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"You don't soften yourself. You toughen yourself," she said. "There will be harder things for you to do in the coming days and weeks, months, and years, and you'll thank me for helping you get stronger and stronger."

Sometimes I would lie in bed and think about my beautifully scented soaps, especially the gift packages of them Daddy had bought me. I would go into Mommy's room and stare at everything on her vanity table like some beggar staring through a bakery window at the fresh loaves. I longed to lift a brush and run it through my hair the way I used to. but Mommy kept my hair very short. There was actually nothing to brush anyway.

&n

bsp; One night she caught me in there, smelling the scent of her cologne, and she screamed from the doorway,

"What are you doing? Don't touch my things!" she snapped and marched in to rip the bottle from my hands.

"I'm sorry. Mommy. I just wanted--"

"Tomorrow. I'll go into town and buy you some of the men's cologue your father used to use. You like that smell. don't you?"

"Yes

"Good." She squeezed my upper arm. "Good," she said. "You're firmer. Good."

She made me leave the room and go work on my school problems. Ironically, if I did them as quickly as I used to do them, she was upset. She tried hard to find things wrong and picked on the smallest mistakes, demanding me to write things over or redo math problems, even if I got them all right.

"You didn't do them correctly. It was just luck," she said.

"Do it again."

I began to realize that I was better off working slower, making deliberate mistakes, and not writing as neatly as I could. It pleased her,

"You'll get it eventually," she would say as she had always said to Noble. "Just keep at it."

If I completed a reading assignment. I couldn't reveal it. When she looked in on me. I had to flip the pages back and pretend I was only up to the middle. She would smile and encourage me to concentrate.

"It's usually more difficult for boys than it is for girls until after puberty," she explained. For some reason, boys do better then, and more often than not, girls don't do as well."

She paused and nodded at me, her eyes getting that far-off look she often had when she was sitting in the rocker or on the chintz sofa and looking out the window.

"It's good," she said. "You're doing well. I'm sure they will be pleased with both of us. I'm sure they will return to us, and well be safe again, safer than any of those skeptics and busybodies out there."

Except for the postman, who had seen me chopping wood and watched me for a few moments, and the fuel oil delivery man, no one from what Mommy now called the outside world saw me. In time they would have to. I thought. I would have to go take the test for my progress at home school, at least, not to mention accompanying Mommy when she went shopping, even when she went far away. It made me nervous to think about it. Would they see Noble or Celeste when they looked at me, and how would that affect Mommy? More important, how would it affect our spiritual family?

It wasn't until the grass had thickened over the newly dug grave to the extent that a stranger could not look at it and tell any difference that Mommy finally decided to call me into the living room one night to tell me her plan for dealing with the "nosy, ignorant community."

"I want you to go fishing tomorrow, Noble," she began, "I want you to go with Celeste."

I looked at her, my face heavy with confusion. She smiled.

The two of you scrunch your eyebrows the same way. I told Celeste many times she would develop two deep wrinkles and regret it someday."

She sighed.

"Someday. What a word that is," she rambled, "so full of so much hope, so much promise. It trails off ahead of us, floats around us, brightens our darkest moments. We can always turn to it to pull ourselves out of our quicksand of doldrums. Someday this, someday that. Well, it works almost always. We can't really do that now, can we? It's far, far too late for that." she said, thought a moment, and then cleared her throat and sat firmer.

What did she mean by "go with Celeste"?

"You will go with your sister. You will get separated. And you will come running home to me when you can't find her late in the day. Take her pole. Where is yours?" she asked, and my eyes widened. "Well?"

"It was in the creek, Mommy," I said. I almost said. "Remember?"

She thought a moment and then nodded to herself. "That's fine. I suppose. They'll find it."

"Who?"