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We watched a movie about the Wild West on her black and white television, which she kept on a fold-up chair. During the commercial I said, “You could ask my mother for another day off.”

She shook her head. “That’s not your business.”

“Luanne!” Mother called from the kitchen.

Luanne left the room.

“We’ll need a salad,” I heard Mother say. The refrigerator door opened and shut. Cooking utensils clattered.

Luanne’s room felt secret and warm. I didn’t want to leave it. I stayed past the time Father came home, door slamming as usual, until my parents returned from the den with their drinks and called us to dinner.

Not long after, when winter’s icy roots plunged deepest and seemed destined to stay forever, I came home after school, plopped my books on the kitchen counter, and went looking for Luanne.

Her bedroom door was open. The room appeared lighter. Looking in, I saw that her bureau top had been swept clean of perfume bottles. I stepped inside. Her scarf over the window had been removed. Where were her cups of earrings? I ran upstairs to find Mother. My parents’ bedroom had views of the front, side and backyards and a dressing room with a wall of closets. She sat on a red upholstered loveseat sewing the hem of a skirt.

“Where’s Luanne?”

“She left, honey. I’ve called the agency. They’re sending someone out next week to replace her.” She removed her reading glasses and stuck her needle into a pincushion.

“Why?”

“She quit, dear.”

She explained that Luanne had left a note about finding a different situation. “Just as well. I always thought she was too young.”

I turned away from her matter-of-factness. Our family was the problem and I knew it. I ran upstairs to the attic to see if Peter had come home. Instead I found Elliot playing with miniature plastic animals in his room. He occupied himself well for a young child. We all did.

The following Saturday afternoon Luanne rang the doorbell to pick up the rest of her clothes. Father answered the door.

“Taking off to shack up with someone?” he said as I ran downstairs to see her.

She was already walking back to the front door with her suitcase in hand when I called to her. 

“Leonard, please,” Mother said standing next to him. “Are you sure you have everything, Luanne?”

She barely nodded and headed for the door.

“I’ll miss you,” I wanted to tell her but didn’t. She went through the front door and hurried down the flagstone walk. A black man waited for her in a white Dodge Dart. Something pushed me and I ran to the open door and shouted, “I’m sorry!” But it came out in a whisper that only I could hear. By then, Luanne was in the front seat closing the car door. The car flew off down our road in a cloud of exhaust and sand.

“Come inside, Sarah. It’s cold out. You don’t have shoes on,” Mother said.

I went back to my bedroom and shut the door. A sharp pain threaded my chest to my stomach. I tried singing a lullaby, leaning on my windowsill—Kumbaya My Lord—the notes low in my throat. Where was she now? Would she think of me ever? My imagination failed me. My heart felt cumbersome on my lungs. Yet the tears wouldn’t rise up or drain out of me. I went downstairs again to Luanne’s closed door in search of her quiet, kind essence. I turned the doorknob and went in. Bare bed. Bare floor. Bare everything.

Mother heard me. “These things happen,” she said, stopping in the hall outside Luanne’s old room. “It’s too bad. But there’s nothing we can do.” She turned and went into the kitchen.

Over several months, different black maids came and went. No one lasted more than six months. One white maid from Ireland stayed a week. None replaced Luanne. Then Dora—another black maid—took the position. She was different. She was obese, squat, and surly. She came from Florida and didn’t care about earrings or singing. She was efficient down to the minute and liked to tell me that she had five grown children so nothing could shock her. “You can’t fool me,” she said. She talked as if she knew all there was to know about life. Unlike Luanne, Dora had seen it all.

continued . . .