I know this one. "Just friends of Suralee's. She's known them a long time. They're brothers. They play baseball." "Just friends of Suralee's. She's known them a long time. They're brothers. They play baseball."

My mother waited.

"They're real nice."

"So the nice boys and you and Suralee had some drinks."

I stared into s.p.a.ce, as if trying to remember.

"Diana."

"Yes!"

"Anything else happen?"

I stared at my hands. The little p.r.i.c.kly hairs of his blond crew cut, the way he smelled so good. How nice it was to be hugged. But the way he forced my mouth open when he kissed me and slung his tongue around, the way he stopped talking to me. The rocking motion of his hips against mine when we lay on the floor, so hard I thought he'd leave bruises. The little p.r.i.c.kly hairs of his blond crew cut, the way he smelled so good. How nice it was to be hugged. But the way he forced my mouth open when he kissed me and slung his tongue around, the way he stopped talking to me. The rocking motion of his hips against mine when we lay on the floor, so hard I thought he'd leave bruises. "What do you mean?" I said. "What do you mean?" I said.

"I mean, did anything else happen."

"Well, we talked. And...that's about it."

She said nothing, and I burst into tears.

"What happened?" she said, and in a rush, I told her. We kissed, he touched me, I threw up, Suralee got mad, I came home. That's all. The end.

My mother nodded. Then she said, "Well. You're growing up quickly, aren't you?"

I shrugged.

"It's wonderful to grow up-all these exciting adventures, all these new privileges."

I said nothing.

"Of course, with any privilege comes responsibility, wouldn't you say that's true?"

"I'm really really tired. Can I just go to bed now? Can we just talk about this tomorrow?" tired. Can I just go to bed now? Can we just talk about this tomorrow?"

It was as though she hadn't heard me at all. "Now, in this case, we're talking about s.e.x. Huh. I would have thought you were a bit young for that. But you've decided otherwise. Now, you told me this young man touched you. Did you like it?"

I was deeply embarra.s.sed. "No."

"Is that all he did, was touch you?"

"Yes!"

"All right. Well, here's what I can tell you, Diana. You say you didn't like it. And maybe that's true."

"It is true!"

"But if you didn't like it this time, it doesn't mean you won't like it next time."

"What next time." My foot started wiggling, and I stopped it. I was now past giddiness and into a kind of ragged irritation. I really was tired; I so much wanted to go to bed. I was still dizzy, and I could feel some nausea returning.

"Oh, there will be a next time," she said. "And a time after that. And what you're going to have to know is how to handle yourself when those situations arise. Now, this time maybe you just felt awkward."

Not true. I had mostly liked it. I had felt on fire. At first, I had wanted him to never stop.

"But at some point," my mother said, "it's not going to feel awkward. And then you're really going to need some willpower. Do you think you have willpower?"

"I guess so."

"I don't think that answer is quite good enough, Diana. Because if you get in situations like that again and you don't have willpower, you'll go too far. And you'll end up in trouble. Believe me."

I looked at her, outraged. "I'm not going to get pregnant! I would never do that."

"Never say never," my mother said in a singsong way. I wondered, suddenly, if my mother had been pregnant when she got married. But I didn't want to ask, for all it would say about me.

"You've apparently decided that you can handle the pleasure of s.e.x," my mother said. "I want to make sure you can handle the responsibility. So here's what I want you to do. I know you're really tired. I know you want to go to bed. What I want you to do is stay up for a few hours."

"What? Why? Why?"

"Because you need to understand that sometimes your body is going to be asking you so hard for something and you're going to have to know how to not give in to it. This will give you an idea."

"Okay," I said. "I'll stay up for a few hours."

"And I'll stay up with you. You just stay there." She nodded. "You stay right there. But first get me a fresh drink of water. You might want one yourself. This is going to take awhile, and it's going to be hard."

And it was. Many times I went to the kitchen to splash cold water on my face so that I could wake up a little. A few times I told her I got got it, I understood, could I just go to bed now. Each time she said no. Once, I took aspirin for the aches in my body. Nothing felt comfortable-not the floor, not the chair beside her bed. it, I understood, could I just go to bed now. Each time she said no. Once, I took aspirin for the aches in my body. Nothing felt comfortable-not the floor, not the chair beside her bed.

We talked sometimes. The lights were out; I could see only the dim outline of my mother, and this, combined with the s.p.a.ciness of extreme fatigue, made for a kind of freedom of inquiry. Once I asked her why, when she was in the iron lung, everyone was so pessimistic about what her life would be when she was discharged.

"They didn't want me to be disappointed," she said. "They were trying to be realistic. There was one crazy nurse there who made us all feel better, though. She looked at people who had polio as a privileged group, like a secret society. She said we had superior nervous systems, much more organized than most and therefore more susceptible to disease. She said such highly developed systems indicated great abilities or talents." She laughed. "Not that we could do anything with it. But for many, it was nice to believe."

