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Vi was raised to think that if you commit suicide, you go to hell. It is the belief of a Catholic, not a southern Baptist, but for some reason her father believed it, so she believes it, too. However, as her notion of hell is eclipsed by her reality, she may reconsider her conviction.

# # #

The meal is always the same: an apple, steamed broccoli, browned hamburger meat, and two slices of white bread. Sometimes she keeps it down. Usually she doesn’t. Her morning sickness rages on. Incredibly, she has not miscarried.

# # #

The baby growing inside her is the only reason she’s still alive, the only reason she continues to eat. Vi has taken to talking to her stomach. She also sings. But the sound of her voice makes her cry. She hears the brokenness of it. A person she doesn’t know.

# # #

Today is Thanksgiving, but Vi has lost all concept of time. Lately, she can’t distinguish between sleeping and consciousness. It’s all that same quiet darkness. Hope has ceased to exist even in her dreams.

# # #

One day she decides that she’s in hell, and that the world of light and love and a man named Max was something she had imagined to pass this black eternity. She had become so good at dreaming, at conjuring that pretend, perfect life, it had alleviated her torture here. But something has snapped her back into hell. She will try to dream it all up again.

# # #

She fails. Her mind is leaving her. She hasn’t eaten in two days, because she doesn’t think she’s pregnant. Becoming a mother was a part of that lovely dream. Her deepest fear now is that she won’t die. Souls don’t require sustenance. She is unbreakable and will go on forever, a bottomless container, capable of holding oceans of pain.

# # #

I drift so far back. Is this a memory? A dream?

It’s a Saturday in late June. I’m nine or ten. Daddy wakes us up at 6:00 a.m. and tells us to get dressed. Mom’s at the beach with her sisters. Just the boys this weekend.

We climb into the station wagon and ask Daddy for the fifth time where we’re going, but he only grins and says, "Have to wait and see." He’s a great lover of surprises.

We ride in the front seat, me in the middle. At a nearby bakery, Daddy buys a dozen doughnuts, and I hold the box in my lap. By the time we reach the visitor parking lot of Stone Mountain State Park, the box is empty and our fingers sticky, our faces stained with chocolate icing and jelly and custard fillings. I’m a little mad at Orson, because he ate all of the crème-filled chocolate ones.

We reach the summit of Stone Mountain a little before 11:00 a.m., and Daddy throws a blanket out on the rock. With one strong warning not to go beyond the ledge of stunted pines, where the dome of granite begins to slope precipitously, he sets us loose—something Mom would never have done.

Orson and I spend the next hour chasing each other across the acres of sunlit rock. The June sunlight is strong, and the water collected in the small craters of the mountain is warm as bathwater. We take off our shoes and socks and dip our feet in and pretend we’re on the moon.

After lunch, we lie down on the blanket beside Daddy. Orson drifts off, but I stare out across the folds of Appalachian forest rippling off into the horizon. June bugs zip by, clicking noisily, and a yellow jacket seems interested in the uneaten triangle of Orson’s peanut butter and honey sandwich.

I glance over at Daddy and see that he’s asleep, too. I lay flat on my back and stare up at the sky which has begun to fade from the crisp blue of morning into the bleached baby blue canvas that may birth thunderstorms in several hours. I feel a prick. The yellow jacket must have stung my arm.

And I stare at the sky and stare at the sky and it turns bluer and flatter and the mountains disappear and Orson and Daddy disappear and then a voice speaks out of the heavenly pixels.

"That was a lovely memory, Andy. So nice to hear you speak of Orson. Your brother was very special."

I feel like