One summer afternoon, I watched from the car as Lucy Mae, who had worked for us ever since my brother was born, her friend Lottie, and my mother stood on the side steps of Sneadlin's Funeral Home, squared off with the puffy, pasty, white director, Pickering Head. They were not going to leave until Lottie was allowed to see the bodies of her two babies.

Pickering Head, finally realized he was dead meat. He moved backward and motioned for them to come inside. The door closed behind them.

I couldn't believe I was sitting in the car while all this was going on.

Mother, Lottie and Lucy Mae stayed inside Sneadlin's Funeral Home for what seemed like hours. I had already slumped down in the seat, to try to keep from sticking to the upholstery, and was trying to entertain myself when I suddenly heard the front door slam with a force that might well have shattered all the panes.

I jumped up to see mother storming across the street. I have never seen her quite so furious. Lucy Mae and Lottie were trailing behind, looking very much like they had just been through a war. Lottie was wailing as she walked and Lucy Mae was staring straight in front of her with an expression that to this day I would not even try to describe.

When we all got to our house, I was banished (under protest) to the yard while telephone calls were made and voices were raised and Lucy wailed. Finally, I rode along while mother took them home. Nothing was said.

My mother took Lottie home first, and then Lucy Mae. When Lucy Mae got out of the car, my mother held up her hand before I could even open my mouth. "Ah." She said. "Not one question, because I'm not going to answer. I know you don't believe this, but there are some things you don't need to know about."

I couldn't believe it. I was sniffing major scandal here and she wasn't going to tell me about it. Of course, my mother knew if she told me, I'd tell everybody else in the known universe that would listen and in a small town like Lanier, even if people commit murder, you still had to live with them and get along with them, and you couldn't afford to have too many enemies.

I finally found out what happened by spying, of course. This was another of my practices that always led mother to call me a strange child when she caught me.

What I heard was that when Mother and Lucy Mae and Lottie had gone into the funeral home, Pickering Head had tried his best to talk them out of having him open the coffins, but mother and Lucy Mae had insisted.

When he did, he didn't have to open two coffins because both babies were there together in the first little coffin, laying on top of each other, like they'd been thrown in by a garbage collector.

The real kicker, though, was that they hadn't even been embalmed. Pickering Head (even though he denied it) was going charge Lottie, Lottie, a fortune on time for the burial of two embalmed babies in two coffins, when in fact, he had done nothing to the bodies except throw them in together.

"I've never seen anything quite so heartbreaking in my whole life as those two babies all crumpled in together in each other's arms," my mother was said to my father, in their bedroom. She was crying, something she never did. "And, I'll never forget that smell if I live to be 100 years old. Poor Lottie, poor, poor Lottie."

All that happened, and I had to sit in the car.