"Men don't fall in love with wh.o.r.es, Sara," May had screamed at her back when Sara stormed off angry and hurt.

Now someone yelled for May and then Ruby, but not Sara, and so May knew immediately Sara was the one in trouble.

May could recall taking the stairs in twos, the sound of Ruby's feet behind her. Her hip still pained her in bad weather from where she'd slammed into the doorframe of her bedroom in a rush to get to her bed. She'd dropped down to the floor so hard that her stockings ripped and the skin on both her knees split wide open.

The pain must have erased the moment she reached beneath her bed and wrapped her hand around the cold steel of the shotgun, but it had happened. She knew that for sure when time swam back again and she was standing over Shonuff Clayton, the gun pointed right at his head.

"You let her go!"

Shonuff had Sara pinned in the corner of her bedroom. His hands were locked around her throat and his eyes were stretched wide open. He didn't even flinch at May's demand; his hands went tighter around Sara's throat.

There were four men in the room, standing behind May and Ruby, all of them shouting, pleading for Shonuff to let her go.

"C*mon, man, what you doing?!"

"Shonuff, you drunk, man. Let go of her now!"

"Please, Shonuff, please!"

Even now the memory of it made May wince. Not the words, but the sound of their voices and her own: loud and scared.

Up until that day May had never known fear for any moment of all the years she had been alive, and now it had been thrust upon her, stealing her breath and filling every pore of her body. She tasted it in her mouth and felt it moving through her bladder and curling through her bowels.

"I said let her go now!" May screamed and stepped in closer.

Sara was almost gone. Her hands had stopped clawing and slapping at Shonuff's face and she seemed to melt beneath him.

*Now! May screamed again, stepping close enough to push the barrel of the gun against Shonuff's temple.

He didn't let go until May c.o.c.ked the gun. He knew even in his drunken madness that she was through with talking, she had said too much already, so he let go and Sara fell gagging and coughing to the floor.

Three men jumped on him, locking their hands around his neck, arms and waist, while the fourth man gently, very gently, eased the gun from May's hands.

The jar was half empty, the sun gone and the sky black when the knocking started up again. The stars were out and that's all that should have been out at that hour of the night. "Decent people are in their homes with their families," May grumbled as she raised her ma.s.sive bulk from the wooden kitchen chair and started toward the door.

Ruby started to follow, had even gone as far as raising up and out of her chair, but she saw the look resting on May's face and how she rocked on her heels before reaching for the shotgun she'd placed in the corner closest to the doorway. Ruby knew then that May's patience had slipped away with each sip she'd taken from the Mason jar.

Her suspicions were confirmed when May swung the front door open without asking who or even what for.

"Yes?"

The visitor, the nosy busybody (as Ruby liked to call them), took note of the smell of liquor that came off of May's breath, looked down and saw the shotgun that hadn't been seen by any outsider since *24, and then looked up into those eyes that didn't just look at you but looked deep inside of you, and knew that May Lacey had had enough.

There were words that sounded like "sorry" and "good night," but Ruby couldn't be sure, because May had slammed the door before the words had fully spilled out from the visitor's mouth.

Three days pa.s.sed before the wind let up, the gray clouds parted and the sun was finally able to take hold of the sky again. Three days, and the three women that at any other time would have been napping, cooking or mending remained seated around the kitchen table. They only ventured away for brief moments and then only to relieve themselves or run a damp cloth across the back of their necks and beneath their arms.

Little conversation pa.s.sed between them, and the small words that did were as insignificant as the tiny cracks that ran through the wood of the table they had stationed themselves at.

May and Ruby took turns checking on Sugar, making sure she was still with them and hadn't gone on to join her mother in the afterlife.

May kept checking the corners of the bed, kept tucking them tighter and tighter beneath the mattress, as if tightly tucked sheets could keep Sugar's life from slipping away.

Ruby stepped in to adjust the drapes with the time of day: fully open in early morning, half drawn in the afternoon and closed at night.

