Chapter 24: Tuesday

In February the box came on a Tuesday, at seven in the morning, while the toast was burning.

I was standing at Luther's stove in his flannel shirt and wool socks, scraping the black off a slice with a butter knife.

Luther came in from the porch with the box under one arm and his hair still wet from the shower.

"It's from the publisher's rep," he said. "It's heavy."

"What is it?"

"A book, from the look of the return label."

He set it on the kitchen table and stepped back.

I wiped my hands on the flannel and cut the tape with the same butter knife.

Inside, in white tissue, lay one copy of a small hardcover with a soft gray cover and a pencil line drawn across it in my own hand.

Pages.

Under the title, in smaller letters, it said: by Emmy Carrow and nine others.

I turned it over, and I sat down at the table.

It had taken seven weeks, and a small press that had never printed anything but poetry.

The pages were mine, in pencil, as I had drawn them in the sketchbooks, uncropped, with the cross-outs left in.

Between them were the pages of the others.

The woman in the cardigan had given us four lines, in a hand that slanted hard to the right.

Under her name, her words read:

"I was timed for eleven years."

"I am sixty-eight now, and I am taking as long as I like."

The woman in scrubs had written a page about her kitchen floor.

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