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lowered herself to the ground to retrieve the ball from behind the rocker. She turned around to see Miss Elizabeth gazing at her expectantly, eyebrows arched upward and head cocked sideways in a hopeful question, “Ba?”
    Mattie blinked away her tears and said, “All right. We gonna do it your way.” And she threw the ball back to the baby.
    Hours later, while they were both dreaming, Emily brought a newborn bundle to Mattie’s room and took Miss Elizabeth away from the warm bed the toddler had shared with Mattie since the night of her birth thirteen months before. Still groggy from sleep, Mattie did not realize the swap had been made until she was awakened by the click of the door closing behind Emily. “Wait,” she wanted to yell, but she did not. She kept her words of protest to herself.
    Outrage poured through her. She was not given even one last kiss. Hot, unshed tears stung her eyes. She refused to touch or even look at the new baby, knowing there was no point in caring about him. He lay there screaming, wanting to be suckled, but she ignored him.

     
    Miss Elizabeth woke up in a strange room in a strange bed. Her heart raced in her chest as she looked around in panic. Where was her Mattie? She cried out, “Ma-ie, Ma-ie,” but Mattie did not come. Her cries got louder and more desperate, but still Mattie did not come. The not-Mattie walked with her. The not-Mattie offered her food. The not-Mattie shook her. Still Miss Elizabeth cried for her Mattie. She screamed until she slept.
    When she awoke Mattie was still gone. In a small, anxious voice Miss Elizabeth pleaded, “Ma-ie?” The woman with her said something Miss Elizabeth did not understand. Miss Elizabeth waited. She comforted herself as best she could with her own thumb, rocked herself back and forth, and stared at the white door watching for her Mattie.
    Sometimes she ate, sometimes she slept, but mostly she waited for her Mattie to rescue her.
    And then she got hot. The heat came and did not go away. Miss Elizabeth got too hot to eat, too hot to move, too hot to drink. Voices came in and out of the room. People touched her body. Lots of not-Matties wanted her to drink. But Miss Elizabeth was tired and did not want to do anything but sleep. She dreamed. She dreamed of her red ball and a toe. She dreamed of brown eyes and a rocking chair. She dreamed of sweet milk and shells to hold on to.

     
    Mattie heard Miss Elizabeth’s cries echo down the hall. She paced the room nervously with the new baby in her arms as Miss Elizabeth cried out her name, “Ma-ie, Ma-ie.” It took all of her self-control to stay in the nursery as the panic rose in Miss Elizabeth’s voice. More and more desperately the girl yelled for Mattie.
    For hours on end Mattie nursed and rocked, paced and wept as she listened to Miss Elizabeth’s desperate sobs. She waited, expecting to be ordered to go to Miss Elizabeth, but that order did not come. Two days after Jack’s birth the cries became intermittent and the girl’s voice grew hoarse. Two days after that they stopped. The silence was worse than the wailing. Now Mattie knew nothing of Miss Elizabeth.
    She asked Skinny Emily when she brought lunch on the fifth day of the new arrangement, “Lisbeth all right?”
    “Don’ let none of them hear you callin’ her that. Miss Elizabeth not eatin’ much, but she finally stopped cryin’. I never heard such carryin’ on for so long. You’d think that Charlotte was stickin’ pins in her from the way she yelled.”
    “What she doin’ now?”
    “When I brung them some lunch, she didn’ head out the door like before. She just layin’ in bed. Guess she gettin’ used it.”
    “She sleepin’ all right?”
    “It ain’t my place to keep track of that little girl and tell you. And she ain’t yours no more neither.”
    Mattie knew not to ask Mrs. Ann, Mr. Wainwright, or Grandmother Wainwright during their visits with baby Jack. However, she did dare to speak to the housekeeper