Sara wouldn't go into the room. She watched from the hallway, wrapped in shadows as she gnawed at her cuticles.

They waited, and on the morning of the fourth day Sara looked out the window to find twenty-four unblinking, tiny black eyes staring back at her.

"What thea"" Sara was startled and stumbled back from the window.

"Yes, I know. Them blackbirds been out there since dawn," Ruby said.

"They have? Lawd have mercy, what now?"

"Don't know, guess we just got to wait and see."

"Them are some ignorant birds. Look how they done run off all the others."

"Yep."

"Mean something for sure."

"Yep."

"They worse than black cats."

"Some say," uttered Ruby as she tipped a bowl of peeled apples into a pot of boiling water.

"C*mon away from the window now. Leave 'em be *fore they get it in their mind to do something." Sara said and wiped her hands across her ap.r.o.n.

"What can a blackbird do to you?" May's voice dripped with disgust.

Sara and Ruby turned to face her. May looked like a specter behind the steam curling up from the teacup.

"Nothing, I suppose," Ruby said and stole one last peek out the window before dipping her long wooden spoon into the pot of boiling apples.

"Humph," Sara added and moved back to the table. "We all know what blackbirds mean."

No one said anything for a long time. There was just the sound of wood knocking against metal and fruit as Ruby stirred the apples and stared out the window.

"You should have told me the truth."

The words swirled around the sisters as gentle and easy as the sweet aroma that escaped in clouds of steam from the stewing pot of apples.

"What you say, Sister?" Ruby asked May as she peered at her over the thin rim of her gla.s.ses.

"I ain't said a thing," May replied and turned her bleary eyes on Sara. May had been drinking steadily for three days and the liquor was taking its toll on her vision.

Sara looked back at May and then over at the pot.

"I said it." The accusation was clearer now and as thick as the mola.s.ses Ruby was spilling into the pot.

The sisters slowly turned their heads toward the doorway. Sugar was there, propped up against the wall. Her lips were chalky and cracked, her eyes puffed and tearing. She was rail thin and looked like a vagrant in May's old gown.

The women jumped to their feet and placed three pairs of hands on her. Sugar tried to shrug them off, but she was weak and her struggle, a brief one.

They helped her to the table and set her down gently into a chair.

The sisters took their respective seats and studied their fingers instead of answering Sugar's question.

Sugar laid her eyes on each of them. They were all totally gray now and the wrinkles that covered their faces were few enough to count. Their cheeks hung like jowls and age spots had begun to dot the honey-brown skin of their arms.

Sugar thought she knew the women that sat around her, but the scars that crisscrossed her belly, the love she was forbidden to have and the father whose name she did not carry; all of those things told her that she did not know the women who'd raised her at all.

"Can I have a gla.s.s of water?" Sugar asked as she laid her head down on the table. Her feet were bare and the floor was cold. She began to shiver. "No, lemme have a cup of tea instead," she said as she placed one foot on top of the other.

"Bring me the quilt from the parlor," May said to no one in particular. "Some socks from my room," she added. The alcohol was still swimming in her head, but the warmth it had provided her seeped out with every hard breath Sugar drew.

Ruby went for the quilt and the socks. Sara just looked off toward the wall.

May rapped her knuckles on the table to get Sara's attention. "The child said she wants some tea."

Sara just looked down at her hands and began examining her fingers.

May let out a heavy breath and shook her head. She did not know when Sara had become so childish and cantankerous.

"Sara." May's tone was stiff. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph," May exclaimed before moving her chair back hard on its legs.

"I'll get it, May," Ruby said, moving back into the kitchen, quilt and socks in hand. She placed the quilt around Sugar's shoulders and then hesitated before dropping to her knees and slipping the socks onto Sugar's feet.

"Y*all could have told me. Y'all should have told me," Sugar said as she struggled to kick Ruby's fidgeting hands from her feet.

"I know. I know," May said as she watched Ruby cross the floor to the stove. She didn't want to see the hate that was stewing in Sugar's eyes.

