Duty, Page 2

"My mother." Carmen sighed, and for the first time Olida saw the tears glittering in her dark eyes, running down her smooth brown cheeks. "I came in the back door. I had a key."

  "You -- " You ain’t a ghost, Olida almost blurted, and felt herself warm up with embarassment. "My God, girl, you didn’t have to be here, to see that. We would’ve cleaned it up. You didn’t have to -- "

  She remembered Carmen’s sponge gliding down the wall, knocking bits of her mother’s brain loose. Her mouth just dried up with sorrow and shock, and Carmen blinked back tears and smiled.

  "It was my duty," she said.

  Olida tried to speak, couldn’t. She picked up her pail with a shaking hand and opened the front door. There, with the sun warm on her face and clean outside air in her lungs, she looked back at the other woman. Carmen was touching the picture again, fingertips trembling on the perfectly duplicated face there.

  "You can come with us," Olida offered awkwardly. "We’re gonna go get somethin’ to drink. Come."

  Carmen shook her head, and turned her back. As Olida swung the door shut, she saw the girl had gone away, somewhere else, somewhere sad and quiet.

  Somewhere Olida couldn’t follow.

  Miz Grainger wasn’t pleased to be waiting in the hot sun. She fanned her face with a fat magazine while Olida came down the steps and squinted at the sun.

  "Lord, what kept you?" she asked crossly, and held out an envelope. "There’s a bonus there, too, for doing it so quick."

  "Shouldn’t take it," Olida grunted and shoved it in her pocket without counting. "That girl did a lot of it."

  "Girl?" Miz Grainger asked, and reached up to pat her shellacked hair. The whole beehive shook when she touched it. "What girl?"

  "Carmen -- you know, the daughter."

  Miz Grainger’s magazine hit the ground in a puff of dust and a blizzard of fluttering pages. Her mouth worked in its shell of peach-colored lipstick, and her face went gray-green. Olida took a step backward.

  "Carmen didn’t have no daughter," Miz Grainger said weakly.

  Olida turned slowly to face the house. A curtain stirred, and fell, with the breath of the air conditioner.

  Miz Grainger joined them for a drink.