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"Rain," we heard. It was Mama calling. "Is that you, sugar?"

I looked at Beth who gazed at me with such disgust, I had to look away.

"Sugar," she mumbled.

"Yes, Mama:'

"Come in here, honey. Please," she begged.

I entered the bedroom. Mania had a cold wet washcloth over her forehead. She looked gaunt in the dim light from the small table lamp. I felt a shiver in my heart. Mama was more

fragile than any of us thought. She had been straining under the weight of this family for too long.

She reached out for me and I took her hand.

"The last thing I want to do is hurt you, Rain, honey. I never meant that," she said.

"I know, Mama."

I couldn't help but continue to call her Mama. I didn't know her as anyone else.

"There were many times when I almost told you all of it, and times when I thought you realized something was different. Not to mention the hundreds of things Ken said in the past that might have raised your suspicions. I warned him that if he ever hurt you that way, I'd kill him.

"Funny thing was," she said smiling, "when he first came to me with the idea of taking you into our lives, I nearly hit him over the head with a frying pan. How were we going to take care of someone else's child, even for all that money?"

"How much money was it, Mama?" I asked.

"What do you need to know that for, child? Ken, he wasted it on drink and gambling anyhow," she said.

"How much?" I demanded. I wanted to know what sort of a price my real mother had placed on my head. She stared at me. "How much?"

"It was twenty thousand dollars," she said. "I wanted to put away some of it in a savings account and use it for your college, but Ken got his big paws on it and before I knew it, it was all gone."

"Will you tell me all of it now, Mama? No more lies," I added.

"I didn't lie to you, child. I never thought of you as anything else but my own and I loved you as much as I could love any daughter," Mama claimed.

"You lied about family, Mama, about me taking after grandparents. There were lots of stories you made up, Mama," I reminded her.

She smiled instead of looking guilty.

"I only wanted you to feel you belonged, Rain. I told those stories so much, I believed them myself?'

"Now it's time to tell the true story, Mama," I said.

She nodded, moved the wet cloth off her forehead and sat up in the bed. Beni stepped into the doorway and leaned against the door jamb.

"Is this Rain's secret?" she asked, "or do I have a right to know, too?"

"That's up to Rain," Mama said.

"Of course you have a right to know, Beth. You're in this family," I told her.

She came farther into the room. Mama looked at both of us, sighed deeply and began.

"Your real mother got pregnant with you in college.

She was the daughter of wealthy people, but she was rebellious and involved in protests and causes. She got herself in trouble with a young black man--no, honey, it wasn't Ken--but she didn't tell her parents until it was too late and I guess there was quite a hullabaloo."