“Cinnamon?”

The odd voice seemed to travel over a great distance, not being one she could recall, certainly not Gran’mere, not Claire either.

“Cinnamon!”  Helena knelt in front of Cinnamon’s chair, startled and frightened by just how not-there the woman seemed to be.  Slack-jawed, her eyes stared at the floor ahead of her.  “Cinnamon, what is it?  What’s wrong?”

With aching slowness, Cinnamon seemed to be coming back to herself, eyes focusing, head shaking, until she looked up at the cream-skinned woman kneeling in front of her.  She felt disoriented, not certain of where she was, or who this woman with the strange accent was.

Helena laid her hands lightly on Cinnamon’s knees, and repeated quietly, “Cinnamon, what is it? What’s wrong?”

“T-t-the…the rug.”

“Whah?  Helena’s head snapped around, then back to Cinnamon’s face, gone pale beneath the spicy brown skin tones.  “What about it?”

Granmere’s voice still echoed in her head.  “Don’t you EVER <bam!> bring that FILFTH <bam!> in here AGAIN!”

Cinnamon fumbled for words, to explain…but she was caught in the slipstream between a frightened child of 12 and the adult woman she now was.  “The rug,” she repeated.  Then she ran her hands back and forth over the wheelrims of her chair, and held them out for Helena’s inspection.  The dirt and clay and mud of many years’ travel lay on her skin.

“What?  I don’t….” Helena’s face softened and her eyes glowed moistly.  She took Cinnamon’s hands in her own.  “It’s only dirt.  Nothing more.  I can have the rug cleaned….”

“What if it don’t come out?” Cinnamon whispered.  “Not everything does.”

A lifetime of Peabody conditioning wanted to say, “Well, then I’ll just buy a new one.”  But it wasn’t the right answer.  It wasn’t the right choice.  Helena knew it as deep as flesh and bone could go. She gazed directly into Cinnamon’s eyes and answered softly, “Then I’ll cherish it to remind me of the night you honored me by coming into my house.”

Cinnamon sagged back into the chair, all the memories, the fears (past and present) draining out of her.  “You a good woman, Miz Helena…better’n you know.  Some of us is what we was raised to be.  But you…you is what you was born to be.  They’s a difference.”