Ida had her boys young, one right after the other. Over the years she forgot the love-making completely. It was as if she’d been impregnated by their father’s voice. She never did forget that deep velvet-night edged voice that had caressed her very bones. In the beginning it was to her the sound of all sexuality and all tenderness. Later she recognized it as the voice of the devil, all sexuality and all deception. Shortly after he left to follow smack, booze and music, she looked into her sons’ sweet faces and prayed to God to help her raise them, and right then and there God spoke to her. She heard God’s voice as clear as day as if he stood next to her in the flesh and the voice was very plain, business like, nothing seductive about it and Ida thought that was a good thing because she’d have been suspicious of a god with a seductive voice.
God was direct, authoritative yet companionable. When her sons were old enough to understand she told them their dad was dead and that God was their father from now on. The boys never did get religion. They figured their mother was religious enough for any three generations of any three families they knew. She prided herself on never again having a man. She prided herself on becoming the plain, direct down to business companion of the god she adored with all her strengths, even the most secret.
After her son gave her the Smith & Wesson .38 hand gun, she put it in a safe place where Adam wouldn’t find it, up in the crawl space of the attic, in fact she had to stand on a chair to reach it. She kept a sturdy chair near the trap door to the attic and once timed how long it took her to drag the chair just beneath the opening and slide the door over enough to reach a blind uplifted hand inside to retrieve the gun. After she’d done it quick enough to satisfy her need to feel absolutely safe, she practiced once a week to keep herself ready in case the Quiggley boy were to sneak up on her house some night.