"Soon," my mother said. "I promise you."

"But how will they change?" Then relief flooded me literally from my head to my toes. "Peacie's coming back!" I said. "Right?"

My mother shook her head. "No. It's something else."

"But what what?" There was nothing else that could happen.

"I don't know," she said. "But things are going to change soon, I can feel it. Now set me up with a book and then"-she dropped her voice to a whisper-"go and help her before she breaks every dish we've got."

I believed in my mother's ill-defined optimism. And every day I waited for the happy event that would somehow rescue us. But the days marched on and nothing changed until one night when I was awakened by my mother weakly calling, "Audrey?...Audrey?"

I raced downstairs and saw that my mother's vent hose had come disconnected from her sh.e.l.l. I reattached it, then looked about for Audrey. I found her sound asleep on the sofa. I had seen caretakers sleep before, even Peacie, and certainly I had, but it was with one ear open to hear my mother. Not so for Audrey. She was lying under a pink flowered sheet I'd never seen, her head on a pillow with a matching case. Her shoes were off. I went to stand before her and called her name. Nothing. I shook her and with some reluctance she opened her eyes. Then she bolted upright. "What's the matter?" she asked, and I was astounded at her tone. She was indignant; I had disturbed her rest.

"My mother's vent hose came off," I said.

Audrey tsked, flung the sheet off herself, and pushed her feet into her shoes. "What did she do do?" She walked over to my mother and asked the same question.

"In case it has escaped your attention," my mother said, "I am paralyzed. I didn't do anything. You didn't attach the hose properly. Now if you will step up here and watch, my daughter will show you how to do it correctly."

"Mom, she was sleeping," I said as I demonstrated attaching the vent hose. "She was sound asleep!"

"I never was!" Audrey said. "I was resting my eyes. I can hear everything from out there."

"I had to shake you awake!" I said. "You were snoring!" This was untrue, but I felt the need to say it.

She turned away from me and busied herself straightening my mother's sheet, no longer the glaring white it was when Peacie was here, no longer wrinkle-free. "I was not sleeping."

"You're fired," I said, and she turned to me, astonished.

"Don't you talk to me that way, young lady!"

"Diana," my mother said.

"What! She brings her own pillow! She thinks this job is sleeping sleeping!"

"Go to bed," my mother said.

I couldn't believe it. "She's no good!" I said. "Just let me do it!"

My mother looked at me with great love and sorrow. "Go to bed," she said again, and I climbed back upstairs, where I lay crying quietly in the dark. I heard the low-voiced ministrations of Audrey. Did my mother want a drink? No? Well, then, she should just close her eyes and go to sleep like a good girl. And don't be fooling with that hose anymore. For heaven's sake, didn't she know that hose was keeping her alive?

In the morning, while Mary Jo made breakfast, I begged my mother to call Susan and have the sisters replaced. "They'll learn," my mother said. "It takes awhile to get used to the routine."

"They're awful!"

"They're all we have," she said.

Mary Jo carried in a tray with toast and cereal, juice and coffee. I rose from the bedside chair so that she could sit down. She laid a napkin across my mother's chest, then said, "Here comes the choo-choo, coming down the track!" She laughed and held up a slice of toast to my mother's mouth.

"Why don't you go and have some breakfast, too?" my mother said, and I understood that I was meant to leave the room. I did so, then heard my mother say, "Mary Jo? I am not a toddler. Please don't speak to me that way again."

"Oh, don't be such a p.o.o.p," Mary Jo said. "I was just kidding. I was just trying to make it fun for you."

"It's not fun when you do that."

"Not for you," Mary Jo mumbled.

"Yes," my mother said. "That's who I was talking about. Me."

"All right, then," Mary Jo said. "We can just do this plain and boring. Now what do you want first, toast or cereal?"

"Cereal," my mother answered. And then, "A bit less on the spoon might work better."

From the kitchen, I heard Mary Jo's huge sigh.

"We'll work it out, Mary Jo," my mother said, and her voice was kind.

"Well, you're about about the most the most demanding demanding patient I've patient I've ever ever had," Mary Jo said. "Diana? I'm going to need you to run to the store." had," Mary Jo said. "Diana? I'm going to need you to run to the store."

As she did every day. It was so she could get rid of me. I made her nervous. It was the best part of my life, at the moment, making her nervous.

Ten days later, both sisters quit. Mary Jo announced at the end of her day that they would give a week's notice, and then they would be gone. "Why?" my mother asked. I was in my bedroom, having just returned from Suralee's. Our play, I thought, was our best yet. I came out into the hall and heard Mary Jo say, "We just feel we need to move on. We might could ask around for y'all, see who could help out."

"There is no one," my mother said. "I can tell you that right now."

"Well," Mary Jo said. "I'm sorry, but that's not my problem."

Silence, and then my mother said, "Mary Jo?"

"Yes, ma'am?"

"Get your sorry a.s.s out of my house and don't come back. I'm reporting you and your sister for gross incompetence."

"I am not incompetent! You and your daughter are impossible! Believe me, I will be happy happy to leave." to leave."

I came downstairs to see Mary Jo walking to her car, and I went into the dining room, where my mother lay weeping in an oddly matter-of-fact way. I wiped her tears away. "Thank you," she said. "Diana, I'm sorry. We are out of options. I can't think of anything to do. I'm afraid I'm going to have to give you up. And I'll have to go to a place where I can be cared for, some sort of inst.i.tution. I'm sorry."

"I'll call Susan," I said. "We'll get someone else."

My mother shook her head, then smiled. "You know what? It might be better. I think I was...Well, I was really stubborn about wanting to raise you myself, wanting you to be with me. But maybe it was wrong. Maybe it was never fair to you. You need-"

"I'm fine!" I said. My voice was thin and high-pitched. I was terrified.

