The Window Read Free Page A

time in my life I have bought more than one thing at a time.
    Emma and the uncles are ready to go out to lunch, but suddenly I'm so tired I can hardly stand up. "Please," I say, "can we go home?"
    The next thing I know, Emma is shaking my shoulder and Abe is saying, "We're here, Mandy."
    It takes all of us to carry everything up to my room. We pile it on my bed, and Aunt Emma says she'll help me take off tags and hang stuff up.
    "No," I say, "I'll do it, if you'll tell me where to find scissors."
    I can feel Emma's disappointment. A twinge of guilt shoots through me, but I can't take more help, not today.
    Alone, I empty a sack, find underwear. I start with a pair of underpants, spread them flat, and run my hand all over one side, all over the other, inside the waistband. Only one tag, pinned in, and I take that off.
    Emma comes back up and puts something metal in my hand. She's gone again before I identify the nail clippers she's given me instead of scissors.
    The skirt and jeans and tops, they're harder to deal with than the pants were. The price tags are all attached by those stiff plastic strings, the kind that end in Ts. The clippers work on most, but there's one tag that's caught in a seam and I finally give it a yank that makes something tear.
    I'm doing the last pair of jeans when I stab my finger on a pin. I suck a bit of blood and wait and wait, lick my finger clean and wait some more. What if I get blood on my new clothes and don't know?
    And then I put it all away, the underwear folded in a dresser drawer, the other things on hangers. The clothes feel right, but I wish I could see them, could be sure they're OK.
    I wish I knew what sort of Mandy the lads are going to see.

    I've got the window open because the attic was stuffy when we got back from shopping. Now cold wind hits me and I go over to close it.
    The curtains billow up, and I duck under.
    I reach for the window, again hear a child's thin voice calling.
    I lean out.

    "Gwen, Gwen, GWEN."
    "Who's down there?" I call.
    "Gwen, where are you?"
    The boy sounds closer now, and I lean out farther.
    Wind gusts and the next instant a curtain panel blows around me. For an instant I imagine I'm in the hospital again, waking up inside bandages. Then the house smells bring me back, bleach and dust from the windowsill.
    My fingers scrabble with the curtain, searching for the edges.
    And then I hear my own voice but not mine, my voice with somebody else's accent....

    "Abe, go away," the voice says.

Chapter 3

    T HE WIND GUSTS again, and I'm moving with it, spiraling from November to summer, from dark to light, tumbling until I'm really seeing, watching another girl. She hangs by her knees from a tree limb, one hand holding up her skirt, the other dragging in the dirt. She looks about my age.
    A little boy is with her, in the shade under the big tree, and I can hear him talking....

    "Gwen, you better come down out of that tree. Mama's looking for you everywhere."
    "Go away, Abe."
    "Mama will get you, Gwen. You know she said you're too big to be climbing trees. I can see your underpants."
    "And you're too little to matter." Gwen pulled herself up, then dropped back to hang from her knees so fast that bark scraped her legs and the little boy sucked in his breath. "Tell Mama I'll be along in a bit."
    She stretched down both hands and dragged the tips of her fingers in the summer dust.

    I stand back from the window, touch its frame.
    What has happened?
    My question is smothered in an answer that wells up, scary and impossible and, especially, exciting. Can I have seen into another time?
    Mandy, I tell myself, you're losing it. Imagination plus.
    But the sharp detail of leg and cotton dress is bright inside my eyelids, and the Texas accents echo in my ears. They're so real, and that moment of being able to see again so clear in my mind, that I feel disoriented.
    I go to the closet and find my new clothes. Count the four pair of jeans.
    Go to the door.
    "Uncle Abe?" I