It’s dark in there, almost too dark to see. I open the cellar door a little wider, peeking inside. My eight-year-old arms shake from the force of holding the door open even this much.

“Mama?” I call out, my eyes adjusting. I can just make out the damp cellar steps, leading down into blackness. “Mama, are you down there?”

With all the strength I can muster, I shove the door. It tips away, slamming open with a resounding thud. Glancing around nervously, I hope that my older brothers don’t hear the sound.

Then again, I could probably be abducted right now, and they wouldn’t know. They’re all glued to the TV, watching each other try to beat some character in a video game. I’ve been told to piss off repeatedly, so I am.

Since I don’t know exactly what piss off means, I’m left to my own devices. And what comes to my mind, again and again, is Mama. Although she has always been sickly, usually waiting for Dad to get home with her medicine, lately…

She’s worse. I can tell. Gaunt and yellow-eyed, wrapped in several thick blankets but still freezing to the touch. I don’t know why she moved out of the bedroom on the ground floor, the sick room she’s occupied for the last couple of years. All I know is that one day she just wasn’t there.

Eventually, I found her in the garage, huddled on a trundle bed, under a bunch of blankets. She barely moved except to whoop out a phlegmy-sounding cough from time to time.

When I asked, she just shook her head and coughed. “My room is too bright,” she wheezed. “I had Art move me down here. Now be a good girl and hand me that box of my medicine.”

That was bad, living in the garage. But today she’s just gone from the garage. Surely nothing happened to her, or I would’ve been told.

But when I ask Tony about it, he shrugs his bony shoulders. “Mama’s sick, Kat. Dad said that we shouldn’t worry about her no more. He’ll take care of her when he gets home.”

With Tony entranced by the TV though, I have lots and lots of time to look for Mama. I search the house from top to bottom, finding her in the very last place I would think to look.

The root cellar. A strange place to be, without a doubt. In fact, I’m not even sure that she’s here at all.

The only reason I think she’s around is that some of the buckets she uses to relieve herself are sitting outside the cellar. The only purpose for them to be here I can think of is that Mama is close by.

And I’ve searched everywhere else.

So now I stare down the darkened steps, calling out. “Mama? Are you down there?”

There’s no answer, but there is a long, rattling cough. Biting my lip, I take a step down, and then another. Darkness eats up my legs, and before long I’m swallowed whole by shadow.

“Mama?” I ask again, taking the last couple of steps.

Letting my eyes adjust, I glance around at the moldering cellar. It’s close quarters in here; barely tall enough for a person to stand, and only three people could stand in here if they stretched out their hands.

It strikes me as being exactly like one of the tombs that ancient Egyptians would bury their dead in. I learned all about tombs and sarcophagi a few months ago at the art museum, and I’ve been obsessed ever since.

Coughing at the dustiness of the place and wrinkling my nose against the pungent smell, I spot Mama’s trundle bed in the far corner. The unmoving pile of blankets on top of the bed is likely her.

The air is heavy, stirred only by my breathing.

Is Mama…

Is she dead?

But no. As soon as I wonder that, the pile stirs a little and the air is punctuated by a long, wet cough. Trembling more than a little, I make my way over to her bed.

“Mama?” I call out softly. “Are you okay?”

The pile moves, sweeping the blankets aside enough for me to see Mama’s bloodshot eyes. She looks like an honest-to-god mummy.

When she speaks, it’s half whisper, half wheeze. “Is that you, Kit Kat?”

My eyes mist over. “It’s me, Mama.”

“You’re not…” She stops, coughing. “You’re not supposed to be down here, my girl.”

I glance around. “Why are you down here?”

She coughs again. “There was too much sunlight upstairs. And you Dad started to worry that people would see…”

She trails off. I cock my head. “See what? I think people know that you’re sick, Mama.”

Mama shakes her head. “Never mind that. Do you think you could get my box of medicine for me? It’s over there.”

She motions behind me. I turn, seeing a small black plastic box the size of a stack of index cards. Trotting over, I pick up the box.

By the time I return, Mama has levered herself up on her gaunt arms, pushing the blankets away from her head and torso. I hand over the box.

“Thank you, Kit Kat,” she says, her eyes lighting up. Her voice is nothing but a whisper of smoke. “You know how Mama really needs her medicine.”

I scan her face, realizing for the first time how awful she looks. Her skin is saggy, she has huge bags under her eyes, and her color says to anyone looking that she isn’t well.

