She counted them quickly. "Okay. This will do for now. When I come back, she had better have made that phone call. Otherwise..."

She let her threat hang in the air.

"Children." she said, turning to Baby Celeste and Panther, who was dozing again, "I now leave you in capable hands. Have a good night.

"I'll be thinking about you. Noble Celeste," she said, and walked out.

The moment the door closed. Mama's scream pierced my heart and fell like thunder from above.

19.

Almost Over .

When I rushed back up the stairs to her bedroom. I found Mama collapsed on the floor. Her body was folded awkwardly, twisted with her right arm out and her left under her torso. When I knelt beside her. I saw that she had fallen hard and scraped the left side of her forehead. A tiny trickle of blood emerged from the wounds. I rose quickly and retrieved a wet washcloth to first clean the scrapes.

Fortunately, she wasn't heavy. In fact. I was surprised at how I hadn't realized her thinness beneath her clothing. I could feel her rib bones as I lifted her gently and laid her on her bed. I put the cold, wet washcloth over her forehead and rubbed her hand.

"Mama, wake up. Please," I moaned, Below. Panther was still crying loudly, but Baby Celeste had come up behind me and was standing in the bedroom doorway looking in with concern.

"We have to work in the garden," she said, as if that were the solution to everything, In a vague place deep in the bottom of my mind. I wondered if it was, if working in the garden was magical and somehow roused all the good spirits who would come to our aid.

I shook Mama's hand. She groaned.

"Mama, wake up. Please." I begged.

Her eyelids fluttered, opened and closed, and then fluttered again. Baby Celeste drew closer. "The garden."

"Celeste. please. Don't you see Mama's not feeling well!"

She looked at Mama and then at me, her face full of accusation. I thought. I could almost hear her thinking. This -was your fault.

Mama groaned again. then her eyes opened.

She looked at me., but she didn't speak. "Mama, are you all right? What should I do?"

She stared and still did not speak. Then her eyes shifted away. I wiped her scrapes clean and went for some healing balm. When I returned. Baby Celeste was gone, which put some more panic in my chest and made me feel as if my nerves had broken into tiny little marbles rolling and bouncing inside me. I could take only short, little breaths and hurried to care for Mama's scrapes. All the time, she kept her eyes fixed on the wall and avoided looking at me. I begged her to listen and talk to me, but she didn't utter a sound.

Concerned for Baby Celeste and especially for Panther's welfare now that I had seen what Baby Celeste had done to him before. I reluctantly left Mama's side and hurried downstairs. Panther was in a deep sleep again in his bassinet. but Baby Celeste was nowhere to be found. I stepped out and saw her working in the garden.

"Celeste!" I called. "Why did you go out without me?"

I charged off the porch, anger like a wind carrying me to the garden where she was bent over, digging with her small spade and ignoring my cries. I ripped her away from the soil.

"Didn't I tell you to wait for me? Didn't I?" She glared at me sullenly.

"First. we have to see to Mama and then we'll come out here. Celeste. The garden is not important now."

"We have to work in the garden," she chanted.

I carried her back, struggling and screaming in my arms.

"You're being very bad," I told her. "You know what happens to people who are bad in this house,"

I marched up the stairway with her and put her forcefully down on her bed. "You take a nap," I ordered. "I need to tend to Mama."

I left her glaring at me and closed her bedroom door. but I was worried she would sneak out again. In the top right dresser drawer in Mama's bedroom, I found the skeleton key that opened and locked all the doors in the house. Before this. I would never dare touch it or look for it without Mama's permission. I returned to Baby Celeste's bedroom door and locked it. The second she heard that, she wailed and pounded on the inside of the door.

"Take a nap!" I shouted.

Then I calmed myself, went downstairs to bring Panther up in his bassinet, and put him in his crib in Betsy's room. He moaned and squirmed a little, but he didn't wake up. How many days like this had he already had in his life? I wondered. but I didn't have time to think about all that now. I had to return to Mama.

She was still lying flat on her bed, her head turned toward the wall, her eyes opened, the eyelids blinking slowly. I sat beside her and held her hand, hoping she would eventually turn to me and tell me what she wanted me to do, but the afternoon light dwindled into twilight and she hadn't moved an inch or said a word. In fact, her eyelids closed and she fell into a deep sleep.

