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She heard the boy's voice. She was certain of this. She heard it--his, his voice, him, the boy--up again, awake again, if scarcely. This she knew. This room--hers--once hers, unassembled by night--still night, too damp, her nightdress damp-- appeared mostly lightless. "Yes," she said, awakening to what? The boy's high voice sounded injured to her, as if pitched from a dream.
 The sheet began to fall.
The glass, at least, was cool. She lifted it. She drank--a tonic, fizzless--spilled it, a blessing on the house. "Yes?" she said. She felt for him, this boy of hers. Tip of the finger, tip of the tongue--spitting, the image. The room reformed.
"Mama?" he said.
"What is it?" she said.
Floor, lamp, bureau.
What was the question? And why did she always say yes, of course? Rags, a shoe, shirt off the back: an opened drawer. In view of the fever, the fact, the likely fact of the fever, which, it seemed, the boy still ran--and she herself, why, she herself, she felt herself, wetted and heated by drink and not love, not solely love--a bit lip besotted, unsuckleable--and always, still, the whistle at the window ("Go?" he said, has said, "Go?" this boy she had carried, soaking, carried away and wrenched) in view of the fever, rashy chest, ungenerous infection-- yes, she said. What else?
Why, of course.
The aunt told stories nightly.
She--the boy's mother--was certain, or as certain as a person could be, that this was true.
"Co," the boy said, "co or coal or cold."
"Cold?" she said.
"No," he said.
"Lie quiet," she said. Cheek. Chin. Blown breath. A bundle of fabric. Dreams," she said. "You were dreaming, you know. Were you dreaming again?Tell me. You must tell me. Tell me what."
What story is this?
Insurgent mercy: "No," he said, unfolding.
"You must tell me," she said.
("Must you?" she had said. "Must you tell me?" she'd said, some bygone time. She'd seen the man's teeth, inhaled the sulfurous breath. "Why leave a person twice?" he'd said. "Here," he'd said. "There," she'd said. "Once," she'd said. "Once upon a time," she'd said--or some such. "James? Yes?" The answering bidden and brokered in the query, father but a twinkle in the eye of the child, going, going, gone. Let the house be unentered.)
"No," he said.
"James," she'd said, hands pressed chestward.
"Jim," she said.
"No," he said.
"Huff," he said.
"Baby?" she said. "I know this story, too," she said. "I think."
"Huff, huff, huff," he said.
"I'll huff and I'll puff?" she said.
"Listen," she said. The air in the room smelled dankly of him--or of her, perhaps, some part of her: Curled hair, not washed, the too-traveled nightdress, bliss wicked up.
"Listen, Auntie drinks," she said. "She mustn't be trusted. You oughtn't to trust her. I never did trust here. "There," she said. "Rest," she said. "Poor dear mother. Rest her soul."
("Now I lay me down," she had said, a prayer, a come-on.)
The bed unmade itself. It was all of it taken, He, the boy, had turned from her. And there she lay, laid bare by him--James, Jim, Baby, boy, boy, boy she had borne, as in absence invoked, in a stutter of the body, breeched release, the belly unwilling, or willing death. The cord about the throat. Oh, embrace me. "James?" she'd said. "Mother?" A willful undoing. Hands. A cry. The rattle of a window. "Mother," she'd said, receiving herself. A knot was tied. And at the breast, a liquid not quite milk began to leak.
The boy's eyes were closed.
"Sweet," she said. She covered herself, inadequately. She'd named the boy and touched the boy and held the boy as if her were a body she could hold.
She was clutching a sheet.
("If," she had said. "If, if, if," she'd said. "If I die before I wake," but she'd been a girl then, cheek to the curtain, stoking the urge.)
"Just dreams," he'd said.
"Sweet thing," he'd said, her nightly guide, made seeable only in motion. it seemed, this lover turned father lit out.)
The boy seemed to shudder.
"Rest," she said.
"Sweet thing," she said, the lover's voice revealed in her. She loved the boy's fear, or rather, the moment of feeling she could somehow contain it, consume it.
"There," she said.
The glass had been emptied.
The boy's mouth opened. He opened his eyes.
"Listen," she said. "Do you hear me?" she said. She brought herself in view of him, by way of an instinct. Bloody itch. "There's no such thing, whatever it is. Rest," she said. "Be still," she said. "The day's about to break."
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