“Dad, we need to get him to a hospital,” she shouted. Kneeling down, she rubbed her brother’s back as he began to vomit pure liquid like an old sump pump, convulsing what he had drunk onto the dresser and the floor.

“Dad,” she screamed, “get in here!”

Her dad came in, staring in helpless horror as Frank finally collapsed completely, curling up, breathing hard.

Snatching one of her old blouses out of the chest of drawers, Annie used it to wipe the vomit off his face and neck. Then she dressed him and got her dad to help her carry him downstairs. Her mom, who had remained in the hall, ran up to help. Annie and her dad then drove Frankie to the hospital in Jackson.

Her dad woke Annie in the middle of the night. It had been a few months since he had done this.

“You’re having a bad dream,” he said. “Are you okay?”

This was always his excuse. Taking her hand, he led her downstairs. He sat in the living room armchair, she on the ottoman in front of him. For a while they were silent in the darkness, listening to a tomcat moaning outside, to the stammering starting up and shutting off of the refrigerator. Her dad’s pajamas, damp with his sweat, gave off a slightly rancid odor.

“That boy,” he said at last. “The black boy.”

“Raj?”

“Si. I dreamed he was living in the house and he was wearing your mama’s robe. And I say to him, What you doing in my house? And he say, You is my papa. And I say no, and I say, Where’s my wife? and he show me his feet and he’s wearing her shoes and I go upstairs to find her, but then I hear the door downstairs. It’s you, and I know he’s going to kill you. And I go to run downstairs, but your mama she comes out of the bedroom. The blood it’s all over her legs and she look pregnant and she’s in her wedding dress and she says she put Frank back inside her and she…she open her dress up—”

He was snatching at his breath, trembling. Annie took hold of his hands.

“Why I come here?” he said. “In Atessa, my papa he own four bakeries. We almost killed that boy. We waited for him, and my papa he said, ‘Devi stare calmo, devi avere il primo colpo pulito.’” Her dad was getting louder now. “I pounded him. Figlio d’una puttana mafiosa! Nessuno me lo ficca in culo!”

Annie squeezed his hands tighter, her father’s body going rigid and jerking around as he stared off almost crazily into the darkness, reliving whatever this was.