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"Now Little Ida and I had pretty much let prayers go by the boards, but with Big Ramona we prayed for everybody in one fell swoop, reciting three Hail Marys and three Our Fathers and never failing to add for the deceased:

Let perpetual light shine upon them, O Lord,

and may their souls and the souls of all

the faithful departed rest in peace.

"Then we'd chat about how it was a blessing Little Ida never knew real old age, or suffered illness, and that she was surely up there with God. Same with Lynelle.

"Finally, after all that, Big Ramona would ask if Goblin was with us, and then she said:

" 'Well, you tell Goblin it's time to sleep now,' and Goblin settled down beside me and kind of merged with me, and off I went to sleep.

"Gradually, over a period of several months, a semi-calm came over me entirely due to Big Ramona, and I was astonished to discover that Pops and the Shed Men, and even Jasmine and Lolly, credited me with kindness to Big Ramona in her time of grief. It was all our grief. And Big Ramona was saving me from a kind of dark panic which had begun in me with Lynelle and was now creeping closer with the loss of Little Ida.

"I took to going out fishing in the swamp with Pops, something I'd never been all that crazy about before. I got to like it out there as we poked our way through in the pirogue, and sometimes we went deep into the swamps, beyond our usual territory, and I got a kind of fearless curiosity about the swamps, and whether we might find Manfred Blackwood's island, but that we did not do.

"One afternoon, late, we came upon a huge old cypress tree that had a rusted chain around it, grown into it in parts, and a mark carved on it that looked to me to be an arrow. It was an ancient tree, and the chain was made of large links. I was for pressing on in the direction of the arrow, but Pops said no, it was late, and there was nothing out there anyway, and we might get lost if we went any further.

"It was all the same with me because I didn't entirely believe all the stories about Manfred and the Hermitage, and I was sticky all over from the humid air, and so we went home.

"Then Mardi Gras came, which meant that Sweetheart had to go to her sister Ruthie's house, and this year she really didn't want to go. She claimed she was feeling poorly, she had no appetite, not even for King cake, which was already arriving daily from New Orleans, and she thought she might be coming down with the flu.

"But at last she decided to go into the city for all the parades, because Ruthie was depending on her and she didn't want the crowd of her elderly aunts and uncles and all her cousins to be disappointed that she wasn't there.

"I didn't go with her, though she wanted me to, and though her cough worsened (she called Pops every day and I usually spoke to her too), she did stay for the entire time.

"On Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent and the very day she returned, she went to the doctor without anybody prodding her to do it. Her cough was simply too bad.

"I think they knew it was cancer as soon as they saw the X rays, but they had to do the CAT scan, and then the bronchoscopy, and finally a biopsy by needle through Sweetheart's back. These meant uncomfortable days in the hospital, but before the final pathology report came in Sweetheart was already breathing with such difficulty that they had put her on 'full oxygen' and had given her morphine 'to lessen the sensation of gasping for breath. ' She was in a half sleep all of the time.

"At last they broke the news to us in the corridor outside her room. It was lymphoma in both lungs and it had metastasized, meaning she had cancer all through her system, and they did not expect her to last more than a few days. She couldn't choose for herself whether she wanted an attempt at chemotherapy. She was in a deep coma, her breath and blood pressure getting fainter all the time.

"My eighteenth birthday came and went with nothing much to mark it, except that I got a new pickup truck and drove it back to the hospital as fast as I could to watch by the bed.

"Pops went into a protracted state of shock.

"This big and capable man who always seemed to be the one making the decisions was a shuddering wreck of his former self. As Sweetheart's sister and aunts and uncles and cousins came and went, Pops remained silent and inconsolable.

"He took turns with me in the room, and so did Jasmine and Lolly.

"Finally Sweetheart's eyes opened and would not be closed, and her breathing became mechanica

l as if she herself had nothing to do with the rhythmic heave of her chest.

"I ignored Goblin. Goblin seemed senseless to me, a part of childhood to be repudiated. I hated the mere sight of Goblin with his inane look of innocence and questioning eyes. I felt him hovering. Finally, when I could endure it no longer, I went down into the pickup truck and told Goblin that what was going on was sad. It was what had happened to Lynelle and to Little Ida, that Sweetheart was going away.

" 'Goblin, this is bad,' I told him. 'This is awful. Sweetheart's not going to wake up. ' He looked grieved and I saw tears in his eyes, but maybe he was only imitating mine.

" 'Go away, Goblin,' I said. 'Be respectful and decent. Be quiet so that I can watch with Sweetheart as I should do. ' This seemed to work some change in him and he ceased to torment me, but I could feel him near me day and night.

"When it came time to shut off the oxygen, which was by then the only thing keeping Sweetheart alive, Pops could not be in the room.

"I was in the room, and if Goblin was there I didn't know it. Aunt Ruthie and the nurse had the orders from the doctor. Jasmine was there and so was Lolly and so was Big Ramona.

"Big Ramona told me to stand close to the head of the bed and hold Sweetheart's hand.

"Off came the oxygen mask, and Sweetheart didn't gasp for breath. She just breathed with a bigger heave of her chest, and then her mouth opened just a little and blood poured down her chin.