"Did you believe it?" I asked.

She hesitated, then said, "Yes. Sometimes I did."

At another point, I asked her, "What's the hardest thing?"

"About what?" she asked.

"About...being you. The way you are now, I mean."

A long pause, and then she said, "When I went out tonight, we pa.s.sed a rosebush, and there were petals on the ground beneath it. I wanted them. I used to sprinkle them places-in my bathwater, into little bowls around the house. I was thinking of how I'd like to have a bowl full of rose petals beside me at night, but I couldn't ask Brooks to stop and get some for me."

"Why? Was it too hard to talk?" She had a lot of difficulty talking when she was breathing on her own.

"No. Because it would have been too much to ask. You get a sense about what you can and cannot ask for. Brooks was already doing so much. He was nervous. He was gripping the wheel, and he had this little band of perspiration above his lip. He was just staring so hard at the road! I think Peacie scared the h.e.l.l out of him.

"But anyway, it's...You know, if someone turns the television on for you, you can't ask them to flip through the channels during the commercials. If someone has just rearranged your limbs for you, you have to wait awhile before you ask them to do it again. That's what's hard. Those little aggravations. Peacie dusts and the lampshade is askew, but I can't be after her to straighten it."

"I don't see why you couldn't ask for that. that."

"Oh, Diana. If you ask for everything you want, you'd be asking for things all day. Think, sometime, about the million little freewill things you do. And then think about having to ask someone to do every one of them for you. You'll see what I mean."

I sat still, imagining variations in my day brought about by my own whimsy. Sleeping late. Spreading a thick layer of peanut b.u.t.ter on my sandwich, because I was in the mood for more than usual. Stopping at the window at the bottom of the steps to watch the robin that landed on our lawn. Removing a barrette that was beginning to hurt my head. Going off somewhere to be alone.

"It's awful, isn't it," I said, quietly.

"It's what it is," my mother said. "And believe it or not, it has its positive side. It teaches you to be content with less. Otherwise, you'd go crazy."

I shuddered-a spasm of aggravation on her behalf. "What do you think you got it from? Do you really think it was from a water gla.s.s?"

"I do. I'll never know, of course." She looked at her bedside clock. One A A.M. "All right; you can go to bed now."

"I don't want to yet."

She smiled. "Go to bed."

"I will, but...can we just talk some more?" There was something about this middle-of-the-night talking, an openness in and access to my mother I'd not enjoyed before.

"I just want to ask you something," I said. "Did you ever think...Did you ever wonder if you caused caused it, somehow?" it, somehow?"

As soon as I spoke the words, I regretted them. But it was something I'd always wondered about.

"There was a six-year-old boy in a lung," she said. "I used to hear him talking to his mother. He used to say he was sorry, over and over, for playing with a dog he'd been told not to pet. It didn't matter how many times his mother told him he didn't catch polio that way; he believed he had."

"What about you?"

"I knew it was a virus. I knew it was. But sometimes I'd think...I'd wonder if it was punishment for being so wild."

"What do you mean?" I asked. "Being wild?"

"Oh, it was just crazy thinking. I did that sometimes, I guess everybody did. I wanted to have something to blame it on. But it was just a virus that attacked the motor-nerve cells of my spinal column. There was no reason. It was a long time ago. I need another drink of water, Diana."

I went into the kitchen and refilled her gla.s.s, and it came to me that the temperature of the water was up to me, and she would say nothing about it being too warm or too cold-she never had. I looked at my reflection in the window above the sink. Her daughter. I stared while the water ran over the top of the gla.s.s, and then I turned off the tap and brought the gla.s.s out to her, stuck the straw in, and let her drink. I wondered how long she'd been thirsty before she asked for anything.

We sat in silence for a long while after that. At one point I asked if she was asleep, and she said no. I heard her bedside clock ticking, the night wind blowing, the creaks of the house, the whirring of the fan, the usual sounds of her respirator, my own breathing. We shared the silence in a way that felt like talking.

Around three, she called my name, checking to see if I was still awake. "Why don't you go to sleep now?" she said. "I think you got the point."

"What was your very favorite thing to do when you were my age?" I asked.

She didn't answer for a while, weighing whether or not to let me stay up, I knew. Then she said, "I'll bet you'll be surprised at what my favorite thing to do was."

"Why? What was it?"

"I liked to make little tiny cities," she said. "Outside, in the dirt. I made roads, I built houses out of cardboard, I used wooden blocks for cars. I made telephone poles from branches and used my mama's black sewing thread for wires. I made holes in the ground and filled them with water for little lakes-my daddy would get so mad at me for digging holes."

