A note on the door pointed me to the back of the house, where Opal, bald as you please, was smoking a joint in a rocking chair and directing an assistant gardener in the care of her tomato, okra, and basil plants. In the daylight her dark skin glowed, still unlined despite her sixty-six years, and the high angle of her cheekbones, sitting above the deep-V chin, gave her an ethereal, almost alien aspect. We talked for another two hours as the dusk came down and the air grew thick with gnats.
