but I don’t want to stop playing.

I’m having so much fun.

I won’t betray myself by saying,

“Mommy, see I’m still awake.

I was only fooling you,”

as you take a nickel

from your robe pocket

and lay it under my pillow,

whispering, “Willow, do you know

how much your mommy loves you?”

I know you did before the “incident.”

That’s what Daddy calls it.

I think it had something

to do with my baby brother, Danny,

who got taken up to Heaven

when he was three and I was eight.

I just remember his bed was empty

and you were crying beside it that time.

Afterward, Daddy took you to your bedroom.

You stayed a long time with the shades drawn

and the maid dressed me.

She combed my hair,

prepared my lunch and shook her head

when she heard your name.

Then one day I came home from school

to find you sitting on the stool

in the kitchen,

chopping carrots and celery

so you could make your famous stew.

I said, “Where’s Ethel?”

“She’s gone,” you answered

and I said I didn’t like her anyway

she smelled like wet wool and cabbage.

We had dinner like a family

but we weren’t the way we used to be.

Daddy didn’t notice, but I did

how you hid your tears.

When I heard you crying and went to help

you’d yell, “Are you spying on me?”

I began to stay in my room.

Other times, when I came home from school,

I’d find you prowling the hall

like a caged lion.

Back and forth you’d stalk

all the while talking about Danny

as if he were still here

and not in the grave.

I knew that’s where he really was

because I’d seen him in his little casket,

then watched as they lowered it

in the ground

and heard the sound of your screams

in my bad dreams that night.

Grandmother said I should have stayed home.

I was too young to go to a funeral,

but you said, “She’s got to learn that life

is just dust in the end,”

or did the reverend say that and not you?

I seem to remember adults there,

but no other children, except cousin Johnnie,

who is older than me and gets an allowance

and never sees his mother on her knees,

scrubbing the floor which isn’t dirty,

because the new maid cleaned it

before she left an hour ago.

Something is wrong, but I don’t know

how to tell Daddy,

So I tell my dolls and my teddy bear.

They think I should do something

and I say I will

when I am ready.

Now they are mad

and won’t talk to me,

because they think I don’t value their advice.

They say I’d rather ask my computer

which is only a machine.