She dumps the contents of the box onto her bed. A spoon, a wad of cotton balls, a lighter, a few orange-capped syringes, a few little, closed glass containers of clear liquid, and a little baggie of brown powder. Like one of the Ziploc bags in the kitchen, but much, much smaller.

Frowning, I try to figure out the puzzle of what all those things have in common. I try to rearrange them a few times in my head, but nothing makes sense. Mama picks up the little plastic baggie, a smile of satisfaction on her face.

She’s forgotten about me, it seems. Mama automatically moves through preparing her medicine. She mixes it inside her spoon, using the lighter to burn the bottom of the spoon. Then she sucks the contents of the spoon up with one of the syringes.

Only then does she pause, focusing on me. “Do me a favor, Kit Kat. Turn around for a minute. Mama doesn’t want you to see her taking her medicine, okay?”

Hesitating for a moment, I stick out my lower lip and slowly turn to face the stairs. Staring at the dirt-packed floor, I can hear my mother moving behind me, the blankets rustling. After a minute, I hear Mama moan wordlessly.

When I turn back around, she’s capping the syringe and pulling the blankets back around herself. She shivers. It’s not really cold in here, being that it’s eighty-five degrees outside at night.

“If you’re cold, you should get one of the boys to move you inside,” I suggest, scraping at the floor with the toe of my shoe.

Mama doesn’t answer. She just closes her eyes, her breathing the only thing that I can hear in this tiny dark space.

“Mama?” I prompt, moving toward her.

Her eyes flutter open. “It’s okay, Kit Kat. It’s, uh, it’s definitely fine.”

My head cocks to the side. I’m not sure that she’s even talking about being down here. “Mama, why don’t you have Dad take you to the doctor if you’re sick?”

Mama’s eyes close again and she shifts to lie down on her side. “Your Daddy is ashamed of me, Kit Kat. He can’t believe he has a druggie for a wife.”

My eyes narrow. Moving slowly to Mama’s side, I see that the medicine kit is still out. “What’s a druggie, Mama?”

Her brow puckers. “Someone who… someone that needs their medicine, real bad. Your dad will hardly get me mine, even if I ask him real nice.”

I sit on the end of the bed, not wanting to disturb her or her kit. The bed is surprisingly hard. “It’s almost too dark down here to see, Mama.”

She sighs. I can tell that she’s starting to drift off by the sound of her paper-thin voice. “I know. But it’s the only place where the sunlight never bothers me.”

Pursing my lips, I cast a glance around the cellar. “Maybe you’ll feel better soon, and then the light won’t bother you anymore.”

No answer. I look over to see that she’s drifted off to sleep, her expression pained. The idea of leaving my mother down here in the dark by herself makes me cringe. It’s cool and damp down here, and all but outside.

I curl up at her feet, resting on a mound of blankets. Closing my eyes, I force my body to relax. As I lie there, listening to my mother breathing, I worry.

Her breathing is so slow, nearly halting. At times, I worry that it has stopped for good. But it always starts again. I listen to it stop and start for an hour or more, my eyes closed against the darkness.

At some point, I must’ve fallen asleep, although I don’t remember when. When I stir, opening my eyes, it’s early in the morning. The dawn sun creeps down the stairs, the paltry light shining on the dirt floor.

It takes me a second to piece together where I am and why I’m here. Pushing myself up, I rub my eyes. My stomach growls, and I think of the toaster waffles that are waiting in the freezer.

Shivering a little, I turn to Mama, pushing on her pile of blankets. She doesn’t stir, so I climb on top of the pile, peering down at Mama.

Her face is deeply lined, gone paler than pale. I look at her for a second, my breath hitching.

“Mama?” I say, reaching out to touch her face.

She’s as cold as ice when I brush my fingers against her skin. I snatch my hand back, my eyes going wide.

“Mama,” I say, shaking her more vehemently. “Mama, wake up!”

It occurs to me that I can’t hear her breathing anymore, although that might just be because my heart is racing, the sound of blood rushing pounding in my ears.

She’s dead.

I know she’s dead.

I think a small part of me has been expecting it for a long time by now.

But that doesn’t stop me from jumping off the bed and tearing off up the stairs, in search of Dad or one of my brothers. They might be able to help her, might be able to save Mama.

I sprint toward the house in the early morning light, my arms and legs pumping just as fast as they will go.