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She just shook her head and told me she would make something warm for me to drink, which was really the way to get the baby to drink. Some nights she would sit there and sing and hum an old folk sang designed to calm the baby. She said it would help the baby sleep.

All this made me feel no more important than a wheelbarrow. I soon understood that in Mommy's eyes. I would be bringing the baby to the table or putting it to bed. I would move it out of the hot sun when I moved or cover it to keep it warm and secure when I covered myself. There was no longer a me. I was slowly disappearing, and the baby was emerging.

And Noble gloated.

He was always there in some shadow. in so

me corner, or just walking slightly behind me, especially after Mommy had spoken to the baby inside me.

"When the baby is born." he said. "you're going to disappear completely.

"And I won't have to wear a dress, andIll get my amulet back."

Even though I had less and less to do. I didn't feel life was easier for me. Almost overnight, perhaps because I no longer could or had to hide was happening inside me. I grew bigger and bigger. I waddled when I walked, struggled to rise out of a chair, climbed the stairs slower, and groaned about the pain in my lower back. I saw how it all made Noble laugh, Sometimes, his laugh echoed and was joined in a chorus of chilling laughter out of the dark. I felt the chill everywhere. It was colder in the house.

This winter was even more severe than the previous. It was so cold, tears would freeze as soon as they escaped my eyelids. To me, it often looked like the world might crack like a piece of ice.

Mommy thought it was dangerous for me, or more to the point, for the baby, to spend too much time outdoors. We had weeks and weeks of belowfreezing temperatures and weeks and weeks of temperatures below zero at night. I rarely went out of the house and spent hours and hours alone in my room, reading, sleeping, or just staring out the window.

The cold took its toll on everything. Mommy had trouble with our car. One day after she had left to get some groceries, she didn't return until a little after eight o'clock in the evening because some hose or something had broken, and she had been stranded for hours waiting for help and a tow truck and then for the mechanic to repair the damage.

We had problems with our oil burner. The pipes nearly froze, and the snow was so heavy with one storm after another. Mommy had to give in and hire someone to plow our driveway, two, sometimes three times a week. I recalled how Daddy used to do that with his truck and how Noble and I would ride with him, or we would be permitted to drive the little tractor and plow with it, and then how he and I had done it together after Daddy's death.

Toward the end of these severe winter months, we had ice storms and branches cracked on trees continually. The moonlight would dance on the icy bark, creating a dazzling show in the evening, but Mommy called it the "smile of cold Death, gleefully enjoying its triumph over fragile and vulnerable living creatures surprised by Nature's treachery."

Mornings now. I would make little effort to get up. Mommy brought the "baby's breakfast" to me. and I remained in bed until almost midday. I began to hate going downstairs because it meant I would have to walk up. Mommy warned me about being too lazy.

"It's going to make everything harder for the baby," she said. She didn't mention how it would harder for me. Everything was the baby, the baby.

She didn't seem to notice or care that all this time while I was confined to the house, my hair grew longer and longer until it was down to the base of my neck. When I knew it was safe because she was busy downstairs. I would go into her room and look at myself in her vanity mirror. I imagined my hair even longer and envisioned how I might cut and style it. Every day, however. I anticipated her realizing and taking the scissors to me.

I tried to keep the baby's kicking a secret. The truth was, it frightened me. One afternoon, however. I had fallen asleep on the sofa in the living room, and the baby's kick woke me with such a jerk. I cried out. She put down her knitting (she was making the baby a hat and gloves) and walked over to me to place her hand on my stomach. She waited, and then her face lit up with more brightness than I had seen in her face for years.

"Its almost time." she said. "It's almost time."

I rarely if ever thought about the impending birthing. It was more as if I believed I would be the way I was forever and ever. The fetus within would never leave me. I tried to learn as much as I could from the books we had in the house, but it was still quite a mystery for me.

The first time I felt a labor pain. I screamed so hard and so shrilly. I frightened myself. Mommy came running. I was in the kitchen, seated at the table, sipping some tea. The cup fell from my fingers and shattered. I thought she would yell about that, but she didn't seem to care or notice as soon as she realized what had occurred.

She made me walk even when the pain began again. She led me up the stairs and to my room, where she had me lie down. The labor pains stopped after a few more minutes, however, and life returned to what it was. I hesitate to say normal. It was so different from what had been my life, even after Noble's tragic death.

The next time the labor pains came, they were accompanied by something even more frightening to me: a stream of water running down my leg. I was standing the hallway. and I couldn't move an inch forward or an inch backward. Mommy had been outside. She entered the house and saw what was happening immediately.

At first she started me for the stairway, but the pain was so intense now. I couldn't lift my feet to climb the steps, so she turned me into the living room instead. She had me lie down on the sofa, and then she smiled and said. This is amazing. I just remembered that my great-grandmother Elsie gave birth to my grandfather on this very sofa. There wasn't even time for the doctor to come, and no time to get her to any hospital. Do you sense her?" she asked me with that same far-off look in her eyes. It was eerie. It was as if she was looking at a face behind my face, and all I had was a mask,

All I sensed was excruciating pain anyway. I grimaced and cried out.

It will be all right." she said, and she went for towels and hot water and one of her herbal

concoctions. I heard her mumble about it being something her grandmother had created. I swallowed two tablespoons of it. but I didn't think it did much of anything. The pain only grew worse.

I don't know how long I was screaming. I know my throat became scratchy and my voice hoarse. I drifted in and out of consciousness. At one point when I awoke. I saw the living room was filled with members of our spiritual family. They were all sitting or standing calmly, talking softly and watching me. Behind one of my uncles, more in the doorway, was Noble, looking frightened, I thought.

On and on my labor went. Mommy wiped my face with a warm wet cloth, but did little else. And then, right after nightfall, with darkness closing around our house as if some giant had dropped a black sheet over it and the windows. I saw the relatives drawing closer.

"Push," Mommy screamed. "Push, push. push."

I did, and again she screamed, and again I did it. The room turned red. I thought I was looking through some crimson veil at everything and everyone. Even Mommy's face was as bright scarlet. I heard a cheer and a cry of joy, and then there was the sound of a baby's cry.