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She nodded.

"It wasn't meant to be," she said in a whisper. "Grandmother Beverly was right."

"No, she wasn't right. She's never right."

Mommy shook her head.

"This time. I'm afraid she was. Maybe I was too old. I had this hope that having a baby would make us a better family, improve my relationship with your father. Sometimes, you just can't force fate. It's almost a sin to try."

"Stop it. Mammy. Don't do this to yourself. That's why you were.., sick before."

"Sick?" She nodded. "Yes. I suppose you could call it that. I don't remember very much. I found myself here and all they tell me is I suffered a slight nervous breakdown, but that I'm on the way to a full recovery. What happened, Cinnamon? What did I do that they would put me in here?"

I shook my head. Was I supposed to tell her?

"Please, honey. We don't keep things from each other," she reminded me.

"You thought you hadn't had the baby. You thought you were having labor pains."

I decided to leave out the bizarre drawing she had made on her body.

"Oh."

"Then you thought you gave birth prematurely and the baby was in intensive care. You kept asking me how she was,"

She nodded took a deep breath to keep her tears back and shook her head.

"Is your father terribly upset?" she asked,

If I have any acting skills. I thought, now we'll see. My slight hesitation already had triggered some concern in her and her eyes snapped open and turned to peruse my face.

"He's been working harder to keep himself from thinking about it all,' I said."I haven't seen much of him."

She nodded.

"I don't blame him for working harder and not wanting to think about it. He wanted the baby very much."

I nodded, smiled and took her hand again.

"You must get stronger and come home as quickly as you can. Mommy. I need you."

Her eyebrows rose at the urgency in my voice.

"Grandmother Beverly making things hard for you?"

"Let's just say you've got a lot to do at home. Mommy." I replied and she laughed.

"Let her have her moment in the sun, gloat about what happened and how right she was. That's all she has, all she's ever had: her own self

righteousness," Mammy added. I felt my heart fill with joy. We were conspirators again, a team, turning the world into our stage, putting the lights where we wanted them, desiring the set, filling it with our own props, writing the script as we went along.

"You mean you won't ignore her as much?"

"Exactly. I'll do exactly the opposite: pay too much attention to her. We'll agree with her, but of course, we won't."

"We'll haunt her. We'll even ask her opinions," I suggested. She smiled gleefully.

"About every little thing. anything."