"You need to have more freedom and...more fun," she said.

"I have fun!"

She smiled.

"I do! I have fun all the time!"

"And you need some nice things that I just can't give you. Everything has all of a sudden gotten so much worse. Maybe things can work out again so that we can live together. But we're going to have to talk to Susan about what to do, Diana. We can't go on like this."

I stared at her.

"Would you come here?" she asked.

I moved closer to her, and she said, "Lie down with me. Put your head just under my chin, okay?"

I did, willing myself not to cry.

"I want to tell you that I'm sorry for the times I was rough with you. I wanted to raise you right, and all I had was my voice." She laughed. "And my teeth, right? I guess I thought I needed to make you a little afraid of me, so you'd mind. Because what could I do if you didn't listen to me?

"Peacie and I wanted you to be strong, so people wouldn't...We used to talk about how we'd make it so that you would always walk with your head up high. And I so much wanted you to be happy." I could hear my mother's smile in her voice, and I smiled, too. "Once, Peacie brought you to visit me when I was in the lung, you were just a few months old, and she held you up and said, 'Behold the mighty Diana!' Your hands were clasped together, your feet waving in the air, and you were smiling so hard. You liked being held like that, you laughed out loud and all the patients around you laughed, too. Peacie lowered you down to me, and I kissed the top of your head and I could smell your sweet baby smell.... And then I couldn't help it, I started tocry, for all I would never be able to do for you. And Peacie said, 'What you crying about?! You ain't got the sense of a barnyard chicken. Look Look at this child!'" at this child!'"

I knew just how Peacie would sound, saying that. I, too, had more than once been compared unfavorably with a barnyard chicken.

"Oh, you were a beautiful baby, Diana. And you were the dryest dryest baby in the state-Peacie never let you stay in a wet diaper more than ten seconds, I swear! But now I wonder if maybe we were wrong, if we didn't expect too much from you. I wonder if I should have done what everyone told me to and put you in-" baby in the state-Peacie never let you stay in a wet diaper more than ten seconds, I swear! But now I wonder if maybe we were wrong, if we didn't expect too much from you. I wonder if I should have done what everyone told me to and put you in-"

"We're not going to live apart from each other," I said, raising my head to look at her.

"Well, we are. Just for now, Diana."

"I'll get a job."

"Diana, you're thirteen years old. And anyway, it's not the money. We could get by on the money we get. It's finding somebody to take care of me. And don't tell me you'll do it, you can't do it."

"We still have Mrs. Gruder!"

"She's not enough, and you know that. Now let's you and I talk about some options."

I lay back down, then said all right. But what I was thinking was, If they separate us, she'll die. If they separate us, she'll die.

In the morning I got my mother ready for Susan's visit, scheduled for eleven. I worked slowly, every part of me aching. My mother would die, and I would be an unwanted orphan.

"Oh, will you stop with the long face?" my mother said. "I really believe this will be much better for both of us."

"It won't," I said.

"Of course it will! You'll live with a nice family, but you'll still be my daughter and we'll see each other all the time. The only difference will be that we'll both be better cared for!" The reason my mother had no bedsores-an extraordinary thing for someone in her condition-was because she was so expertly cared for, mostly by Peacie but also by me. No one would care for her with the vigilance we showed.

The doorbell rang, and I looked at my mother's bedside clock. "She's early," I said.

My mother nodded. "Let her in," she told me, and forced a smile.

From the window, I saw a long red car. "Wow! She got a new car," I called back to my mother and then opened the door. And saw not Susan Hogart but a strange man. "Is this the residence of Paige Dunn?" he asked.

I nodded. Now what? Were we going to be arrested?

"My name is Ed Winston," he said. "And out there in the car is Mr. Elvis Presley."

I swallowed. "What do you mean?"

"Well, I mean I got Elvis Presley out there in the car, come to see a Miss Paige Dunn. Are you her daughter?"

"Yes, sir."

"You wrote him the letter?"

"Diana?" my mother called.

"Just a minute!" I called back.

"Yes, I wrote the letter," I told the man. What was I wearing wearing? I couldn't look down at myself. I couldn't look anywhere but into this man's face. He was a handsome, blue-eyed blond man, a bit over-weight, fun in his eyes. "Does he...does Elvis remember her? Mr. Presley."

"Diana?" my mother called again.

"I'll be right there! Just hold on."

"Come here right now!" she said.

I looked at the man. "Go ahead," he said. "I'll wait right here. But hurry."

I went to my mother's bedside, where I stood wide-eyed before her. "Who's here?" she asked.

I felt for one brief moment like vomiting. Then I told her that the man on our porch said Elvis Presley was in the car outside, come to see her.

"Well, invite him in," my mother said. She was absolutely calm. I might have been saying Brooks was here.

I went back to Ed Winston and said, "I'm supposed to invite y'all in."

He nodded. "Okay, good. But I need you to do something for us, honey. Can you do something for us?"

"Yes, sir."

"I'm going to get Mr. Presley, but when he's inside, I need you to make sure n.o.body else comes over here. Can you do that?"

"Yes, sir. n.o.body ever comes here, anyway." I remembered Susan and said quickly, "Well, our social worker is coming in about an hour."

"That's all right, we'll be gone by then. Now, I'll go and get him, and then I want you to sit on the porch and watch real good. You call me if anybody starts over here. Y'all have a back door, right?"

"Yes, sir."

"Okay." He started down the steps, and I said after him, "So he does remember her?"

The man turned around, squinting in the strong morning sunlight. "He never forgot her. She took good care of his mama."