Chapter One

One
February 1991, Chicago

There comes a time you've walked so long on a twisted path you forget what you set out looking for and are content just to find your way home.

I walk the city's streets after winter's dark has fallen-that dark that comes at half past four and is strange to me even now, though it suits my heart. Most nights I wander in the chill air and have no direction, but this night I have a small mission, which pertains to Bertha in the flat across the hall from me, a kindly enough Mississippi woman ten years older than me who is big as a bus and so much blacker than me, we might as well be from two different races God set on the earth. Bertha's been complaining tru the evening that her belly's knotted with pain and cramps.

"You want a doctor, then," I tell her, standing beside her bed, my back to the door that opens to the dim hallway and onto my own front door. "You don' fool with pain in the belly. Might be your appendix want to burst."

"No, girl," she tells me. "Don't need no doctor. Don't be bothering no doctor in the night. I'm certain it's fixing to pass. Might just be the change coming hard now I'm past forty, like it did for Mama."

"You and your mama not the same person, in the same body."

"Those things pass on down," she says.

I think she's just acting brave, because her face is drawn with pain. "You needing to be ox stubborn now?" I ask her. "Maybe we go to the Emergency and that way no bother the doctor at home. That satisfy?" I am ready to pack her up and take her to the clinic in a cab. Truth be told, I'm ready to get out of the