Mama sat down on the couch and lowered Andy from her shoulder to her arms and her lap and lifted the blanket off his head. Andy's head was covered with light colored hair that curved around the shape of his head. His eyes were closed and tiny blue veins showed right through the skin of his eyelids. But that wasn't when I knew that Andy was mine to take care of.

Mama lifted her finger to her lips. "Shh," she said, "He's asleep."

"Can we hold him?" I said. I leaned against the couch so I could look at him.

Lindsay leaned against the couch too, on the other side of Mama, touching Mama's leg, but Bobby went over and sat on the big chair, just looked over at Andy in Mama's lap. Lindsay reached over and touched Andy's blanket about where Andy's foot would be.

Mama said, "Don't wake him," not in an angry voice but Lindsay moved her hand away and put it in the little pocket of her pedal pushers. So I couldn't touch Andy then.

Bobby said, "Does he sleep all the time?"

Mama's mouth started to smile, then she held it back, but it made her face fill out soft. She said, "No, not all the time, but newborn babies do sleep a lot at first." Mama's eyes soft too when she looked at Bobby while she said that. I started to ask again if we could hold him but then Mama turned her soft eyes to me.

She said, "You'll be able to hold him after supper when he wakes up. All of you will be able to hold him."

After supper I watched TV and waited for Mama to be ready. Mama washed the dishes first. Then she walked through the living room to the hallway, so I thought maybe she was going to get Andy, but she came back and sat down on the couch with us, and watched the rest of the Huckleberry Hound show. When the show was over she walked up to the TV and turned it off. I thought she would go then and get the baby out of his crib, but she didn't. She came back and sat in the armchair next to the couch. Between the chair and the couch was an end table so that people

Between the chair and the couch was an end table so that people sitting and talking had someplace to put their coffee. The end table also had a lamp on it and Mama turned on the lamp. She got up, walked into the dining room and turned off the dining room light. Now the only light was the living room lamp light and it make a big round warm spot on the couch and the carpet around the couch, round like the shape of the shade on the lamp.

Mama said, "You kids all sit up there on the couch. Then I'll go get your baby brother." We all sat up on the couch. Bobby sat on the end near the lamp, closest to Mama. I sat next to him, and Lindsay sat next to me.

"Scoot way back," Mama said. I scooted back, so then my legs were straight on the couch because my knees didn't make it to the edge of the couch, so they couldn't bend. My feet stuck out over the edge a little. Lindsay's feet barely made it to the edge of the couch. Even Bobby's legs stuck straight out, although they were longer than mine, because he was six and I was still four.

Even though I scooted all the way back on the couch, and so did Bobby and Lindsay, Mama came up to Bobby, then to me, then to Lindsay to make sure, and when she came to me she kind of lifted me up and scooted me back even more, so I sat up real straight against the back of the couch, the ridges of the couch material against my legs.

Then Mama went to get the baby.

Andy was so small.

Mama sat back down in the big chair, underneath the lamp with its warm light, and she let the blanket fall off Andy a little bit and then I could see the little nightgown he was wearing, and his little fists. He was moving his fists just like he was boxing, but he was doing it real slow, and his eyes were closed. He pressed his eyelids tight together, then it looked like he was trying to open his eyes, but he didn't quite get them open. Then he let his arms rest on the blanket for a bit, and stopped trying to open his eyes, so I thought he was fast asleep again, but then he started the whole thing over.

It was so warm, the way it was dark and the light shone on my little brother, and on the light brown carpet in front of the couch, and the light wasn't too bright.

Mama said, "Now, I'm going to hand him over to each of you, and I want you to get ready. You bend your arm like this," she showed us how her arm was bent underneath Andy's head, "and you hold up the baby's head with your arm."

Mama looked up from Andy. She waited. When she saw that Bobby and I and Lindsay were all looking at her, Mama said, "That's important to hold up the baby's head. "

Mama looked back down at Andy, laid her other hand on the side of Andy away from her body, and said, "With your other arm hold him securely in your lap."

I got all ready, got my arm bent just right for his little head to go into, got ready to use my other arm to put on his leg or his side to hold him up against me.

