“No, no, you only dreamed there were.” I put the back of my hand to her cheek. It was blazing. “There, now, you’ve got yourself worked up into a fever again,” I said and put the thermometer into her mouth. Troubled, I wondered if she had actually coughed blood that afternoon. I looked around for signs but saw none. Gently I drew the blankets up about her again but she cast them off, mumbling around the thermometer that I was trying to suffocate her. She did have a fever, higher than it had been since the last acute phase of her illness, but I told her that her temperature was normal. “You’re just tired, Mamma. It is a little warm, I guess. Would you like a sleeping powder now?”

“Yes. And you come to bed, do, darling. I know there were birds in here. You keep watch for two hours and then wake me up and I’ll keep watch. I don’t want them to get tangled up in my hair. They do that! Especially the kind that are part mouse, you know the kind I mean.”

“Bats?”

“Yes. I wish I had a nightcap. I know, let me wear the little boy’s stocking cap.”

I took the little red and white cap out of the bureau drawer. “It won’t fit,” I said. But she reached out her hand for it and set it on top of her head. She pulled at it but when she had let go, it immediately contracted, skimmed to the top of her head and sat there precariously. But she was satisfied: “It looks like a nightcap, anyway, don’t it? It’s like not letting a dog know that you’re afraid and he won’t bite you. I suppose it’s the same with bats.”

She was still restless and insisted that I sit with her a little while. First the lamp, then the darkness after I had turned it out, harried her and she turned her head this way and that, groaning and sighing until at last she fell asleep and I went to bed on the pallet. Because I was exhausted and slept dreamlessly, I was sure I had only just closed my eyes when a cock’s crow and my mother’s shriek came simultaneously to my mummified mind and I awoke to the grisly light of early dawn and to my mother, kneeling at my side. She had had a nightmare. She was in the house of the witch who was no longer a woman but a man; a semicircle of people stood round about an ancient hag dressed in black who writhed in death-throes on the floor. The onlookers were solemnly interested but made no move to help the woman who had been poisoned by the witch. My mother was accosted by Ivan, grown into a tall young man, and he said, “That is my Mamma. We knew it would happen at the Reds of Easter. When is it your turn?” Suddenly, looking at her hands, she saw that they were covered with a crumbling brown incrustation, green in spots with mold, and the witch, who stood near her, touched her bare foot so that more of the crusty scabs appeared. He touched her at various other places until her whole body was infected; she could not get away from him although he was not holding her; her feet were rooted to the floor. A hideous scream came from the throats of the people who watched. At last, when she was entirely covered with the vile stuff, he seized her by the arms and kissed her lips until the blood streamed from them, soaking her blouse. She saw then that he intended to lift her up and carry her to a couch, set in a vast bowl of water through which swam goldfish with enormous human eyes that devilishly winked at her. In shame and fear she begged to be released, and as he laughed at her protest and lifted her up, she screamed and wakened.