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"I know what I said. Don't you think I remember what I say?" she snapped.

"I didn't mean you don't remember. I meant maybe we could let her be seen finally,"

Blood rushed into her face, but she closed her eves and with the power she could will like a fairy goddess waving her wand, she forced the blood back.

"When the time is right

, when the time comes, we will." she said slowly, punching out her words like my hammering nails. "The time is not yet right." She shook her head,

"I just thought it would make it easier for us all and..."

"Don't... think," she ordered. "Just listen and do what you're told. Do you understand? Do you? Because if you don't, if you feel like something is preventing you, some dark force is cloggi.ng your ears and mixing you up inside your head, I want to know right now. I don't want to put Baby Celeste in any unnecessary danger," she added, the heaviness of the underlying threat not lost on me.

"I understand. Mama. I understand." "Good. Good."

Afterward, she went to her piano and played a musical piece I had never heard her play. Mama had very little sheet music. She once told me the music, all the notes, melodies, were already in the piano. When she sat on the stool and brought her fingers to the keyboard, she had no idea what she would play until she heard the first note. Then, she said, it all came up to her through her fingers, into her arms, into her heart.

All of the women who had lived in our house had played this piano, and cousins had often played when they had visited. I remember Mama talking about them when I was little, and about the piano never forgetting. She made it sound magical, a conduit through which she could reach back in time. Perhaps that was why she often had new thoughts, new revelations, to announce after she had finished playing.

When I was younger, many nights I awoke and heard the piano being played. Noble

never did and slept through it always. I would get up and tiptoe to the top of the stairway to listen. I knew Mama would be angry if I went downstairs and snuck up on her. Daddy used to say she played in her sleep. She rose, went downstairs, and played, then returned to bed and denied having done it.

"It wasn't me. Arthur Madison Atwell," she would tell him. She always pronounced his entire name when she wanted to stress something or when he made her angry.

"Right, Sarah. It was your great-great-aunt Mabel," he would joke.

"I had no Aunt Mabel and you know very- well I didn't," she would say. Mama had no sense of humor when it came to her spiritual family.

Daddy would shake his head. If I was standing nearby and heard the conversation, he would wink at me and point to his ear. He once told me that when Mama talked about her spirits, you had to listen with half an ear.

Sometimes when she finished playing, she looked exhausted, drained, and sometimes she looked revived, even younger. This night she played with an intensity I had rarely heard. Her hair fell about her face and her face became flushed, her eyes bright. Even Baby Celeste stopped doing what she was doing and stared up at her in awe.

When she was finished, she lowered her head to the piano for a long moment, then sat up and smiled at us.

"It will all be well. Noble. I am confidant now. I have seen Baby Celeste."

"You have seen her?" I looked at her and then at Mama. "What do you mean? She's been here beside me all the while."

"I have seen her older, much older, and she is everything I dreamed she would be.

"Tomorrow." Mama declared, rising, "tomorrow it will all begin again,"

She lifted Baby Celeste into her arms and carried her off toward the stairway.

With wonder I looked at the piano and then I followed her. We put Baby Celeste to bed and then we both went to bed ourselves.

Hours after I had fallen asleep, I woke just as I often had as a young girl, and I heard the music below. It was the same music Mama had played earlier. I rose, confused, wondering why she had gotten up and returned to the piano. However, when I went out to the hallway, the music stopped and I could see through Mama's open door that she was in bed. But I had heard the music. I had. To the day I died. I would swear to it. I wished Daddy would appear so I could confirm it_ but he didn't.

I returned to my room and called for him in the darkness, but he didn't come.

Something's wrong, I thought. There's a reason he's not coming to me anymore. There's a reason he fled into the woods and he stays in the dark places.

Surely it had to do with these dramatic changes in Mama. I thought. How I need him now,

I fell asleep again, hoping at least to find him in my dreams. But I found nothing but deep darkness.

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