Mama bent over the couch. She held Andy out to set him into Bobby's lap. When she bent over underneath the lamp, the lamp light shone on her, on her hair, on her housedress, lit her up warm like the warm spot on the rug, on the couch. Mama set Andy down in Bobby's lap, but she didn't let go until she had made sure of Bobby's arm holding the baby's head, Bobby's other arm, up over the baby, making sure Andy couldn't fall off Bobby's lap. Then she sat back down in the armchair. I wanted it to be my turn, but the longer Bobby's turn was, the longer my turn would be, so I didn't say anything. I waited, thinking all the time that I would get to hold Andy that long too. I would get to hold him for a long time. I didn't talk, and nobody else talked either. I watched Andy in Bobby's lap, but that still wasn't when I knew.

When I knew was when Mama lifted Andy off Bobby's lap and put him on my lap instead. I had my arm all ready to hold his head, but then his head was really there in my arm. I was holding him. It was Mama arranging my arm, picking up my other hand, and putting it down on Andy's side and feeling Andy's plastic pants on my leg where the nightgown had scrunched up, smelling the baby powder smell and feeling his skin on my skin. I had to concentrate on what I had to do, with my arm bent for his head, with my other arm going around him, because now he was in my lap where I could see him clear, see his little fingers, his little feet and toes, and he was everything. He was so little, but he was so big, and somehow I could hold him.

That was when I knew that Andy was mine to take care of.

* * *

That was all back in Yakima with Mama and Daddy. Now we were in Missouri, first without Daddy, then without Mama too, living with the Follises. Andy was three years old. He still wet the bed at night.

These are the things that happened to Andy because he still wet the bed at night when we went to live with the Follises:

The strap,

the creek,

the green food coloring,

and the last, worst thing.

This is how we came to live with the Follises:

Mama told us one morning, just a few days after Christmas, that we were going for a ride. Mama told us to dress in our Sunday clothes, so we did and Mama wore her black dress with a belt and high heels. After we were ready we all got into the blue Plymouth that Mama bought a little while after we got to Missouri.

Bobby sat in the front seat. He asked first and Mama said he could. Lindsay and I sat in the back with Andy in the middle. Mama said we were going to West Plains. She said she was going to talk to a priest at the rectory there, so maybe that was why we were dressed up like for church.

"What are you going to talk to the priest about?" Bobby asked.

"I'll tell you about that later," Mama said. She said it in her quiet voice - not her angry voice, but her serious voice.

When we reached West Plains Mama drove the car into a dirt driveway next to a church and a long white building. Mama turned the car off, rested her arms on the steering wheel, her eyes straight out ahead.

She turned halfway round in her seat.

"I'm going into the rectory to talk to the priest. You stay here in the car. It shouldn't be too long."

It was winter but the sun was shining, and the car was warm. Bobby rolled his window down a crack.

I said, "Want to go in the front Andy?"

Andy nodded so I lifted him over the seat, kind of rolled him over the top, then he sat in Mama's seat and pretended to drive. Now everyone had their own window.

We were in the middle of a big dirt lot. The lot and the church and the rectory were the only things on the block. Nobody walked by our car while we waited. No cars even drove by on the street. The nearest house was across the street where we couldn't really see so there was nothing to watch. We hadn't brought any games to play so I just leaned against the car door and listened to Andy make noises like he was driving.

"I wonder what she's talking to the priest about," Bobby said. He leaned back, his eyelids closing, against his car door. I felt sleepy too.

"Maybe she'll tell us when she comes back," I said.

"Maybe," Bobby said.

A long time later I heard a door close, then the crunching sound of walking on gravel. There was Mama and the priest along with her. The priest was dressed in his black cassock and looked young to be a priest. He stopped by the passenger side of the car and looked in the open window at Bobby.

"Hello, son. What's your name?" the priest said, holding out his hand.

Bobby shook the priest's hand and said, "Bobby."

"What grade are you in, Bobby?"

"Fourth."

Andy scooted out of the driver's seat and stood on the front seat over by Bobby, holding on to Bobby's shoulder.

"And how are you, young fellow," the priest asked, but Andy just sucked on his fingers and looked at the priest. The priest didn't seem to mind. Lindsay rolled down her window and the priest talked through the open window to Lindsay and me.

It was strange to see a priest after all this time. Even at St. Paul's the priests hardly ever spoke to you. Mostly just the nuns did. The priests spoke for a few moments on some special occasion, like when we practiced for our first communion.

This priest asked each of us what grade we were in school, except Andy, since he was only three.

