"Tell me about the play."

"It's a musical called Up at the Club, and it's about how this guy wins and loses and wins Ms. Right. I play a bartender at this club in the 'hood who gets the young people back together. I'm the voice of wisdom and reason. It could be entertaining if they'd tighten up the script a little bit and the director would let the actors act."

"When do you audition for the sitcom producers?"

"Next week."

He started describing the TV series; it really was pretty dumb. And I knew Orlando knew it.

Our cups were empty. I picked them up and tossed them into a nearby receptacle. "Walk me back," I said, and when we got back to the shop, "I'll call you if I need you."

THAT EVENING I SAT IN MY KITCHEN, HOLDING THE PHONE, listening to the police officer say it was too soon to list Trina as a missing person. Even when I told him that she'd been released from a mental hospital two days ago, he said it made no difference. "Call back after seventy-two hours, ma'am." Twenty-four hours more. He didn't tell me how to spend them.

I kept moving. Paced to the refrigerator and back to the sofa. From the sofa to the refrigerator to the phone. Food was in my hands, my mouth, at all times. Popcorn, raisins, ice cream. Eating was my Prozac. In between swallows, I called the number that Melody's mother had given me.

Mattie, Gloria, and I did a conference call. Mattie prayed fervently, something about God's awesome power. The message was always the same: Don't give up hope; things will get better. And then there was the black Baptist postscript: He never puts more on you than you can bear.

I plunked myself down on the sofa in my family room and stared at the television set, letting the portable phone rest on my lap. So this is how the kid turned out, I thought. My sweet, sweet baby. Ballerina princess at eleven, cheerleader at fourteen, nutcase at eighteen. So this is how my life turned out. I dialed Boy Man's number again. No answer.

I called Clyde, hoping he'd heard from Trina but also needing to hear his voice. He loved the child I loved. I didn't share that with anyone else. Aurelia answered the phone. As soon as I heard her, I remembered my promise and was sorry I'd called.

"Oh, Keri," she said, "Clyde isn't here." There was a slight hesitation and then she said, "How's it going?"

It was her halting tone, along with the hesitation, that made me realize that Clyde had probably asked Aurelia to call me and she didn't want to talk with me about her marriage.

So we were in agreement.

"Not that great, actually. I just wanted to know if Clyde had heard from Trina."

"Heard from Trina? What's wrong?"

"Clyde didn't tell you that she left the hospital and didn't come home?"

"I didn't even know she was in the hospital. When did all this happen?"

She got the abbreviated version of the story. And I could hear her anger in the inflection of her voice. Aurelia liked Trina. Whenever Trina had been sick in the past, she'd always come to visit. She didn't bother making excuses for Clyde.

"I don't understand that man," she said with a sigh.

"That makes two of us."

After I hung up, I wanted to go to sleep instantly, not to have to think another thought. But there was nothing in the medicine cabinet to take the edge off my mind. The top drawer of my bathroom cabinet was filled with rollers, bobby pins, do-rags, and hair gel. Nothing in the second drawer but perfumes I could no longer stand. The third drawer was a catchall, a bin full of junk. The third drawer technically classified me as a pack rat, but not a very discerning one. No sleeping pills, no tranquilizers. Had I only imagined that they were there? Benadryl! It had expired three years earlier, but I took two anyway, and then another, since the potency had been compromised.

The first faint veil of grogginess felt sweet. Bright buds of sleepiness played with my mind, but the flowers never bloomed. The three expired capsules left me groggy as opposed to unconscious. I was tempted to take more, one or two more, maybe three or four more, tempted to explore how deep grogginess can get before it surrenders to sleep.

After the officer, the same officer who'd been answering all night, said, "Lady, you need to calm down," after he firmly and convincingly told me there was nothing that he could do or that any other officer could do until the proper time had elapsed, after I'd hung up and hadn't dialed the police or the boy for fifteen minutes and the last little time capsule kicked in, I had a moment of clarity. I went to the computer and checked my e-mail.

Bigtime@aol.com. The address wasn't familiar, but the tone of the message was: I hate you. If you try to find me, I'll kill myself.

I had never imagined Trina in a place with a computer. Her deranged wildness sharing space with technology seemed incongruent. I stared at the message for a moment, then pressed KEEP.

She's eighteen. I can't make her do anything. My head started shaking of its own accord, as though agreeing with the words in my mind.

