  Butterflies’ liveries are scarlet and black.  They drive chariots in air.  People in the chariots are pale as dew—­ you can see right through them—­ but the chariots are made of gold of the sun.  They go