"I studied," she said. My eyes were still on her.

"Who was that man?"

She shrank back, turned her head.

"There are people in this world who live just to see you fall. They make their money on weak people. Go to a meeting tonight."

"All right."

Rona hadn't moved from the middle of the floor. She was standing still, watching the swirl of activity around her. My words came out in a rush. "I can do you right now. At my house. You'll have to follow me in your car."

My massage room was on the first floor, right off the family room. I had to wipe the dust off the table and lay down a clean sheet. I checked my oils and put on a soothing CD as Rona sat on a chair in the room. She might have been in her middle or late forties, but her demeanor was that of a much older woman. Her head was covered with a woolen skull-cap that she kept on even after she disrobed. Usually, I left the room while the client undressed and returned after she was on the table under the sheet, but Rona needed assistance.

Comforting a body is like cooking a good meal. The ingredients have to be lined up, the utensils prepared, the fire hot enough. Mostly, the chef has to be in the right frame of mind. I needed to concentrate on something outside of Trina and me.

I washed my hands and let warm eucalyptus oil flow into my palms.

"Let me hear you breathing, honey," I said. The sound was wispy, filled with frail tremors. "That's right. Deeper, now. A little deeper."

I could feel the fear in her as soon as I put my palms on her feet. Her entire medical history was in the palms of my two hands. Even though I hadn't used my skills in a while, they hadn't disappeared. Her headaches, the childhood asthma, the ringing in her ears, her latest bout with cancer, and the one before that were right at my fingertips.

"Relax," I whispered. "Just let go. Close your eyes and picture the sea."

My thumbs sank into the knots above Rona's shoulder blades and rubbed the swollen muscles, back and forth, until they were putty, malleable, pressed out, serene. I employed the lightest touch. My breath matched the movement of my thumbs, the in-and-out motion of her rib cage, the ticking of the clock, the New Age music on the tape. I felt myself surrendering to the rhythm of the breath and realized that Rona's pain served me.

"Just rest for a while," I said. She nodded. When I turned to leave, to give her privacy, she caught my hand with hers and placed it on her head.

"There. Please."

The cap came off with a quick, smooth movement. Her head was round, muscled, with just the thinnest veneer of pre-Afro fuzz. It was a head that yearned for heat and comfort. I rubbed her with my knuckles, creating tiny concentric circles of warmth all over her scalp. Rona lay perfectly motionless.

"Thank you," she said when I finished.

I left her alone for about fifteen minutes, so she could recover. When I returned she was sitting up, still naked, her stomach shrunken, her skin sagging below the fresh scar on her belly. Her purse was beside her. She had a piece of paper in her hand. She passed the paper to me, and I realized it was a check.

"No. It's on the house," I said, handing it back.

She shook her head. "I want to come back," she said. "Keep it, please."

I looked at the check again. "Your last name is Tubman? Are you related to-?"

"Harriet?" She shook her head. "No. You asked me that the first time we met."

"Your family isn't from Canada, is it? Didn't I read that she settled there after the Civil War?"

"I don't know. I always thought she died in Buffalo."

"Maybe," I said. "I'm forgetting my history."

"Didn't you go to Spelman?"

"Yes."

Once we rediscovered that we were Spelman College sisters, Rona and I chatted as though we'd been dorm mates, reminiscing about the president, the choir, and the white dresses we wore at the induction service.

"I want to go to the homecoming in October. Are you going?" Rona asked.

I shook my head.

"You should come. Anyway, I want another appointment," Rona said. "In a month. Is that okay?"

"A month is good. Call me for the exact time and date."

"I couldn't have done what she did," Rona said, putting away her wallet. "I'm talking about Harriet Tubman."

"Me neither. Most people can't even free themselves, let alone somebody else."

5.

AT EXACTLY SEVEN O'CLOCK, I MARCHED RESOLUTELY UP the steps of the Weitz Center, walked through the double doors, and there I was, back in that old familiar world: fifth floor, domain of foreign-born psychiatrists and psychologists, nurses, orderlies, and the homegrown mentally ill. The same bald-headed Ghanaian who'd been guardian of the sign-in sheet the last time Trina was on hold was sitting behind the little table. He gave me a nod of recognition, opened my purse, and rifled through it. Finding no contraband-no alcohol, drugs, sharp instruments, or enough rope for either a hanging or a selfflagellation-he passed it back to me. I walked over to the locked double doors, pressed the buzzer on the wall, and waited until another accented voice, this one Nigerian, told me to come in.

"Hello, Elijah," I said to the nurse who greeted me.

