"Ssh, ssh. Be still now, little one," she coos, "be still, be calm, be like the cool winds." This is the voice

of Mayaletta, as she holds me close after I’ve grazed my knee. I was distracted rescuing myself from

an evil dragon in the field behind our house; the long, wet grass swishing around my night dress

menacingly, when I saw the rock just a moment too late. I stumbled and now my knee is stinging and

the blood runs down my shin in thin lines. Mayaletta rushes from the flowerbed she was tending to,

and clicking her tongue, she pulls me into her arms.

Immediately I’m soothed. Just the comforting smell of her, of molasses bread and dirt, is enough to

stop my tears. She jiggles me on her lap, and using the edge of her ripped dress hem, presses my skin

where its sore. She is my mother, although she did not birth me. Her skin is much darker than mine,

her palms a coarse pink, wrinkled and marked from the work she does in my family’s home. Outwardly

we do not match; our tongues, our eyes, our faces, but I call for her – not my ghost mother, who looks

on vacantly from the veranda – whenever I fall. Mayaletta knows who I am, she knows what I fear,

what I need, my shadow follows hers.

We look forward to the days when the heavy rains come and pour down from the ominous skies,

wetting the earth so that the grass is welcoming and soft for one day and one night before the sun

rises again and burns it all back to brown. Mayaletta tells me that when this kind of rain comes, we are

blessed. She holds me to her breast on the veranda, beneath the leaking bamboo-weaved shack roof

and sings softly what she calls, 'rain for love'. I don’t understand a single syllable, soft clicks and oohs

whispered into my ear, but soon I feel like I know, I feel like I am one with the song, and one with

her. Where do her arms end and my freckled ones begin? Soon my eyes are heavy, the sweet smell of

rain infiltrates my nostrils, her warmth protecting me from my childish loneliness.

“Dance, my pretty one,” she says, rousing me from my sleepiness. Gently she pulls me to stand, and

pushes me out of the shelter of her arms and the veranda covering. The rain comes down in sheets, I

am immediately soaked but the shock of it is such a thrill, that I am laughing loud big howls like a

wolf. “Dance, dance to make the rain come more. More.” Mayaletta rises, gathering her skirts, she

comes to meet me in the hot rain, taking my hand in hers. She pulls me around in circles, howling up

to the skies. Twirling together, we laugh into the clouds.