It’s best not to push her.

I watch without breathing.

No one in the room

says a word. Like they all

want to know

what will happen

now.

Be careful.

Hush, baby.

Shhhh.

Lizzie,

Momma says,

her hands like claws

though she doesn’t

touch my sister.

But if she could,

why I wonder if

she’d scratch Liz’s

eyes from her skull.

You gotta talk to me sometime.

Liz doesn’t say a thing.

She just finds a chair.

Sits.

Her head bows

and she is

gone.

My real sister

is

gone.

You hear me?

Momma says and her voice gets loud.

She bends over Liz.

Her hands still claws.

Momma,

I say,

the words stuck

in my throat,

don’t.

You’ll have to leave,

the nurse says.

Security,

she says over her

shoulder and

to Momma,

you’re disturbing the

patients,

then she takes

Momma by the arm.

Momma jerks away.

All the kids in the room stare at her

and then at me.

Momma,

I whisper.

I move near to

Liz, put my hand

on her

used-to-be-shiny

auburn hair. Quick-like

before they pull me away

too.

After all I’ve done . . .

Momma says.

Come on, let’s move on out of here. . . .

Two big guys

come in the room

and go to pull Momma away.

But Momma shakes them

off, walks away

proud, head high.

Hope,

Momma says to me,

get your butt in gear.

We are going.

I pause, unable to make myself

leave my sister.

My feet are stuck

to the black and white

squares of the

floor.

Butter yellow and olive green is good with me,

I say, trembling,

if you want, Liz.

I look

up into her face

from my squatting position.

But it is like she

is not there.

Liz doesn’t say a thing back.

She doesn’t even look at me.

She just

sits.

100.

I think we have something here,

Dr. Marino says to

Momma, later that afternoon.

I sit in his office with her.

Momma, tense in her chair,

flutters her hands in the air,

like butterflies maybe.

Or a pale moth.

Can I smoke?

she says.

Dr. Marino gives a

little nod at the ashtray

on the table near Momma’s

chair.

Momma lights up.

Her hands shake.

Well,

she says,

after she’s blown

smoke out her nose

and let it seep from

her lips,

well, I hope somebody

can tell me something,

because this is costing

me a helluva lotta time.

And time means

money to me.

I look at the doctor.

For a moment I

wish I could take

a drag from Momma’s

cigarette,

that’s how scared I am.

It’s the dreams,

he says.

The crying dreams your daughter keeps having.

My stomach turns to icy Jell-O.

I feel my guts

shake.

I feel my guts

tremble.

Liz is trying to kill herself

because of dreams?

Momma’s voice is high

and quivery.

Jell-O-y sounding

too.

The dreams are Hope’s,

Dr. Marino says, and he points

at me.

Now Momma looks