The small dark man smiled at me from behind the nurse's station and gave me a sympathetic look. I'd met him during Trina's first hospitalization, and he'd comforted me back then.

"I saw your daughter when she came in this afternoon. So sorry she's back here. I thought she was doing the program downstairs, that everything was fine."

"Everything was fine," I said. The words came out as wailing. The tears surprised me. I hadn't been aware that any of this was so close to the surface.

"You mustn't cry," Elijah said briskly, as though he were appealing to my sense of logic. "Maybe she'll get better."

"I don't understand. She seemed to be doing the program, staying sober."

"It's hard to stay sober, especially when you have a mental illness."

"Yes. Yes. It's just that you live with somebody and think she's doing one thing, committed to one thing, and it turns out that she's not."

"Welcome to the world, babygirl," Elijah said. His Yoruba-soaked English was without a trace of humor. He handed me a tissue. "She's outside, in the smoking area."

The hallway that led to the outdoor smoking area was a long one. To walk down it was to return to a house I'd once lived in. Same old marks on the walls, the carpets. Same old bewilderment befuddling my brain.

There! My first celebrity sighting! The aging actress whose heyday had been in the forties and fifties, when Dorothy and Lena couldn't get much silver-screen love, was walking toward me, holding the hand of a younger, catatonic version of herself. The daughter, her face puffy, her body bloated, moved slowly, with uneven steps. The mother's eyes met mine and locked in silent commiseration. When she passed, I recalled that she'd won an Oscar, but I couldn't name the movie.

Fat zombies, anesthetized by meds that slowed down their metabolism, roamed the halls. A young boy, barely five feet six inches, lumbered toward me, weighing at least three hundred pounds. Another woman, scarcely out of her teens, her huge belly sagging toward her thighs, guzzled a soda from the machine. It had always angered me that none of the psych wards or residential treatment centers was proactive in keeping weight off their mentally ill patients. Their meals were a carb fest, their exercise programs a joke.

Smoke assaulted me as soon as I opened the door at the end of the hall. The room of inhalation and exhalation, where all had the free pass of a nicotine high, was filled, as usual. At least ten people were crowded around the big table that was in the center of the small atrium. Scanning quickly, I didn't see Trina. A second look revealed my baby in a corner chair, her face somewhat obscured by grayish plumes of smoke. She turned away from me. Seated next to her, very close, was a young man who was puffing away.

"Trina."

Her name resonated in the air between us, like a dare that takes some consideration. Her quick finger tapping was freighted with lethargic mania, subdued by meds but not banished. Her eyes still held out the promise that she might try to scale the building and then leap. She wasn't cured, just contained, and couldn't yet be trusted. She blew smoke defiantly in my direction.

"Trina."

Her eyes tried to fool me. But behind the wide-open stare were two shuttered windows. Around me there was shuffling at the table, the soft rustle of hospital gowns, the swishing back and forth of the requisite hospital slipper socks. Curious glances were coming my way from Trina's community of sufferers. I lowered my voice and forged ahead. One-way conversation had its merits.

"Elaine called and told me what happened. Don't feel bad, honey. It's just a little setback, that's all. You'll get right back on track."

Rah, rah, rah!

Trina stubbed out the cigarette she was holding and lit another one. I reached out to take it away from her, but her glare, pure unadulterated essence of pissed off, stopped me. Maternal instinct held no power here.

"Sorry," I murmured. "I don't want you to become a chain-smoker, just because you don't have anything else to do."

Around the table, heads tilted my way. Smoke settled into my cropped curls.

"Trina, would you come into the multipurpose room with me?"

She didn't move. I felt the young man's eyes. He was handsome and grungy; his knee pressed against my daughter's leg. I sighed and settled into the groove in the wall I was leaning against, breathed in addiction and mayhem on pause, watched the people watching me. They were all there. The ancient schizophrenic, Medusa of the Homeless, her rheumy eyes alert to the faint whispers that still resided inside her. The unipols, wrist slitters, trigger pullers, and overdosers who were on the verge of embracing life again. There in the corner, the young one, Little Miss Schizoaffective, manic enough to be bipolar, psycho enough to be schizophrenic-but not quite. At the table, their eyes still wet with craving, twelve-stepping for all they were worth, the addicts: heroin, cocaine, crack, meth, painkillers (an oxymoron, for damn sure). Crazy was not a useful word in this place. Seventy-two-hour holds demanded specifics.

Trina got up suddenly. Stomped out of Smokers' Paradise and down the hall to her little corner of the world, a twin-bedded cubicle with a cubbyhole bathroom. I trailed her right up to her door, which she slammed vigorously in my face.