There was another e-mail, from Rona. She'd forwarded information about her Spelman reunion and added a personal note: I've been feeling a lot better since you massaged me. I'll call for another appointment soon. You have gifted hands. I thank you, and great-great-great-grandmother Harriet thanks you! Rona.

What would Harriet do with this? No time to plan. Nowhere to run. But the same imperative, the same need to cross the border. To save herself. To save another.

10.

I FELL ASLEEP AROUND 3 A.M., AND THAT'S WHEN THE phone started ringing. Music blared from the receiver into my ear. Glass broke in the background, crashing against loud, angry voices. There was yelling and shrieking, lots of shrieking. Of course, she didn't say anything. Just screamed and hung up.

And called again. And again. For two hours. Trina's psychotic tease: I'm alive, but maybe I'm in pain.

"Trina, come home!" My voice echoed against a blast of music, more yelling, and then a dial tone.

After the eighth time, I took the phone off the hook.

A week on meds, and she would apologize. A good night's rest would make a world of difference. But she wasn't ready to come down. I had to stay alive while she was up there, whirling in the sky, a sparrow on speed.

A child's death isn't always necessary for a mother to grieve.

Ma Missy mourned her baby girl for years. My mother. Emma. Such a beautiful alcoholic. She reserved weekends for her binges, sitting by the window after work on Fridays, sipping scotch and milk or scotch and soda. Sometimes she drank gin, Tanqueray, or wine. Ma Missy would watch her ominously, waiting for fireworks or tears, which were always preceded by voluptuous laughter. There was a tipping point. One extra swallow could turn a good time into something too ugly for a kid to see. Ma Missy knew the timing. Maybe it was something in my mother's eyes that alerted her, the curl of her bottom lip. One minute Emma was chuckling and the next a snarl would break from her pretty mouth, and my grandmother would snatch me away, direct me upstairs, where I would creep to the landing and listen to Ma Missy, pleading with her daughter to stop drinking, to get herself together, to change her life.

I can't remember how long Ma Missy begged, but I do remember that there came a point where she simply stopped, accompanied me upstairs on Friday and Saturday nights, closed her bedroom door, and watched television with me. With my brain clouded, I wondered why she had given up and how many years had passed before she did. Maybe there was some sort of epiphany. Maybe it was just precise arithmetic: subtraction. Years to go from years lived. Or maybe her craving for peace of mind overcame her maternal instinct.

After one Saturday night not too much different from the others, she lifted my chin in her hands and spoke directly. I won't give her my life, and I won't give her yours.

"Keri will stay with me," Ma Missy told Emma.

"She's my child," my mother said, her voice trump-card sure and petulant.

"If you want to fight me," Ma Missy said, "one of us will not be alive when it's over."

My mother packed her bags the next day.

I remember the shock in Emma's eyes and the pain and rage in my heart, because, drunk or sober, I wanted her around. If she was around, I could tell myself that she loved me more than the bottle. It took a long time for me to understand Ma Missy, let alone forgive her. Maybe I was forgiving her now.

THE NEXT TWENTY-FOUR HOURS WERE ENDLESS. THE Y segued into semicomatose afternoons and evenings. Orlando provided respite. I didn't hear from Clyde, except on the radio.

I was the last one to leave the shop on Tuesday night. Maybe I lagged behind because I didn't want to go home, to call the police and remind them that seventy-two hours had passed and they could officially begin looking for my lost kid. Suppose they didn't find her? Most of the cars in the parking lot were gone. The night was clear and scented with jasmine. It was dark and quiet until a white Ford suddenly turned in from the street, picking up speed as it drove straight toward me. Somebody was leaning on the horn. There was no time to be afraid, to cry out, to move. The car stopped inches from my feet. The horn faded away and horrible laughter split the air.

Trina jumped out of the car. Boy Man remained in the passenger's seat. Reefer scented the air as the door opened.

Trina swaggered toward me. "Been looking for me?"

She had on the same T-shirt and jeans she'd been wearing when I'd last seen her, only now the T was torn, a deliberate tear to create cleavage. Trina's breasts swelled above her shirt.

I spoke very carefully. "Trina, I want you to come home."

"If I come home, you'll call the cops and get me locked up."

"No. Just come home and start taking your medication again."

"I've been taking it."

"Trina-"

"Trina what?"

Her voice rose, and she stepped closer to me. It was too dark to see the pupils of her eyes, but I didn't have to.

"Come home with me."

"Fuck you!" Her rage splattered the air. "Are you my mother? Tell me the truth. Are you my mother?"

"Trina, what are you talking about? Of course, I'm your mother."

