Chapter 9: Exhibit A

I read my mother's signature four times, standing in Jesse's doorway.

Then I folded the petition in half and put it in my back pocket.

"She thinks she's protecting you," Jesse said.

"From what? From Callie?"

"From whatever she's afraid of."

The probate courtroom was on the second floor of the county courthouse, with tall windows and a ceiling fan that ticked.

By Tuesday morning at nine it was full.

Bell Shoals had heard about the dress, and then about the arrest, and now it wanted to see the Coker girl get put away.

The seamstress sat in the third row with her pocketbook on her knees.

Price sat behind his mother, with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands.

Miss Eugenia sat very straight in the front row in a navy suit.

Her brother sat beside her in his uniform, working a toothpick.

My mother sat at the petitioner's table with a lawyer from the county.

She didn't look at me once.

Daddy sat behind her, and he looked at me the whole time.

I didn't have a lawyer.

I had Jesse in the first row on my side, and a manila folder.

"Miss Coker, you understand you're entitled to counsel," he said.

"Yes, sir. I'd like to go ahead."

The county lawyer called the doctor first.

He was a thin man in a brown sweater.

He'd seen me for fifteen minutes on Monday, because my father asked him to.

"Miss Coker has a fixed belief that she has a younger sister," he said. "There's no record of any such person."

"Anything else?"

"She believes her left hand doesn't appear in photographs."

He looked at me kindly, which was worse. "That's a recognized kind of delusion about the body."

The lawyer called the chief next.

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