I rode my bike past her house, hoping to get a glimpse

of her in the yard or at the window. Nothing. Blazer stood at the back of the house, tethered to a tree with a frayed rope. I rode on past, thinking maybe Rae would be in our shack; I imagined myself saying I was sorry for breaking the windows, as if that was what had driven us apart. The shack was empty.

The next day, when I saw Rae in the hall at school I LU V I C K E RS

practically tripped over myself to get next to her, to push myself through the crowd of kids so I could place myself where she'd have to say something just to get by me, but it didn't work. She walked right up to me and stood still, her lips pressed together, her eyes narrowed, until I moved out of her way to let her pass. In that moment I could see that the girl I'd kissed in the field was gone. Rae had grown taller than me; her white hair had darkened to a dull straw color. The white eyelashes I'd lingered over that day in the field were caked with greasy black mascara.

I couldn't understand how a person could change so quickly in one year, how she went from choosing me to

choosing those boys. But I was kidding myself. After living with Mama, I should've been surprised if people didn't change as rapidly as wind. Hadn't my own Mama just gone crazy?

Once I realized that Rae wasn't going to see me, I decided to just let her go, to put her out of my mind, and to work on being normal so Mama would have a chance to be okay when she got home. At school I pretended to laugh at the boys' jokes. When the girls gathered in the bathroom to gossip, I acted interested. Partly I just wanted to make sure they weren't talking about me. I was afraid everyone would find out that Mama had had a nervous breakdown and was in the hospital, but no one seemed to know.

At home I swept the floors, washed dishes, washed and hung out clothes, took the clothes in and ironed them, all without being asked. I hoped that Daddy would tell Mama I was quite the young lady these days, hoped that would make her want to get well and come home.

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When she finally came home a month after we'd gone

to see her, she seemed fine, not tired but rested, like she'd

just woken in a good mood from a long nap. She'd gotten most of her memory back and she recognized us, although

I wondered if she really did or if Daddy had told her to fake

it. I hugged her close to me that first night; she smelled like baby powder, the way she always smelled when she came into the bedroom to kiss Maisey and me good night. She treated our going to sleep as if we were babies going on a voyage; she nuzzled her mouth against my ears as if she might never see me again. When she kissed me, I listened as hard as I could

to see if I could hear any radio music, maybe Johnny Cash or Merle Haggard, but I didn't, just the soft whoosh of her breath when she pulled away. There weren't any visible signs that she'd broken down, but I felt it. In some ways she was like a toy I'd smashed—now someone had fixed it and given it back to me. I was afraid of her.

Shortly after she got back, Mama woke us up one morning and said she'd missed us so much when she was gone that we could skip school that day. We stayed in bed longer and then piled into the car and drove uptown to the Dime Store. Before she got out of the car, she leaned over and looked at herself in the rearview mirror. She patted her hair, then clutched her purse. Maisey and James sat in the car while Mama and I went in to buy the kites. I wanted to see what she'd do; she never went into stores in Chattahoochee; she

always made us go in places and buy things. I followed her into the store. I hadn't been in there in months. Mama walked down the aisles, looking for the box that held the

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kites and string. She picked up four of each.

We walked back to the front of the store. Mama laid the kites on the worn counter and sat her purse beside them. As Mrs. Bevis rang up the kites, she caught Mama's eye, then nodded over at me. "Home sick?" she asked.

Mama looked surprised. "Why, no," she said. "I'm not sick at all. I'm taking my children out to fly kites."

Mrs. Bevis raised her eyebrows, the way she used to raise them at Daddy when he brought me in to buy slingshots. I wanted to say, She meant me, Mama, but I was too scared to say anything, thinking I might give her away. I could tell Mama's being in this store was part of an act. She was trying to be normal.

"You know," Mama said. "I have spent entirely too much time indoors lately. And I bet you have, too." She glanced around the store. "It's awfully dark in here. Let me buy you a kite, and you come on and fly it with us. It's nice and sunny outside."

Mrs. Bevis laughed, then pushed the kites across the counter to Mama. "Honey, I got to work."

"Well, some other time," said Mama.

We drove back home and went into the house to get tails

for the kites. Mama rummaged through the closets the way she did that day she took us butterfly hunting. She found

a sheet and tore it into long, thin strips, and we tied knots into them. Then we unfurled the paper kites and put them together, attaching the tails. Looking at the brightly colored kites, I thought of the butterflies I had pinned into my cigar box, wondered if today was going to end in disaster.

She drove us to the field. She wore short shorts and she climbed out of the car and I expected her to say, "Just look at 1 2 6

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them and let them go," the way she had with the butterflies, but she didn't. She said, "Don't let go, don't let go of the string or your kite will fly away and we'll never catch it again."

I hadn't been in that field since the day I'd watched Rae with those boys. I'd stayed away from it, as if the place but not what had happened there was painful. Even though the memory had faded, as I walked over the grass, kite in my hand, I could still remember the warmth of Rae's breath on

my cheek just before she kissed me; I could hear the boys' voices, talking her into walking off with them; I could see her lying in the grass, her legs bone-white against that blue sky. I felt my heart beating fast, the way it beat when I ran home that day, the way it beat later when I found out that Rae's mother had lost herself in the woods, had stopped talking, had gone crazy.

Our kites whipped high into the sky, and we held on to them, the wind washing over us like waves of water, and it was kind of like being underwater. The wind was blowing so hard. It was not easy to breathe, and I thought maybe Mama was trying to drown us in all this air, not just me this time. Maybe she thought we were babies who couldn't breathe in the wind.

Then, for some reason, all of the kites were loose and they were flying together in a bunch like butterflies skittering across the air. Mama ran after them, trying to catch the strings, but the strings were slithering across the ground like snakes and the kites were moving up and away from us and there was no way she could catch them. I ran after them;

I ran toward them instead of away from them; I ran as if I could make up for the time I kept my butterflies and made Mama cry; I ran toward the edge of the field where Rae had 1 2 7

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lain; I ran fast so Mama wouldn't go crazy again; I ran to make up for all of my mistakes, but the kites lifted up and away from me, drifting out of my sight. I fell to the ground. Mama came and stood over me, her red hair blowing wildly. I couldn't see her face. The whole blue sky hovered empty above us.

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Me and James and Maisey stood on the carport next to

a row of boxwoods arguing about who got the windows in our two-tone Fairlane and who got the front seat. Mama had been home for a month and we were going to Panama City Beach to try her out—see if she worked okay. Daddy said

we should all act normal; there wasn't any sense in acting different. Life goes on, he said, you just have to go along with it. It was as if he was talking about a tornado, a flood, or a hurricane, something that would just sweep you away. Those were the kinds of things you just had to go along with.

Daddy lowered the ice chest into the trunk and we heard Mama talking to herself inside the house. "I don't want to go; I don't want to go. Don't make me go. Listen to them fight;

they'll put me right back into the hospital."