"No, you're not." She turned to the boy in the car. "She's not even my real mother!" she screamed. She turned back to me. "Bitch, you stole me from my real mother, and now you want to lock me up!"

"Trina, calm down."

She was so far beyond any possibility of tranquillity. Trina raised her hands. The blows were rapid, like a sparring boxer's: bap, bap, bap. Too quick for pain. No sound except retreating footsteps, a slammed car door, a fast getaway. She left behind air that dripped with perfume.

"Trina!"

I stood in the parking lot, rubbed my shoulder, picked up my purse, turned around toward a rustling sound. My body buckled toward the woman standing in the doorway, clutching a briefcase, watching me. What was on her face that wasn't discernible in the shadows, horror? Disgust? Did she feel anything as she stood in the dark, judging my life? Rage and shame fought for space in my mind. The woman was still standing in the doorway, looking straight ahead as I drove away.

When we spoke by conference call that evening, Gloria and Mattie assured me that Trina would come home. We talked strategy. Milton got on the phone and said I should alert the Systemwide Mental Assessment Response Team, SMART, the county department of mental health's mobile response unit, even before Trina returned, so that if she showed up within the next few hours I could use the attack as a criterion for another seventy-two-hour hold. I asked about Wellington and Nona. I don't remember what they said. After we hung up, I realized that the roles had switched. They were fanning flies in the big house; I was sweating in the field. At least for now, they were the lucky ones.

The lucky ones are never a comfort.

I looked up Bethany's name on the support group's roster. When she answered the telephone, her voice sounded as though the mouth it was coming out of was bruised. A swollen slash, not a mouth. Each word a unique wound, painful to hear. Did I sound like that?

We didn't talk long, not more than a few minutes. Really, we were just checking in with each other, the way the poorest Africans in Zimbabwe do. They ask in their language, How are you? and the answer is always, I am suffering peacefully.

Bethany's renegade spirit surged forward right before she said good-bye. "I will not live like this," she said.

TRINA ARRIVED AT MY DOOR LATE THAT NIGHT. THE WILDness in her eyes was a tide that hadn't ebbed.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Mommee. Let me come home. I just want to come home." She threw herself against me. Her head against my chest felt warm, familiar. My fingers were in her hair before I even closed the door. She pulled away, stepped back, and the light from the ceiling highlighted the fresh bruises on her face. Trina must have liked my look of horror. She began smiling.

"Mommee, that boy I was with started hitting me for no reason."

This was probably a lie, at least the no-reason part. In the kitchen, Trina couldn't sit still long enough for me to press ice against her eye, against her forehead. She squirmed after about ten seconds and then got up.

"You have to go to the hospital."

She clung to me, her hands around my waist. "No, Mommee. Let me stay here. I'll get back on the meds, I promise."

She was manic and high. None of her words meant anything.

"I'll go back to the program tomorrow," she said.

"You have to take your medication right now," I said.

"Okay."

While I was getting the medicine, I called SMART. In twelve minutes they had arrived, with two officers from the sheriff's department. The counselors, a man and a woman, asked me a few questions as we stood in the entryway. Had Trina tried to hurt herself? Had she tried to hurt anyone else? I told them about the attack in the parking lot. The officers appraised me silently.

No blood. Damn.

"Well, ma'am, there's no evidence that she hurt you. Did anyone see her hitting you?"

The woman's face flitted across my mind. "No. But she's been fighting with someone else. When she gets manic, she'll pick fights."

"Did you see her fighting?" the woman asked.

"Her face is bruised. I saw her a few hours ago, and she didn't look like that."

"Is there the possibility that someone beat her up?"

"She probably started the fight."

"But you didn't see her fighting?"

"Look, my daughter just got out of the psych ward three days ago. They should have kept her. She's supposed to take medication, and she hasn't been taking it. She needs to-"

"Ma'am," the man said, "where is your daughter now?"

Their expressions revealed nothing. I was afraid of what they were thinking.

When Trina saw the police officers and the pair from SMART, she glared at me. Mom had betrayed her again. One of the counselors asked how she was feeling, and she didn't respond. She knew they needed a reason to send her back to the hospital, and the quieter she was the less likely they'd find one. But silence can't live where mania resides.

"There's nothing wrong with me," Trina said finally, her words hot and loud. "She just calls you guys for attention."

"What happened to your face? Were you fighting today, Trina?"

"My mother pushed me, and I fell."

"Trina, " I said, "that's not true."