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"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. Thiswas 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.Ill 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.