She came and stood by the small new grave. After a few days more she stopped coming.
I knew the woman and went to her house to see her. She was beginning to forget the child. She was beginning to take up again the thread of her life where she had let it go. The thread of her life is involved in the divorces and fights of her neighbors.
Out in the warped graveyard her child is forgotten. And presently the wooden headstone will begin to decay. But the worms will not forget their part. They have eaten the small body by now, and enjoyed it. Always worms enjoy a body to eat.
And also the Devil rejoiced.
And I rejoiced with the Devil.
They are more pitiable, I insist, than I and my sand and barrenness—the mother whose life is involved in divorces and fights, and the worms eating at the child's body, and the wooden headstone which will presently decay.