I rose, feeling exhausted myself. The children were quiet, the house was dark. I had to see to dinner.

I told myself when I looked with longing at my own bed. I was tempted to fall asleep and dream that none of this had happened, but I descended the stairway slowly and went into the kitchen to prepare something for all of us to eat.

My early days as Celeste, a daughter who often stood side by side with her mother in the kitchen, returned to my memory. As Noble. I had done little in the kitchen, but remarkably, all I had done with Mama years and years ago was vivid. I prepared her wild rice and prepared some eggplant with her herbal breading.

Then I set the table. I heard the grandfather clock bong and listened expectantly for the sounds of Mama rising. She would be pleased at what I had done. I thought. She would be restored.

But when I went up to see her. I found she was still in a deep sleep. I hesitated, wondering if I should wake her anyway. She should eat something. I thought. If she doesn't wake up soon. I"ll feed Baby Celeste and Panther, then bring up some food for her. She'll still be pleased.

I unlocked Baby Celeste's door and found her curled up on the floor beside it. She sat up, rubbed her eyes, and looked at me furiously, "If you behave now, you can come out. Are you going to behave?"

She nodded, but did not speak.

"Come on then. I've made us dinner. 'We have to get Panther and feed him. too." Panther was squirming uncomfortably in his crib and alternating between sobbing and coughing on his tears and pain. I put another dose of balm on his burn and brought him down to sit in his high chair at the table.

"Help me bring everything out I told Baby Celeste. She did so, but not with the same excitement and joy she had when Mama asked her to do it.

Afterward, she sat quietly and ate, watching me feed Panther and eating something myself as I did so.

I couldn't stand the way Baby Celeste glared at me. It was Mama's angry face transposed on her face like some mask she could take off and put on at will.

"We've got to behave ourselves," I lectured, and help Mama. She's not feeling well, and not behaving will only make her feel worse. Celeste."

Her normally sweet lips tightened in the comers, but she didn't say, "Okay," or anything. She finished eating and then, without my telling her to do so, began taking things back into the kitchen.

Panther ate, but he was uncomfortable. I wondered what Betsy was doing and when she would return. Until I had a good talk with Mama, there was little I could do to make Betsy happy and keep her from making trouble for us. I thought. I settled Panther in his crib and then I looked in on Mama. She had turned her head and had her eyes open, but she was staring at the ceiling.

"Mama, how are you? Are you hungry? I made some dinner for you.' She didn't reply.

"I"ll bring it up," I said, thinking that when she saw it, she would be pleased and begin to speak.

Baby Celeste followed me about, but was as silent as Mama, not responding to anything I said or asking for anything. I fixed Mama's pillows so I could sit her up. She was limp and did nothing to help. Even after I put the tray before her, she just stared in silence.

"You've got to eat and drink something. Mama.

You have to." I began to feed her. She looked at me and she chewed slowly.

Good. I thought, she's coming around. I fed her as much as she would take and made her drink as much water as I could, but then she just turned her head and closed her eyes. All the while Baby Celeste sat on the floor listening and watching. I adjusted Mama and her pillows again, then carried out the tray.

"Let's go downstairs, Celeste," I told her. "I'll read with you."

I continued down the stairs to the kitchen, my mind reeling with worry and confusion. It took me a few minutes to realize Baby Celeste hadn't followed.

After I had taken care of the dishes and silverware. I went back upstairs, expecting she had remained in Mama's bedroom, She hadn't. I looked into her bedroom, and to my surprise I found she had prepared herself for sleep and was in bed. It was truly as if she was tuned in to Mama's every mood, every feeling.

Suddenly, that frightened me. Instinctively, I thought that wasn't good.

I attended to Panther, talking and playing with him for a while until he, too, drifted off to sleep. then I went downstairs and sat in Grandfather Jordan's chair and waited with a trembling heart for Betsy's eventual return. It was like anticipating a tornado. The silence was ominous.

"Daddy," I whispered at the darkness outside our windows. "Come to me. Help me. Help us."

