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| Jesse Bohlingher, born with Polio |
"Is this Chud in Indiana?"
"Must be. Let me see it, since it's out."
"No harm in it?"
"It says postcard on the back Grandma Pearl."
"Must've been a fancy photograph. Maybe a wedding. Here, put it back where you got it."
"But I don't really know what page it was on."
"Well, then maybe you'll have to explain yourself."
Sherry didn't know that God had different religions.
She probably went to her spot up in the barn, in the loft, to think on why...there's something different between their books.
Same spot where Pearl discovered, Sherry's an artist.
"It was still there when I went to college," Mama tells me when we climbed up the ladder.
If we go pretty quick we won't see any spiders, she assures.
Up in there I saw Mama's little mama crayons. Some were just bits, left.
"I had an old piece of plaster board for a canvas," she explained. And she dug it out from behind some big barn beams and hay squares. I saw it. It really was a piece of wall with a drawing on it. Looked like a boat and a rainbow and some kind of buildings and all kinds of stuff. Mama says Grandma Pearl didn't get mad when little mama went into her loft to work on it.
"In high school, I took an Art Class and I got some paper, too," Mama explains. She told me her Art Teacher's name but I forgot because I was remembering the drawing of the Candy Girl back in New York in Mama's real Workshop. Mama said that was Imagination put together with Technical Skills. Daddy made it into a Poster in the City.
"Mrs. Somebody taught me to draw," Mama was explaining as I kept one foot in place to steady my body while my eyes were following her all around in the Loft. She had moves. First she'd climb the ladder while she was holding onto a hairy, prickly rope. Then she'd look out her secret window. Then she'd get out her piece of wall. And the crayons which were in a different spot. They were in a can that smelled like crayons. Then she'd Imagine What To Draw. Sometimes she'd just color in Coloring Books. And sometimes she'd write stories too. She said she'd show me sometime when we got home. And I couldn't really figure out how Mama could have two homes so far apart, but I knew she did.
Down below, the night before, Chud showed me a barrel full of old parts. Heavy metal and all size screws, really big bolts and "pull-ees" and some "grease-got-yer-hand" coated stuff too. He let me keep one thing. And my brother, too, got to pick one thing to save.
My brother's thing was bigger, but I didn't care...mine was a light-switch-not-in-a-wall. So I could turn on my Imagination anytime.
Back in Pearl's kitchen...
Mama saw Grandma looking at the pic-sure.
"Why did you cry Grandma Pearl? Did I do something "bad"? Little mama asked; worried.
Adjusting the skillet on the stove, Pearl would've felt touched. And maybe not right away, but she would've explained about "God working in mysterious ways"...
...and Jess is my angel, Pearl would've said softly.
"I think he's my angel, too," little mama would've said. "And you're just like him, you're two, MY angels...the pair in my hand...better than aces, I've got angels watching over me."