When Lindsay told the priest she was five he patted her shoulder and said, "You sure are big for a five year old." Everybody said that about Lindsay and me, except with me they said I sure was big for an eight year old.

"Well, I'm glad to meet you all," the priest said. He walked over the to driver side of the car where Mama stood by her car door. The priest said, "You have four fine children there."

He took Mama's hand then, and he shook it, but then he kept holding it while he looked straight at Mama. Mama bent her head down and looked away.

"Thanks so much for your help."

The priest said, "It will be all right." He let go of Mama's hand and headed back towards the rectory.

We heard the rectory door close.

Mama opened her door and got back in the car.

Mama turned around in her seat and her voice came out hard quiet, angry quiet, "What do you mean by not saying 'Father' when you talk to a priest?"

Mama looked at Bobby and Bobby straightened up in his seat and his face got red. Mama looked at me. My face felt hot and I wondered how I could have forgotten. Only last year I was in second grade in St. Paul's school and now I was already forgetting how to be a Catholic.

Mama said, "Do you want him to think you are rude children who haven't been brought up properly?"

I shook my head no.

Bobby said, "We're sorry, Mama. We'll remember next time."

Mama turned back around in her seat. She turned the key and pressed on the gas pedal to start the car. Bobby lifted Andy back up over the seat and I helped him slide the last way over into the back so he didn't fall. Mama got the car started and drove out of the gravel parking lot, the tires on the gravel. For a long time Mama just drove looking straight ahead, her hands tight on the steering wheel.

Mama started talking, in a quiet voice again, serious quiet. Lindsay and I leaned up against the front seat to hear.

Mama said, "I'm going into the hospital soon. It's for something called a nervous breakdown. I need a long rest."

I never heard of a nervous breakdown. Bobby didn't look like he'd heard of a nervous breakdown before either. His face didn't look red anymore but he didn't move, his arms, his legs, his face, everything, completely still. Lindsay closed her eyes. Her blue eyes gone, all of her was pale, her face, her blond hair, big light curls that you could see through. Lindsay opened her eyes back up and laid her head down on the front seat back facing towards Mama.

Mama said, "You'll be staying with the family of the man who drives the bus for the Catholic school, the Follises, and you'll go to Catholic school again. The Follises have kids too, a boy who's ten, and a girl who's thirteen. Plus they have three older boys who take care of their farm in Ava.

"You'll be able to live on a farm." Mama said that like a question and she looked away from the road over to Bobby for the answer. Mama said, "The boy's name is Bobby too. That might be a little confusing." She smiled at my brother, but not an all the way smile, more like a smile she would finish if Bobby smiled back.

But Bobby didn't smile back.

Mama looked back up front at the road.

Bobby said, "How long, Mama?"

Mama didn't answer right away. She lowered her head a little, then raised it back up. She opened her mouth like she was going to talk, then closed her mouth and swallowed and her hands stopped holding the steering wheel so tight.

"About six months, maybe a little longer," Mama said. "The doctor can't say for sure."

Bobby turned his head towards his window, leaned his forehead on the glass, shut his eyes, opened his eyes, turned his head back around to face Mama.

Bobby said, "That's summer. Will you be out by Lindsay's birthday and my birthday?"

July 1st, July 8th.

Mama said, "I don't know for sure. I think so. I hope so." Her hands were tight on the steering wheel, but she wasn't angry at Bobby, her voice wasn't angry.

Bobby whispered, "Andy's birthday?"

August 4th.

Mama said, "Almost certainly before Andy's birthday."

Six months, maybe a little longer.

Lindsay sat back down in her seat and scooted back, her legs out straight. She rested her arm on the window ledge, laid her head on her arm, and Lindsay didn't look so big for her age.

Mama just drove for awhile before she quickly turned her head around then back again to the road.

Mama said, "You kids will behave for the Follises, won't you?" She looked at Lindsay and at me. It was like when she went to Beauty School, and Uncle Tom, Mama's youngest brother, babysat us. We told her Uncle Tom was mean to us, and Mama said she'd try to find a new babysitter, but there wasn't really much choice. We just had to put up with him.

The only choice was whether to cause Mama trouble or not.

"And you'll remember to call the priest 'Father,' now won't you?"

"Yes," I said.

"Yes," Lindsay said.

"We will," said Bobby.

"You'll watch out for the littler kids, won't you?" she asked Bobby and me.

"Of course we will, Mom," Bobby said.

He answered for both of us.