I held my breath and listened and waited. but I heard nothing beside the pounding of my heart, thumping like a distant drum.

For some strange reason. I began to hum Mama's song. Then I sang it softly.

"If you go out in the -woods today.,."

I sang myself to sleep and didn't wake up until the whole house shook with Betsy's laughing, drunken entrance, slamming the front door. She stood in the hallway looking in at me, her body swaying. I was about to speak when a young man with dirty-blond hair, dressed in a dark blue athletic shirt and jeans, stepped up beside her and put his arm around her waist. He had tattoos over both his forearms. They looked like snakes twisting into what looked like chain links.

Betsy had gone directly to a clothing store and bought herself a new blouse-and-jean outfit with a pair of pink and white shoes. The blouse was half-open, revealing her breasts almost down to the nipples.

"There he is, my stepbrother," she said, and laughed.

I was holding my breath in expectation. What had she told this stranger? "Hi there," he said, waving and then laughing.

"This is..." She turned and looked at the young man. His eves were set close above a thick nose that looked as if it had once been broken. "Was it Brad or Tad, I can't remember," she said, and laughed.

"Tad." He lifted his right hand to wave at me again.

"Brad is with a rock-and-roll band called..."

Betsy looked at him, her eyes turning in her head like loose marbles.

"The Hungry Hearts!"

"Yeah. the Hungry Hearts. They're good, Maybe I'll take you to hear them one night when you're not working in your garden or chopping wood or painting poles." She laughed again. Then she seemed to sober up instantly and step a bit forward.

"Did you get what had to be done, done?" she demanded.

"Yes," I lied. I thought, under the circumstances, it was the wisest thing for me to do.

"Good. Good. Noble here is perfect," she told Tad. Then she tued on his arm. "C'mon. We'll use his room tonight. You don't mind, do you. Noble? I don't want to wake up you know who," she said in a conspiratorial tone.

I looked away and shook my head. She probably hadn't told him that Panther was her child.

She laughed again and pulled Tad to the stairway. I listened to them giggle and navigate their way upstairs, wondering if they would wake Mama. I almost wished they would. At least she would speak and move again, but apparently they didn't. Once they were in my room and had shut the door, the house returned to its ominous stillness.

I closed my eyes and made silent prayers.

When I opened them. Elliot was sitting across from me.

"It"s almost over," he said. "The whole thing...

it's almost over."

I simply stared at him. He no longer frightened me or surprised me. I could see that bothered him.

His smile softened to a grin of confusion. Then he shook his head.

"You're happy about that, aren't you? You wanted all this. You wanted me to succeed."

I said nothing.

I closed my eyes again, and when I opened them much later on, he was gone.

And in his place there was nothing but emptiness, a deep, dark emptiness that had settled comfortably in my heart and wrapped itself snugly around my very soul. There was nothing left for me to do but sleep, surrender to it like a soldier who had fought his best and settled regretfully but willingly into a bed of defeat.

At first light. I was waken by a tug on my hand and opened my eyes to see Baby Celeste standing there and looking at me.

"Celeste!" I cried, and scrubbed my cheeks with my palms. Is Panther awake. too?" She shook her head.

"Did Mama wake you?" I asked hopefully.

Again, she only shook her head.

"C'mon then, let's see how she is." I started up the stairs. She didn't follow. I looked back at her standing at the foot of the stairway. "Don't go anywhere now. Celeste. Were going to make breakfast in a minute."

She didn't reply. She just continued to stare up at me. I hurried to Mama's room, taking note as I passed my own bedroom that the door was shut. It would be quite a shock for Mama to see that Betsy had dared bring someone to our house like this. I thought.

Mama was awake, but she had the same distant look in her eyes. What frightened me the most, however, was seeing that she had wet herself like a baby.

"Oh. God. Mama," I cried, She didn't look at me: she didn't in anyway acknowledge that she had heard me. For a moment I just turned in circles mina to think of what to do first.

Then Panther began to cry. I anticipated Betsy risinc, to see about him, but the door of my bedroom never opened. I didn't know what to attend to first.

"Mama, you have to get up. You have to change and clean yourself. Please." I pleaded.

"Mama."