‘What am I supposed to do about that?’ he wanted to know.
Janie turned her head to look into the bassinet. ‘Feed him.’ The man nodded and began fiddling around the fire.
Meanwhile, the little Negro girl had been standing in the one spot with her big eyes right out on her cheekbones, looking at me. Janie went back to her painting and the baby just lay there same as always, so I stared right back at the little Negro girl. I snapped, ‘What the hell are you gawking at?’
She grinned at me. ‘Gerry ho-ho,’ she said, and disappeared. I mean she really disappeared, went out like a light, leaving her clothes where she had been. Her little dress billowed in the air and fell in a heap where she had been, and that was that. She was gone.
‘Gerry hee-hee,’ I heard. I looked up, and there she was, stark naked, wedged in a space where a little outcropping on the rock wall stuck out just below the ceiling. The second I saw her she disappeared again.
‘Gerry ho-ho,’ she said. Now she was on top of the row of boxes they used as storage shelves, over on the other side of the room.
‘Gerry hee-hee!’ Now she was under the table. ‘Gerry ho-ho!’ This time she was right in the corner with me, crowding me.
I yelped and tried to get out of the way and bumped the stool. I was afraid of it, so I shrank back again and the little girl was gone.
The man glanced over his shoulder from where he was working at the fire. ‘Cut it out, you kids,’ he said.
There was a silence, and then the girl came slowly out from the bottom row of shelves. She walked across to her dress and put it on.