Деница Минчева

→They did not know that Jamie had given up his role. He could not tell them. They did not know what they had lost.

→The children wondered what had happened to him. He was never quite the same.

→Jamie returned to school a week later. He did not stride into the schoolyard with his old assurance; he did not bend imperiously at the fountain; nor did he pass his tests with anything more than a grade of seventy-five.

→Jamie sank against the bed, mouthing into the cold blankets, and the walls of Jericho crumbled and fell down about him.

→He must have been babbling aloud, for Dad turned and glared at him in old, ancient horror and struck him bluntly across the mouth to shut him up.

→Inside the walls of Jericho that was Jamie's mind, a thought went screaming about in one last drive of power: Yes, she's dead, all right, so she is dead, so what if she is dead? Bring her back to life again, yes, make her live again, Lazarus, come forth, Lazarus, Lazarus, come forth from the tomb, Lazarus, come forth.

→She was dead.

→Dad got up, swaying.

→Ma, don't, Ma, don't, oh, Ma, please don't give up.

→Dad moved suddenly. It was a stiff movement with a jerking of breath. He held Mama's wrists so hard he might have broken them. He lay against her breasts sounding the heart and Jamie screamed inside.

→She would get well. She must! Why, it was silly to think any other way. Ma just wasn't the dying sort.

→The fierce energy lashed out from him silently, wrapping, cuddling her and beating into her sickness, tendering her heart. Jamie felt glorified in his warm power.

→Get well, get well, Ma, get well, you'll be all right, sure you'll be fine, I command it, you'll be fine, you'll be swell, you just get up and dance around, we need you, Dad and I do, wouldn't be good without you, get well, Ma, get well, Ma. Get well!

→Jamie took up a station at the end of the bed and stared at Mama, shouting instructions in his mind to her.

→Hours later, with the first stars, he came home to find Dad standing beside Mama's bed and Mama not saying much-just lying there like fallen snow, so quiet. Dad tightened his jaw, screwed up his eyes, caved in his chest, and put his head down.

→Jamie ran out onto the desert to walk alone. He did not cry. He was paralyzed, and he walked like an iron child, hating himself, blundering into the dry riverbed, kicking at prickly pears and stumbling again and again.

→Throught the window, Mama looked sicker. The doctor closed up his little black bag and looked at Dad a long time with strange lights in his little black eyes.

→The doctor's car stood in front of the house.

→With a sudden bleat of terror, he ran for home. It was all his fault, all his fault!

→"I take it back, I take it back," cried Jamie. "I take it back, what I said, I didn't mean it."