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"Kitty, I'm never going to call you Mother again, because you never were and never will be my mother. You're Kitty the hairdresser. Kitty the fake ceramic teacher." I spun around on the heel of one silver slipper and pointed at the line of wall cabinets. And I laughed, really laughed, as if I enjoyed this, but I wasn't enjoying myself, only putting on a false front of bravado.

"Behind those locked cupboard doors you've got professional molds, Kitty, thousands of bought molds! With shipping labels still on the boxes they came in. You don't create any of these animals! You buy the molds, pour in the clay slip--and you display them and label them as one of a kind, and that's fraud. You could be sued."

Kitty grew unnaturally quiet.

That should have warned me to shut up, but I had years of frustrated rage locked up within, and so I spewed it out, as if Kitty were a combination of Pa and everything else that had managed to spoil my life.

"Cal told ya that," came Kitty's deadly flat statement. "Cal . . . done . . . betrayed. . . me."

"Nope." I reached for a drawer in my desk and pulled out a tiny brass key. "I found this one day when I was cleaning in here, and just couldn't help opening the cabinets you always keep locked."

Kitty smiled. Her smile couldn't have been sweeter.

"What do ya know about art, hill scum? I made t'molds. I sellt'molds t'good customers--like myself. I keep em locked up so sneaks like ya won't steal my ideas."

I didn't care.

Let the sky fall, let the rain swell the ocean and wash over Candlewick, carry it to the bottom of the sea, to sleep forever next to lost Atlantis . . . what did I care? I could leave now that the weather was hot. I could hitchhike--who'd care? I'd live. I was tough. Somehow or other I'd make my way back to Winnerrow, and when I was there I'd tear Fanny away from Reverend Wise, find Tom, save Keith and Our Jane . . . for I'd thought of a way we could all survive.

To prove my strength, my determination, I turned and stuffed my doll far under the bed, then deliberately fell on the bed and curled up on my side, reaching for a pillow that I hugged tight against me. It hit me then--the thing I'd not thought of before--just what was the evil thing Kitty presumed I did. The girls in school talked about it sometimes, how they pleasured themselves, and foolishly I threw my leg over the pillow and began to rub against it.

I didn't do that more than two seconds.

Strong hands seized me under my armpits, and I was yanked from the bed. I screamed and tried to fight Kitty off, tried to twist around so my hands could rake Kitty's face or do some other damage that would force her to let me go. It was as if I were a struggling kitten in the jaws of a powerful tiger. I was carried and dragged down the stairs, into the dining room I'd made pretty with party decorations she picked me up, plunked me down on the hard glass-top dining-room table.

"You're putting fingerprints on your clean tabletop," I said sarcastically, idiotically dauntless in the face of the worst enemy I was likely to ever have. "I'm finished with shining your glass tabletops. Finished with cooking your meals. Finished with cleaning your stupid house that has too many gaudy animals in it."

"SHUT UP!"

"I DON'T WANT TO SHUT UP! I'm going to have my say for once. I HATE YOU, KITTY DENNISON! And I could have loved you if you'd given me half a chance. I hate you for all you've done to me! You don't give anyone half a chance, not even your own husband. Once you have anybody loving you, you do something ugly so that person has to turn on you and see you for what you are--INSANE!"

"Shut up." How calmly she said that this time. "Don't ya move from that table. Ya sit there. Ya be there

when I come back."

Kitty disappeared.

I could run now. Flee out the door, say goodbye to this Candlewick house. On the expressway I could catch a ride. But this morning's papers had spewed ugly photos on the front page. Two girls found raped and murdered alongside the freeway.

Swallowing, I sat frozen, snared by indecision, regretting, too late, all the things I'd said. Still . . I wasn't going to be a coward and run. I was going to sit here, show her I wasn't afraid of anything she did-- and what worse thing could she do?

Kitty came back, not carrying a whip or a stick or a can of Lysol to spray in my face. She carried only a thin long box of fireplace matches.

"Goin home, back t'Winnerrow fer a visit," said Kitty in her most fearsome monotone. "Goin so ya kin see yer sista Fanny, an yer grandpa. So I kin see my sista, Maisie, my brotha, Danny. Goin back t'touch my roots again, renew my vows t'neva get like em. Gonna show ya off. Don't want ya lookin ugly, like I might neglect ya. Ya've grown up prettier than I thought. Hill-scum boys will try and get ya. So I'm gonna save ya from yer worst self in a way that won't show. But ya'll know from this day on not t'disobey me. Neva again. An if ya eva want t'find out where yer lit sister Our Jane is, and what happened t'that little boy named Keith, ya'll do as I say. I knows where they are, an who has em."

"You know where they are, you really do?" I asked excitedly, forgetting all I'd said to anger Kitty.

"Does t'sky know where t'sun is? Does a tree know where t'plant its roots? Of course I know. Ain't no secrets in Winnerrow, not when yer one of em . . an they thinks I am."

"Kitty, where are they, please tell me! I've got to find them before Our Jane and Keith forget who I am. Tell me! Please! I know I was ugly a moment ago, but you were, too. Please, Kitty."

"Please what?"

Oh, my God!

I didn't want to say it. I wiggled about on the slippery tabletop, gripping the edge so hard the glass if it hadn't been beveled would have sliced off my fingers.

"You're not my mother."