But none of that mattered when I was with Carrington. Whenever I picked her up from day care or Miss Marva's, and she came running toward me with her arms outstretched, life couldn't have been sweeter. She had begun to acquire words faster than a TV preacher sells blessings, and she and I talked all the time. We still slept together every night, our legs tangled together as Carrington chattered. She would tell me about her day-care friends, and complain about the one whose artwork was "just scribble-scrabble," and report on who got to be the mother when they played house at recess.

"Your legs are scratchy," she complained one night. "I like 'em smooth."

That struck me as funny. I was exhausted, worried about an exam the next day, I had about ten dollars in my checking account, and now I had to deal with a toddler criticizing my grooming habits. "Carrington. one of the benefits of not having a boyfriend is that I can go a few days without shaving my legs."

"What does that mean?"

"It means deal with it." I told her.

"Okay." She snuggled deeper into her pillow. "Liberty?"

"What?"

"When are you gonna get a boyfriend?"

"I don't know, baby. It might be a while."

"Maybe if you shave your legs, you'd get one."

A huff of laughter escaped me. "Good point. Go to sleep."

In the winter Carrington had a cold that wouldn't go away, and it turned into a hacking cough that seemed to rattle her bones. We went through a whole bottle of over-the-counter medicine, but it seemed to have little effect. One night I woke up from what sounded like dog barks, and I realized Carrington's throat had swollen until she could only breathe in shallow pants. In a terror worse than anything I had ever known. I drove her to the hospital, where they admitted us without insurance.

My sister was diagnosed with croup, and they brought out a plastic mask attached to a nebulizer machine that pumped out medicine in a gray-white mist. Frightened by the noise the machine made, not to mention the mask, Carrington shrank into my lap and cried pitifully. No matter how I reassured her that it wouldn't hurt, it would make her better, she refused until her body spasmed with coughing.

"Can I put it on?" I asked the RN desperately. "Just to show her it's okay? Please?"

He shook his head and looked at me as if I were crazy.

I turned my wailing sister around in my lap so we were face-to-face. "Carrington, listen to me. Carrington. It's just like a game. We'll pretend you're an astronaut. Let me put the mask on you for just a minute. You're an astronaut—what planet do you want to visit?"

"Planet H-h-home," she sobbed.

After another few minutes of her crying and my insisting, we played Carrington-the-space-explorer until the RN was satisfied that she had inhaled enough of the Vaponefrin.

I carried my sister back out to the car in the cold dark of midnight. By then she had exhausted herself and was sleep-heavy. Her head dropped on my shoulder and her legs wrapped around my midriff. I relished the solid, vulnerable heft of her in my arms.

As Carrington slept in her car seat, I cried all the way home, feeling inadequate, anguished, filled with love and relief and worry.

Feeling like a parent.

As time passed, Miss Marva and Mr. Ferguson's relationship acquired the knotty tenderness of two independent people who had no reason to fall in love but did anyway. They were a good match, Miss Marva's peppery nature balanced by Mr. Ferguson's stubborn tranquility.

Miss Marva proclaimed to anyone who would listen that she had no intention of getting married. No one believed her. I think what finally did Marva in was that despite his comfortable financial situation. Arthur Ferguson was clearly a man who needed taking care of. He had missing buttons on his shirt cuffs. He sometimes skipped meals because he simply forgot to eat. His socks weren't always matched. Some men just thrive on a little nagging, and Miss Marva came to acknowledge that she probably needed someone to nag.

So after they had been dating for about eight months, Miss Marva fixed Arthur

Ferguson his favorite meal, beer pot roast and green beans and a big skillet of cornbread. And red velvet cake for dessert, after which, naturally, he proposed.

Miss Marva told me the news sheepishly, and claimed Arthur must have tricked her somehow, because there was no reason a woman with her own business should get married. But I could see how happy she was. I was glad that after all the ups and downs of her life, Miss Marva had found herself a good man. They were going to Las Vegas, she said, to get married by Elvis, and after that they would see a Wayne Newton show and maybe the fellas with the tigers. When they returned, Miss Marva was going to leave Bluebonnet Ranch and move into Mr. Ferguson's brick house in town, which he had given her leave to redecorate from top to bottom.

It was less than five miles from Miss Marva's single-wide to her new residence. But she was traveling a greater distance than you could measure with an odometer. She was moving into a different world, acquiring a new status. The thought that I would no longer be able to run down the street to visit her was unsettling and depressing.

With Miss Marva gone, there was nothing keeping me and Carrington at Bluebonnet Ranch. We were living in an old mobile home worth nothing, sitting on a rented lot. Since my sister was going into preschool next year, I needed to find an apartment in a good school district. I would find a job in Houston, I decided, if I was lucky enough to pass the upcoming Cosmetology Commission exams.

I wanted to get out of the trailer park—I wanted it even more for my sister than I did for