Belle Prater's Boy by Ruth White

the poem says, People are going back and forth across the doorsill/where the two worlds touch?”
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œDo you think the two worlds could mean her life here with Grandpa and Granny, and her life there with you and Uncle Everett?”
    â€œMama was always fascinated with that place where two different things come together.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œLike twilight and dawn—places where dark and light meet. Like the horizon. Like the moment between waking and sleeping. See what I mean?”
    â€œI think so.”
    â€œShe talked to me a lot about those few seconds just before I was born when she went out of her body and met me.
    â€œâ€˜We were hovering between this side and the other side,’ she’d say to me. ‘And it was right on the stroke of midnight, too, between the old year and the new.’ She thought that was real significant.

    â€œAnd once she said how odd it would be to live on the equator, or exactly on the place where a time zone changes. She was peculiar that way.”
    â€œYeah, but in the poem …”
    â€œIn the poem,” Woodrow interrupted me, “it’s talking about that place I told you about where two worlds touch.”
    â€œSo you really think she’s in that other place … in another world?” I said.
    â€œI know she is. A whole ’nother world.”
    He folded the newspaper neatly and tossed it on the splintery floor.
    Then how come he was so interested in checking the ads every Sunday, I was thinking, but I didn’t say it. Because it all fit together—Woodrow’s great interest in the newspaper every Sunday and no other day. He was looking for his mother to send him a message through the classified ads. So he really didn’t believe his own farfetched story. He felt she was somewhere in this world, and she would contact him in a familiar way.

Fifteen
    I n midsummer the apples were getting some size to them. They were bending the tree branches down, and you could smell them when the breeze was just right. But you couldn’t eat them yet, because they were too bitter. Woodrow tried it and got a fearful bellyache.
    There were blackberries and raspberries growing wild along the creek bank. And from Grandpa’s patch of garden in that sunny place behind the shed, butter beans and green beans, summer squash, tender cucumbers, and melons of all shapes and sizes were coming on.
    It was the best time of year for good stuff to eat. There were always fresh berry pies cooling on the
kitchen windowsills, and there was corn bread to crumble up in your vegetables, and fried green tomatoes and okra. You could drink cold buttermilk with your roastin’ ears, and dribble hot pork drippings over your garden salad. There was nothing like it.
    It was also the time of year for Mama’s annual garden party, the social event of the season. It was always written up as such in the Mountain Echo ’s social section. In the past I had dreaded it worse than a typhoid shot, but that summer of 1954 was different, because Woodrow was there. He was interested in everything and almost everybody, and the way he looked at things with fresh eyes made me see them fresh, too.
    It was an especially hot, humid summer afternoon the second week of July. Grandpa and Porter moved tables and chairs down by Slag Creek at the edge of the orchard near the tree house. The gardenias there were in full bloom and aroma. It was my favorite flower. Sometimes I could smell it in my dreams.
    It was mine and Woodrow’s job to get all the names of the women there and make sure they were spelled right for the newspaper. We were also in charge of serving refreshments, which consisted of dainty sandwiches of exotic substances, mints, nuts, and Mama’s special drink, which she named Peach Ice. It was made with vanilla ice cream, fresh peaches, and ginger ale.
    Mama had me wear a plain white, sleeveless cotton
dress with