I hadn't expected to become the enemy again. Weren't those days over? Silent treatment and screaming fits, her palm striking my cheek- wasn't all that finished? Elaine had said a setback. But blowing smoke in my face, not speaking, her silence quivering with hostility-this was starting over.

Tap, tap, tap. Not too loudly. Didn't want anyone to notice. Tap, tap, tap. A bit harder. Sore knuckles seemed a fitting beginning. A nurse walked by.

"We don't allow visitors in the rooms," she said. She stood stiff and stern. No getting past her.

"Right," I said, stumbling down the hall.

Something bad was going to happen. The signs were all there: massa was on his deathbed; mistress was crying. Auctioneers and lawyers were assembled on the veranda. I could feel the overseer's eyes assessing the value of my flesh, her flesh. This wasn't my first plantation. Deep South, that's where I was headed.

What I needed was a swamp and a star.

Visiting hours weren't over yet. People were still coming in as I trudged down the hall toward the exit. All the visitors looked worn out and sad, old slaves who'd been worked to death. Nobody ever looked pretty or vivacious on the psych ward. Didn't matter how damn good-looking you were on the outside, once you set foot on the ward, all the ugly and tired that had been lying dormant inside you jumped up in your face and took up residence.

Never look in a psych-ward mirror.

I stood by the metal double doors, waiting until someone buzzed me out. There was a sign that read ALERT! THIS DOOR MUST BE LOCKED AT ALL TIMES. When Trina was on hold at Daniel Freeman Hospital, there was a sign next to the exit that read HIGH ELOPEMENT RISK. When I read it, my first thought was: Who'd want to get married in a place like this?

"Keri!"

As I stepped off the elevator, the flash of a familiar smile greeted me.

"Bethany!" I said, once she released me.

"My daughter just signed herself in yesterday," she said.

Her face seemed internally lit. Everything about her seemed lifted, as though some invisible hand had realigned her spine, propping up her body and her spirit. Bethany looked ten years younger than the last time I'd seen her.

"That's great," I said, sounding to myself as automatic as a stamp machine. There was no place in me to absorb good news, at least not someone else's.

Bethany didn't seem to notice; she was spilling over with the excitement and happiness elicited by her recent reversal of fortune. She wasn't really listening to me. She wanted to plow ahead with the retelling of her miracle. That's what we do, I thought. If we mothers of the unstable survive our children's madness, we examine it, dissect it, and put it back together, embellishing and polishing whatever good we can extract, presenting that semiprecious stone to an audience we hope will not judge us. How brave and pitiful we are.

"I thought the mania would never break. It just had such a hold on her. And then the drugs too. To tell you the truth, I think it was the drugs that brought her here. I've never seen such despair in all my life. She didn't get out of the bed for three days straight. I know she was thinking about suicide. I kept talking and talking and talking. You know," she said, giving me a cursory glance, "saying all the things they taught us in support group that I never thought would work. Only finally it did, and she told me she wanted to come in."

"So she's not on a hold?"

"Voluntary."

Meaning she could walk out of the Weitz Center whenever she got good and ready. I turned away from Bethany. Didn't want her to see the doubt shining in my eyes.

"That's just wonderful," I said, fiddling with the strap of my purse.

"You just don't know. Well, of course you do." It came to her then, a reality bite in the midst of her spiel. "What are you doing here?"

"My daughter had a little episode."

"Oh, no! She was doing so well. This is probably just a blip on the radar. She'll get right back on track."

"Yeah." She didn't want to hear the details, didn't want my sadness to bring her down. I understood.

"Listen, I've got to get upstairs."

Bethany got on the elevator, and I went out the front door.

The traffic on La Cienega Boulevard was mercifully swift, and whatever music was playing on the radio blended in with my thoughts. I didn't sing along. My nose was still clogged with the sterile hospital odor. I rolled down my window and let the breeze clear my mind.

My house seemed wintry once I was inside. Even after the heat had been on for more than an hour I was still trembling, sitting on the sofa wrapped up in a blanket I couldn't even feel. There were things that needed doing. I was hungry, for starters. The phone rang several times; I couldn't make myself answer it. The sofa had claimed me. I watched television with the remote in my hands, click, click, clicking away.

AFTER ABOUT AN HOUR, THE PHONE BEGAN RINGING AGAIN.

"Hello." My voice sounded strange even to my ears, the voice of some escapee, lost in the swamp, trying to rise from the depths of scum and quicksand to reclaim her humanity.

"Keri?"

I had to crawl through mud to connect to that voice, wipe away the sludge in my eyes, clear my throat.

"It's Orlando. How are you doing?"

His name was a whiff of fragrance, a snatch of a dance tune.