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when they argued.
    Since the end of November, right after Thanksgiving, Camille and Andrew had been staying on the third floor, about which I had increasing concern. I was afraid that it might become a permanent arrangement if she didn’t get things sorted out with Grayson, who, to the best of my knowledge, was in Atlanta.
    The greatest positive aspect about having them all under one roof for the holiday was the hope that they would perhaps recognize their own foolishness by witnessing it in one another and, somehow, shape up. It was a lot to hope for and I knew it, but it was the last thought I remembered before I fell into a deep sleep.
    Then the terrible dreams, the worst nightmares of my entire life began.
    I dreamed of Pearl and my grandmother Dora, for whom I was named. I was a little girl and we were all in the kitchen baking cookies for Christmas, just simple sugar cookies. They were the kind you rolled out and cut into shapes—bells, stars, trees, and so forth—with metal cookie cutters. Even in my dreams, I could smellthe butter and sugar as they swirled through the air. I would have sworn, except for the fact that ladies don’t swear, that the smell was real and that my mouth actually watered. We were all happy. Then Pearl turned to me and she was angry, angrier than I had ever seen her.
    “How did you let them turn out to be like this? How? Didn’t I teach you better?”
    “I’m just a little girl!” I said. “Who are you talking about?”
    Now, in my dream I knew I was a grown-up and that Pearl and my grandmother were dead. I realized but did not want to acknowledge that Pearl was referring to the generations of us that she and my grandmother had left behind to spiral down into a bucket of rattlesnakes. With that thought, rattlesnakes began to crawl from all the pots on the stove until they covered the floor of the kitchen. They threatened and hissed, rising and squirming. I tried to scream. No noise would come from my throat.
    In a flash, the hazy light of my dream changed to a midday clarity, and my grandmother disappeared. Pearl and I were in the kitchen alone. The snakes were gone. I was my present age and I knew beyond a doubt that this was no longer a dream. It was a visitation. If you thought the snakes were bad, this was worse. Much worse. Pearl looked at me with those spooky brown-rimmed, hazel eyes of hers and set her jaw like she wasgoing to kill me dead. She exhaled so long and hard I could actually feel the heat of her breath on my arm.
    “What is the matter with your family?”
    “Please help me, Pearl!”
    “Help you? I spent a lifetime helping you!”
    “What have I done? Why are you so angry?”
    “It is not what you have done, Ms. Theodora! It is what you have not done!”
    “What can I do now? I’m so old! No one cares what I think! No one!”
    She must have realized the truth of what I said. She calmed down a little and was quiet. She said, “Listen up, ’eah? I gots one more t’ing to do to get in dem Pearly Gate and I guess your hard heads be it. I gwine set dem all straight and den I gets my wing. Gawd he’p dem that gets in my way.”
    For the rest of the night, I lay in my bed with my eyelids glued together, perspiring and shaking all over. I was terrified, listening to the earsplitting wind howling and screeching all around the house. Every window in the house rattled to the point where they should have fallen from their frames. Above and below, the floors creaked from footsteps, even though I knew everyone was in bed, fast asleep for hours. Something from beyond the natural world was coming closer and closer. Crazy as this sounds, I knew it was real as sure as I knew anything. All our ghosts were rising up inprotest against us and in support of Pearl. For the thousandth time, I beseeched the Almighty for protection.
    It wasn’t the noises that were so terrible, it was the vision of Pearl. She was beyond furious with me. In fact, it made me highly nervous.
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