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"I'm sorry," I said. "I'll get out now. I'm finished anyway."

She didn't step out. She stood in the doorway and waited, watching me lift myself up and out of the tub as carefully as I could. I reached quickly for my towel and wrapped it around myself. I didn't consider myself an overly bashful person. but I still had modesty, especially in front of someone who had such searching eyes. She looked like she was judging every bone in my body.

"You not be one to have many children." she remarked, shaking her head.

"Why not?" I asked.

With her free hand, she made a gesture over her hip bone and across her abdomen.

"Not good for many children,"

"I don't want many children anyway. Just two."

"Bon, " she said nodding.

She wasn't going to leave so I started to dry myself, glancing at her furtively.

"What about you?" I fired back at her. "Have you any children?"

"Oui."

"You do? How many?" She held up one finger. "A boy or a girl?"

"Boy," she said.

"Well, where is he?" I asked, clipping on my bra and slipping my arms through the sleeves of my blouse.

"Downstairs," she replied.

"Downstairs?" Obviously, she wasn't

understanding me. I thought. I shook my head.

"No, where does he live now?"

"Downstairs," she repeated.

I paused.

"Downstairs? Where. downstairs?"

"In my holy room," she said. "I'll show you when you are ready."

She stepped farther into the bathroom. I sat on the closed toilet seat, refitted my bandage over my ankle and slipped on my sneakers while she emptied the tub and then stuck her pail under the faucet to fill it with warm water.

Holy room? What was she talking about?

When I was completely dressed. I reached for my crutch. She went out, set the pail on the floor and nodded at the stairway. Nervously. I started down.

Why had I even asked her about children?

When I reached the bottom, she moved past me, into the kitchen, beckoning for me to follow. We went through the kitchen to what I had thought was the pantry, but turned out to be another room.

What I saw made my skin crinkle up and down my body. A half-dozen large black candles provided the only light. The room wasn't very big, but it was crowded with charms and bones, dolls, and bunches of feathers and hair and what I was positive were snakeskins. There was a human shill on a center table and beside it was a chair upon which sat a large jug. On the floor beside the chair were two sets of crossed brooms. There were candles on the floor as well, lighting the ends of a strange design drawn in some sort of bone-colored chalk.

"I don't understand." I managed to say.

"My son be gone. His soul be in there."