"Were you afraid of him?" I asked.

"No," she said. "He wasn't a mean man, just righteous, righteous, you know? Church-righteous-that man never did sit any way but straight up in his chair. And my mama was a lot like him. I didn't feel...I guess I just never felt like I belonged to either of my parents. I mean, I you know? Church-righteous-that man never did sit any way but straight up in his chair. And my mama was a lot like him. I didn't feel...I guess I just never felt like I belonged to either of my parents. I mean, I didn't didn't biologically, of course. But I didn't in any other way, either. It was just a bad fit." biologically, of course. But I didn't in any other way, either. It was just a bad fit."

"We're a good fit," I said, and she said yes we were.

A little after three, I felt an odd rush of energy. "I'm not tired anymore," I said.

"Yes you are," my mother said wearily.

"I'm not! I broke through it! I'm fine! Let me just finish the whole night, please? I can do it. I want to."

"All right," she said. "But you are tired, believe me." And then she told me about how when she worked nights as a nurse, the first night was awful. That there was always a point at which you thought you'd come out of the fatigue, but then it would come back, worse.

About this she was right, too. Just before six, I ached all over-even my kneecaps hurt. I felt nauseated again, too. I felt like I wanted to cry, but I didn't. I saw the sky lighten, and the birds begin to fly from branch to branch in the backyard. I had always thought of dawn as bursting forth, delivering a new day with Disneyesque optimism. I felt none of that now. Now I sat on a wooden chair by my mother's bedside, rubbing one arm and seeing the world as in resentful orbit, creaking and groaning as it forced into existence one more day. Here came the sun, starkly and uncaringly revealing our house, so small and different from the people's whose lives and fortunes were far better than our own. But I had done it; I had lasted the night.

When we heard Peacie coming through the door, my mother said, "All right. Now you really must go to bed." Her voice was croaky now, and she had deep circles under her eyes. She looked about as bad as I felt.

I started for the stairs, and Peacie narrowed her eyes at me. "What you up to?" she asked. I walked past her. "Vixen," she said, and then I heard her say to my mother, "Good G.o.d almighty, what happened to you?"

A little before noon, Peacie shook me awake. "Don't," I said. "I'm sick."

"You ain't sick. You hungover. Now wake up, I got to talk to you."

I squeezed my eyes shut and pulled the sheet up over my head. Peacie yanked it off and then grabbed me by the shoulders to sit me up. Reflexively, I reached out and slapped her. For a moment, we both sat still, staring wide-eyed at each other. I feared for myself. Surely she was going to slap me back, or worse.

But she only said, "Get dressed. Your mother is sick, she got to go the hospital. Riley ain't there, so I called over the hardware store. Brooks out to lunch, so Dell on the way over. You got to pack her things and help me get her in the car." She walked out of my room and quickly back downstairs. I lay still, listening to her talking to my mother, and heard my mother's weak voice, talking back. Then my mother began coughing. And coughing. I knew Peacie would be turning up the positive pressure on the respirator, forcing more air into my mother's lungs. If she didn't stop coughing, Peacie would have to fling herself across my mother's midsection to try to help bring up secretions.

My fault.

Outside, it rained. Perfect. Perfect. I struck my chest with my fist, hit myself again. Then I got up, got dressed, and headed downstairs. I struck my chest with my fist, hit myself again. Then I got up, got dressed, and headed downstairs.

My mother was lying in bed, her eyes closed. Everything about her looked fragile and illuminated, like Mary in a holy card. "Mom?" I whispered.

She opened her eyes. "I'm fine."

She was not. I recognized the signs of respiratory distress: the labored exhalations, the sunken eyes, the off color.

"I'll pack some things for you," I told her. "Dell's going to take us to the hospital."

"Is he?" she asked, and closed her eyes again.

I packed quickly. Into the blue suitcase she kept under her bed I put her photo of me, her favorite lap quilt, and the bed socks she liked to use whenever she had to go into the hospital. Her medications and the complicated list of instructions for taking them. Her toothbrush and makeup. When I picked up her hairbrush, I began to cry. Peacie came into the room and spoke quietly. "You can shut them waterworks off right now. This ain't no way 'bout you. She got enough to worry about."

"It's all right, Peacie," my mother said, but her eyes stayed closed and she spoke as if she were in a dream. I hoped she was. I knew how much she hated going to hospitals. I wished she could stay asleep until she came home again. Somewhere around the edge of my brain a thought flitted in and out: She might not come home. This was how people with polio often died, a respiratory infection that couldn't be controlled. And this was the sickest I'd ever seen her.

Peacie had gone back into the kitchen to gather up her own things. I went to sit at the table. "Peacie?"