Terrible heat today. We're all wilting, but my sister Althea most of all. She's in labor. At last she gives birth, but the baby's dying as it emerges, maybe from heat-stress.

Althea slowly recovers during the evening, but the baby's gone within minutes.

She whispers bitterly "Baby woulda had a hard life anyway, being half black, half-white." Yeah, right, some consolation. This is a side of her I've never seen--is she serious?

She insists we keep the corpse around! Like a horrible little doll. In this heat, one more day and it'll be a rotting doll.

The worst thing is, I can't keep away from it. I keep rearranging the body, feeling repelled at my own compulsion. Like I'm some a chimp trying to revive a dead baby by going through the motions one more time... Can't I let the dead alone?

No. Rock the dead baby all night, and in the morning, I sit the baby up, and try to get it to lounge on bed so it's shaded from the rising sun by a pillow.

An eye blinks. A shallow breath. The baby's ALIVE...

Now.

Barely, and it'll need help still, but... alive.

Pronounced dead. Those stupid bastards. Well, not that stupid. It really was dead...

Then.

NOTE ON WAKING

I've been ill for months and doctors have been no help; basically written me off. Well, fuck them. Keep figuring out the illness myself.

It's easier than raising the dead. And I did that.

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