She didn’t show up on my doorstep, really, but on the barstool next to me asking for half a beer if I could manage, parting the corner of a coaster into layers like book pages. She was stuck here because a road trip with her boyfriend went sour. I’ve never been here, she said. I have a lot to learn about this place.

There was the hint of accent on her, thoughtless vowels that sounded like rushing through the cold. New England. And, though she was quiet, I remember thinking I saw harshness in her and her lack of thank yous. She didn’t say much else, nodding, almost smiling, until 3am when she said she needed a place to stay. Even if I had known stay was exactly what she meant, looking at her gritty and sleepy and drunk, I would have said yes, of course, yes. I’ll take care of you, small white thing.

A million questions banged at my skull, but there are some things you just trust.

She didn’t want to be taken care of, found ways to pay her way. I would come home from work to new colors—red, orange, yellow fruits she placed on my tongue until winter. Breads and bottles of wine that didn’t come from Ingles, that she’d gotten on her long walks to God knows where. Friends told me they’d seen my little mystery walking, on the highway even, though I think that was just gossip, legend. I didn’t ask where dinner came from or how she paid for it, just tore chunks and took sips, instinct closing my eyes each time.

I wanted to tell her these things. That back home we played tambourines, women in long flowered dresses jumping with arms to the ceiling and men sweating through their suits speaking languages you couldn’t write down. And the Spirit was there. You couldn’t prove it, but I played the tambourine so hard I sprained my wrist once and I saw my Aunt Rhonda fall to the carpet and shake so hard they put a blanket over her. She sat up and spoke French, real French, which she’d never learned.

I may have given Him up a long time ago, didn’t make it to high school with a tongue of fire on my head, but I can’t deny it was there. White bird sent to us.

I didn’t tell her these things. Silence was sacred to her.