OPINION: Melinda Ruley

Children, I've noticed, are powerfully drawn to tribes, groups of others who are, if not like-minded, fitted out at least with the same colors, slogans, face paint, piercings, war whoops. The first tribe is the family, the "us" into which each child is born, but kids are quick to diversify, declare allegiances to other "us"es--teams, clubs, gangs, fraternities--that may or may not reflect the values of their tribe of origin.

Early this month the Nobel Committee announced that Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai had won the prestigious Peace Prize, beating out, among others, weapons inspector Hans Blix and U.N. nuclear watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei. Maathai, a 64-year-old U.S.-educated biologist and assistant environment minister for Kenya, has made a name for herself promoting democracy and the rights of African women.

Hey, why don't we call it the Scenic Hillsborough Crawfish Memorial Bypass?* Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Why come do I always get stuck with Orange County?

They let Rhoda Bruington out of prison last month, 12 1/2 years after she was put there. When I talked with her on the phone, she invited me to come over to Raleigh to see the house where she's living until she can get a job, get her feet under her.

Last month the Durham City Council voted to close the Apex Street bridge, a two-lane overpass connecting the neighborhoods of St. Theresa to the east and Forest Hills to the west. The 4-3 vote was a victory for the mostly white, mostly middle-class residents of Forest Hills who had watched the small neighborhood bridge become a shortcut for commuters.

Several years ago, packing up to move after graduate school, I came across a slip of paper neatly folded and tucked inside a novel. The book--John Updike's Couples--was one of a stack left by a previous tenant, a collection that included a tattered English-Russian dictionary, three volumes of a '50s-vintage encyclopedia set, a biography of Mao Zedong and a half-dozen tattered paperback mysteries.

"There's just one thing," Royce says over the thump thump thump of the big rawhide drum. "If you write about me, don't say I'm part Native American.

Like a lot of women who've stitched together domestic life and work, I often wonder what it would've been like to follow just one thread: deadlines or baby bottles; notoriety in The New York Times Book Review or a lifetime of Mister Bubble. My friend Emily, who has three children, calls these imaginary systoles and diastoles "parallel universe fantasies," or "poofs."

There's not been much to smile about in the newspapers lately, so when Alan Gell came into our kitchen on the front page of The News & Observer last month, acquitted at last of the murder charges that landed him on death row six years ago, it was hard not to grin right along with him. Hard not to celebrate with his mother and sister, marching arm-in-arm with him out of the Bertie County Courthouse.

They don't make anything easy in prison, least of all contact with the outside world. So when Rhoda Bruington called this week from the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women--or "Women's Prison," it wasn't exactly a relaxed conversation.