"So you did know?" Sugar was flabbergasted. Up until that point she'd hoped against hope that they didn't know about Joe Taylor and the fact that he lived in Bigelow, just two towns over.

But that hope was shattered with May's confirming words.

"Oh, G.o.d," Sugar moaned as sorrow pressed against her chest. "Oh, my G.o.d." She dropped her head against the table and began to weep.

The sound that followed was deafening. The women threw their hands up to their ears and looked to each other for answers. The black winter night poured into the kitchen and the sound swelled until it rattled the walls and shook the tiny ceramic knickknacks lining the shelf above the stove.

"Lawd!" Sara yelled.

Blackbirds, dozens more than the twelve that had perched outside earlier, fluttered at the window, their strong wings beating at the gla.s.s and the side of the house, splintering the wood and sending cracks through the gla.s.s.

"Lawd help us!" Sara yelled again and jumped back from the window.

"What's going on? What's happening?" Sugar screamed, her voice barely audible over the noise.

"They want you!" Sara screamed, pointing a crooked finger at Sugar, her body trembling in fear.

"What you say?" Sugar screamed back at her, not sure she'd heard Sara right. "What you say, Sara Lacey?" Sugar said again, sure now that she had heard Sara right.

"Don't you look at me." Sara threw her hands up in front of her face as she eased herself away from the table. "Don't you dare lay your eyes on me!"

The clamor of the birds increased, and a piece of the window gave way.

"Ahhhhh!" Sara screamed as she ran from the room. The women didn't notice her departure; their eyes were fixed on the birds that were forcing their way through the opening.

"Dammit to h.e.l.l!" May yelled as she stormed past Ruby.

Suddenly, there was a loud blast, a flash of light, the shattering of gla.s.s, clouds of smoke and then complete silence.

Sugar's eyes moved from one sister to the other and then to the s.p.a.ce where the window used to be.

The wind carried b.l.o.o.d.y black feathers in and set them down on the table, the floor and into the pot of apples that were now bubbling and mushy. Above them, Sara could still be heard screaming b.l.o.o.d.y murder.

"May?" Ruby called her sister's name just as soft and gentle as the man that had eased the gun from her hands back in *24. "Let it go, May," she said, moving toward her. "Give it here," she urged as she placed her hands over her sister's.

May's grip tightened around the gun and for a moment Ruby didn't think May would ever let go.

"Whaa"huh?" May looked on Ruby with blank eyes.

"Sister? May?" Sara said as she unfolded May's fingers from the warm metal. "Give it here."

"Oh, yes," May said, her eyes clearing. "Yes," she said again to some other question neither Sugar nor Ruby had asked.

Neighbors came in twos and threes after the sound of the shotgun echoed across Short Junction.

"What done happen here?" Mr. Gates from two houses over yelled out before stepping in front of the gaping hole the blast had left.

"Everybody okay?" he called before stepping hesitantly into the circle of light that spewed out from the kitchen.

May looked at him and then straightened herself. She ran her hands over her hair and then across her face before she spoke. "Fine, just fine," she said.

"Had a little trouble is all," Ruby said as she placed the shotgun on the table and then thought better of it and moved it back to its place in the corner.

"What happeneda"" Mr. Gates started to ask, but Sara had started screaming again and her shrieks did as much damage to his words as the shotgun blast had done to the wall.

"Sara done taken ill is all." Ruby's words were rushed and she didn't seem to notice that her response had nothing to do with the hole in the wall.

Mr. Gates' eyebrows rose and his mouth twisted a bit, but he didn't challenge Ruby's explanation.

A few more men came into view. "She's in a lot of pain," Ruby explained. " *Scuse me," she said to the men, five of them now, before she hurried away and up the stairs.

The men gathered around the hole to examine the damage. Their eyes fell on the pieces of dead blackbirds that lay at their feet and then their eyes found Sugar. They took in the blue tint of her skin and the closed pinched look her lips had, as if the undertaker's needle had already had its way with them.