“I’m not dressed right. My nightgown,” Connie mumbled.

Bolivar took from a pile beside the body a long shift and helped her pass it over her head. It was much too long to walk in, but for sitting it was fine. “Person had taken it out to wear in a ceremony we performed in Red Hanrahan village last month. Neglected to return the garment to the library afterward. Person was often careless.” He spoke monotonously, face blotched and strained tight.

“Oh, Bolivar. This is your second loss. Your mother Sappho and now Jackrabbit,” Luciente said. She walked over, touched her forehead to his. “Bolivar, you’re getting use to grief, and your pain must be great, recalling old pain not yet worn out.”

“Nobody gets used to grief. Yet I feel numb.”

“Before this night be over, your pain gonna loosen and come down.” Erzulia spoke, in a robe of sky blue. “I am ready to lead this ritual. Bolivar, you and Jackrabbit made so many good holies here. Many times you give us pleasure and the healing of conflict, the easing of hard edges, the vision that pick us up and carry us. I hope we able to bring you through this night. All the sweet friends and handfriends, the basemates and old family and mems. We gonna try hard to make the passing of Jackrabbit beautiful as person made other giving backs. We begin now. It gonna be done in truth and beauty and kindness.” On that last phrase her voice boomed forth. Her voice for a moment colored the air and hung there. “We gonna speak now and remember our friend. We gonna speak of the good and of the bad Jackrabbit done. We gonna remember together Jackrabbit.”

A girl stood. She began to sing:

“A hand falls on my shoulder.

I turn to the wind.

On the paths I see you walking.

When I catch up

person wears another face.

In dreams I touch your mouth.

When new friends ask me of my life

I speak of you

and words turn to pebbles

on my tongue.

I turn from them

to the wind … .”

Connie could hardly hear the ending because the girl was crying by the time she finished. “Jackrabbit was my teacher. I felt so close to per! I was angry person chose to defend while I was learning in torrents.”

Luciente too began to cry again, but Bolivar sat like a scarecrow, his freckles drawing all the color in his face to them and the rest of his skin pallid.

“I’m Arthur of Ribble, a Lancashire village in Fall River.” A heavy‑set person of forty or so with cropped light hair rose. “Jackrabbit was my child. Gave me joy and hard worry. Person was running in seven ways at once from five on. Such beauty. Such a pile of beginnings! Jackrabbit wanted to do everything. Person could not, would not choose. Instead Jackrabbit would begin to weave a rug, would launch a complicated genetic experiment, would begin studying spiders, would start glazing a namelon, would demand to be taught how holies function, would begin cartography lessons, all in one week. A month later the rug would be a beautiful fragment, the namelon would be half painted and abandoned, person would know a bit about spiders, something of how holies function, would have had three cartography lessons and would have abandoned the genetics experiment in the third generation of fruit flies. Person drove me wild! I would yell and bluster and my child would sulk and withdraw. But person would forgive me–yes, that’s the way to body it. In sunny excitement my child would forgive me and come tell me how person–then named Peony–wanted to learn theory of wind power, construct a mill, learn lithography, study Japanese and vertebrate anatomy. I comped Peony to choose something. Much pressure. I wore out just listening. I could not grasp such trying on of subjects and roles was learning also. When Peony began to think seriously of shelf diving, I bound per into making a commit. I obsessed Peony into being ashamed of flightiness–which was excessive curiosity. I didn’t do this alone. Others reacted same way. Including the head of the children’s house.” Arthur sat down.

The old person rose, still strongly made, with a squat pyramidal body ending in a head whose iron gray hair was worn in a knot. “I became Peony’s mother when that child was eight. Peony bumped on per original mother, Elima. Elima felt overwhelmed by Peony’s energy and truly began to dislike per child. So Peony and Elima brought the sticky up in council. I’m an old kidbinder and I spoke out and said I’d be feathered to have Peony for my old child. I was old then. Now I’m seventy‑nine. In our village it isn’t common for people over sixty to mother. But Peony liked the idea.”

Arthur spoke again, grinning. “Peony jumped up and down, shouting, ‘Yes, Crazy Horse is for me!’”

“I’m an old hard‑bitten comrade. I spent ten years in the war. I stiffed it all over Latin America working on reparations–I was one of the teams that worked out the details, in the early days when there were still endemic diseases raging. For a whole year after I could digest no fat. I didn’t settle down in Fall River till I was fifty‑five. I’d had a child at fifteen, live‑born child of my own body, and saw my baby die of tularemia when they loosed the plagues on us … . Peony–Jackrabbit–was like wine to me. Didn’t care for the right and wrong. I figured you grow through things. I can still remember being hungry as a child, always hungry … . What a pretty child person was–gawky, long‑limbed, awkward, but coltish and gifted in giving joy. I had only three years of mothering but years I loved. I didn’t give dandruff if Peony was irresponsible. We were each comping Peony in opposing ways. No wonder person went mad at naming. I was gobbling up every prank like candy and Arthur here was pushing the straight and narrow … .”

“What of the third mother?” Bee asked.

“In Oregon now. Gentle, quiet. Couldn’t fix Peony against our heaving and hauling,” Crazy Horse said. “Still, Jackrabbit grew strong, and rough times can shake a body down. I never met a kid I liked better.”

Arthur shook his head. “Jackrabbit used to fall by to see Crazy Horse whenever person worked near us, and we’d talk. Even last year we were arguing. Somehow we could never leave off arguing. I loved Jackrabbit, yet I think I must have spent ninety percent of the time we had insisting person was always wrong. Clipping, binding.” Arthur sat down abruptly and blew into a big orange handkerchief.

At the back someone rose to play a sad melody on a flute. The flutist played for perhaps ten minutes, joined by a guitar, a flat twangy instrument, a drum. After the others stopped, the guitar played a song many joined with that muffled blurry sound people have when they’re not trying to sing in unison:

“I feel like dry grass

combed by the wind, the wind.

I feel like last year’s grass

raked by the salty wind.

The tides creep in the marsh,

the water rises,

the water falls,

but the old grass finally breaks

under the wind.”

After the singing died into silence and they sat on for a while, White Oak rose. “I came here fourteen years ago to work in the plant genetics base just firming. Jackrabbit and I have been friends since sixmonth after person came here to be with Bolivar. Jackrabbit ate with us awhile, deciding what family to join. Especially we shared a love for the sea What I want to tell is something two–no, three years ago. Now, you know my loving with Susan‑B was not good. Never in balance. We all critted on that and tried, but it never flew and always I felt unvalued in the end. Susan‑B is gone now and I confess it’s easier for me with person living at Portsmouth. For a long time I couldn’t want to be loving with anyone, waiting for Susan‑B to want to be as close to me as I wanted with per. A long saddening. When Susan‑B left, I had to face the failure of the whole long struggle. I withdrew even more. I worked hard–”

“Fasure, day and night,” Bee said. “You coordinated and did the work of three.”