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perhaps that was the reason we were slow to notice she wasn’t well. She began to do things only partway. She’d start a sewing project, then become bored of the color thread she’d chosen. She’d quit the Game of Life and Uncle Wiggily right in the middle, would just wander away and not come back. Dirty clothes went into the washer, but by the time she remembered to put them in the dryer, they needed to be washed again. Often I went to school in clothes I’d already worn, and once I had to borrow a pair of my brother’s clean underwear with an old stain in the seat and a weird pocket in front.
    But if anything pointed to her decline, it was the wickerlaundry basket she kept on her side of the bedroom closet. When the mail came, she dumped it there. Our school work went in, too—drawings we’d made, permission slips, stray socks, even a few dirty dishes. Momma kept a dress draped over the top of it.
    My parents shared the bedroom closet—Momma on the left, Dad on the right. Momma’s side didn’t close all the way because there were jeans, pantyhose, and slips hung over the rod. Dad’s side was tidy: five work shirts buttoned to the top, slacks carefully folded along the crease, shoes filled with shoe trees and lined in pairs. When the dress that covered Momma’s laundry basket crossed the line over to his side and he bent down to pick it off the floor, he discovered a problem larger than the unpaid bills and notes from my teacher.
    After he was done shouting and balling his fists, he took her to the local clinic. Maybe a blood test or an X-ray would explain this change in Momma. Maybe her trouble getting dressed in the morning or doing the simplest things was caused by cancer or some other medical problem. That he would have understood. But after a thorough exam and a series of blood tests, the doctor concluded that she was absolutely fine.
    This news from the doctor sent Dad into a rage. “Enough of this! You don’t have cancer!” he shouted at her the next time she said she couldn’t get out of bed. Momma’s problem, he decided, was one of stubbornness. She was sloppy, helpless, emotional. Unforgivable things.
    I didn’t like when he shouted at her, and it was not because I was afraid of shouting. I liked the way an angry voice brought out goose bumps on my arms and legs, like I’d been plugged in and something suddenly buzzed through me. But every time he shouted or criticized her, she was less likely to get out of bed.
    I tried to help her clean so he wouldn’t yell. When dishes disappeared into a sink filled with brown water that never drained, I pointed to a switch on the wall and told her, “Flip that up and it’ll clean the sink.”
    “Oh, but the garbage disposal is so loud,” she said. Then she bent down and whispered a secret just between us. “Besides, I always get the strangest urge to stick my arm down the drain and let it gobble me up.”
    “No, I’m going to gobble you up!” I told her, giggling.
    She reached down to tickle me and I danced out of the way. When she finally caught me, she curled me in her arms, planting loud kisses on my cheeks. Then she tickled under my chin, and always, when someone tickled me, I bit.
    “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Momma.”
    The single joke in our family, when we still joked, was to be careful naming children after wild animals. “You can’t be wild now,” Dad would say. “You have to be a tame bear.”
    And Momma famously answered, “You can’t tell a bear not to be a bear.”

    WHEN DAD RETURNED FROM his trip to Washington, the sight of our neighbors gathered on our lawn and the state of our house when he came inside convinced him to get control of Momma. Each morning he physically dragged her out of bed. As she would slump to the floor, he shouted, “Stand up, and pull yourself together.” He tucked his arms under her armpits and pulled. “Stand up, damn it!”
    Most days she would stay where he left her, collapsed on the floor, looking