I was careful not to step on the bloodstains. I ran in the back door, through the long hall, where there were bloodstains on the heart-pine floors because of a duel once fought here. I put him in his cradle and went from the detached kitchen to the main house. So far I'd managed to keep it between me and MyJohn.I wrapped Edward in dry clothing. While he did not know of the evil going on here at home under his own roof.Nobody in the family did yet. Likely riding through the countryside to stop and call at taverns, stores, and plantations to talk about the new evils sent to us by the king. From Shadrack, the oldest at twelve, to Nancy, Pleasant, Jessee, Reuben, and even Letty, the two-year-old.'Is the baby daid? Is the baby daid?' five-year-old Reuben kept asking.'Get the children out!' I ordered.Pegg shooed them out.'Take Mama to the front parlor.'She led Mama away.'And keep a still tongue in your head.' I was stern but kind, the way Pa had taught me to be with the Negroes.But Pa was away again. She just kept saying it, over and over, while I set about getting Edward breathing, and Pegg, our cook, started praying to Jesus then and there.Soon the commotion brought Pegg's children, who were always underfoot, anyway. I set him down on the wood table and pushed his chest until he got his breath.'I can't abide his crying anymore,' Mama was saying. He was choking by then, and I did what Pa had taught me and John to do in case one of the other little ones fell into New Found River. She paid me no mind.So I pulled my little brother out of the water. Lest she get a purchase on him that I couldn't break. He near turned blue.'Mama,' I said, 'Mama.' But gently.

And after that day she just went all inside herself.Edward stopped crying, sure enough, when she put him in that water. That was the day she found out Pa was leaving once more.'The House of Burgesses again.' She looked mournful sad. Nothing Silvy or Pegg or any of the other Negro servants did would stop him.'The water will becalm him,' Mama said.But she had that same look in her eyes that I'd seen the day I found her in the middle of the English garden trying to take all her clothes off, and talking about how the sun was her only friend. But Mama wasn't about to take him out.Baby Edward was just two months old, and he'd been crying for hours already. But then one day she dipped baby Edward into the basin of water because he was fretful.Dipping a baby in water is no reason to think somebody is addled. Somewhere along the line, when Pa was away speechifying against all those laws and writs and resolutions, she took leave of her senses.I didn't want to admit it at first. Chapter OneSPRING 1771I WAS THE FIRST ONE in the family to know when Mama started to go insane.

Or Give Me Death by Ann Rinaldi