One in the morning folded into two in the morning, and two in the morning dissolved into three. Back and forth. Back and forth from the stairs to the sink to the stairs to the sink until I felt like I had worn a canyon beneath my feet. But still, my job was far from finished.

Once the walls and stairs were clean, there were the dishes covered in grease from the fried salami. And then there was the sink itself, which needed to be bleached and scrubbed and rinsed until it gleamed.

By three thirty, all that was left to clean were Mother’s soiled clothes. They smelled disgusting. If I put the clothes in the sink, the sink would get disgusting. If I put them in the washing machine, the washing machine would get disgusting. I stood exhausted in the kitchen with the bag of clothes, and my heart clenched into a fist. Outside the kitchen window, all the other houses were dark. Inside, mothers and daughters were sleeping in their own rooms, in their own beds with their own blankets that smelled like gentle dreams.

The stench of Mother’s clothes curled out of the garbage bag and wiggled its fingers at me. Taunting me. There was no way to clean this. There was no way to be free of it. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how much bleach I used, and no matter how many times I scrubbed, I would never be finished.

But then I remembered.

I was a nomad of the ninth dimension.

I had powers.

I had a backpack full of Necessaries that could dig and cut and slice. I had Letter Opener’s smooth blade, Carrot Scraper’s tooth, Scissor’s claw. I had muscles in my arms, lungs full of magic. I slung the trash bag over my shoulder and tiptoed through the kitchen to the heavy wooden door, where I turned the brass doorknob and pushed. Quiet. Quiet. Don’t wake her up. And then I was standing barefoot on the porch, bathed in the streetlight. The world was suddenly filled with nighttime sounds. The electric hymn of summer frogs, cicadas, and crickets.

On the side of the house was the old garden shed and the raised patch of ground that used to be a rose garden back in the days when my grandmother made everything bloom. Even though the grass was long and scratchy, the ground was still soft, and it dimpled where I stepped, so I knew this would be a good place to dig.

I unzipped Backpack’s mouth and emptied all the Necessaries onto the ground and used them one by one. They all took turns, the soup ladle scooping out dirt, the spatula flinging it, the carrot scraper cutting through roots, and my own fingers plunging deeper and deeper into the hole. Then I found Letter Opener wriggling in the dark. He was so desperate for adventure, he nearly leapt into my hand. I grabbed him hard by the handle to show him who was boss and used him to slice a rectangle into the earth, three feet long and two feet wide, his sharp blade biting into the ground. When I was finished, I wiped the dirt on the grass and kissed his gleaming blade.

Grave diggers have to work fast. They are ready before the men in suits bring the coffin on its wooden rails, before the family gathers with their heads bowed, each one of them taking their turn to put in a shovelful of earth. The sound of dirt thudding on the top of the coffin, a strange and final drumbeat. When it’s over, and everyone has turned their back on the grave and gone home, the grave diggers finish their work. No time to think about who is in there. No time to wonder. Just do your job.

I plunged Letter Opener into the earth. The first cuts were the hardest. We had to get through tangled roots, pieces of clay pots and corners of bricks, rounded stones that used to line the garden beds. I soon figured out that the best way to dig was to use a combination of Letter Opener and my own hands. I used his blade to loosen the earth, and then I scooped up fistfuls of dirt, flinging roots and rocks out of the hole. I used every ounce of energy I had. I used every muscle in my arms and my back, crouched by the hole, digging furiously.

I don’t know at what point I threw Letter Opener aside and started to work at the hole like a dog, scratching with my fingernails, flinging fistfuls of dirt so earth rained over the lawn, all over my hair and my body, scooping with my bare hands until they were raw from ripping out roots. I was dimly aware that I was making noises while I dug. They came from somewhere deep inside me that I didn’t even know existed, the sound of my own jagged fury, and my own determination, ripping my voice from my throat until I was weeping while I dug the grave.

I don’t know when I realized that I was no longer alone.

I never raised my head or slowed my frenzied digging to see who had come out of nowhere to help me, but at some point, I realized that there was another person crouching next to me with her hands in the grave.

There was another person beside me, crying with me, screaming with me, throwing dirt, grasping rocks and roots, and making the hole deeper and deeper.

I never slowed to see who it was until we were finished. I didn’t question it. It was almost as though I had used a spell of transformation and I was so crazed by exertion that I had duplicated and now there were two June Bugs screaming from the pain of earth beneath my fingernails.

And somehow through this effort the grave got deeper, and somehow, finally, it was finished, and one of us flung the garbage bag into the hole, and then somehow we both were on our hands and knees again, covering it up with earth, and then we were patting it down again with our hands and bare feet until there was a mound, and the lawn was covered in dirt, and everything smelled like earth.

We sat side by side by the grave.

“I’m Jenny,” said the other person, sticking out her hand like a man.

Her fingernails were black from dirt.

We shook.

“I’m June Bug,” I said.

“Yeah,” Jenny said. “I know who you are. I’ve seen you in the neighborhood. You know, your daddy and me, we were best friends when we were kids. He liked burying things too. Maybe it runs in the family.”

I looked over at her. I had never seen Jenny this close before. I had always been up in the tree or down the street or behind a window, and she always seemed more like a fairy tale than a real live person. But here she was beside me. Covered in dirt from the grave. That’s when I noticed that her left eye was bruised. She had a split lip, and the whole left side of her face was swollen.

“How did you get messed up like that?” I whispered, pointing at her cheek.

She looked at me and frowned. “That ain’t polite, asking a person how they got ugly.”

“Sorry,” I said, looking down at my lap.

“What are you doing digging a hole in your yard at four in the morning?”

“I was burying something.”

“Well, is that so?”

“Yes,” I said. “That is so.”

“Well, we sure made a mess out here. I don’t think your mama’s going to be too happy when she sees your yard. But then it kind of fits the rest of the disaster your house has become the last few years. Everything’s changed since your daddy and me were kids. When this was your grandma’s place, it used to be so pretty. Rosebushes and gardens everywhere.”

I looked up at the sinking roof, the dusty windows.

How long had it been since Mother had seen our house from this angle, from the outside, the neighborhood side? Anyone walking down Trowbridge Road could see what I was seeing right now at that very moment: the ivy snaking along the clapboard, the sighing porch sinking to its knees. What on earth is wrong with the people who live in there? Don’t they care that it’s falling apart? Look at the cracks. Look at the rotting boards. Look at the shingles falling out like loose teeth.

Now there was a new scar. A small, dark grave.

I could see a light on in our bedroom window.

Mother had been awake the whole time.

She had been watching me digging furiously.

She had been watching me weep.

She knew how dirty I was.

There was movement in the window. The silhouette of her head. A thin hand, drawing back the corner of the curtain so she could crouch at the windowsill and peer out at Jenny and me.

I was disgusting from touching the trash bag. I was disgusting from the dirt. I was disgusting from my bad, bad thoughts.

Suddenly I started to cry again.

It was not the uncertain cry of disappointment, or the fleeting cry of something new. This was a wail that had built up over months of watching Mother getting worse, and even further back — to the beginnings of disgustingness and disinfection, the diagnosis and disease. It had Daddy’s deathbed in it. It had the black suit he never would have worn, and the blue striped tie Uncle Toby found in the closet. This wasn’t my daddy lying still on the white pillows. This was a puppet someone painted to make us believe he was sleeping. At the graveyard, each one of us took turns with the shovel. Each one of us covering the casket with dirt.

I sobbed. I held myself with my dirty hands, and I sobbed and shook.

I grabbed a fistful of dirt and threw it at myself.

I slapped at my arms.

I slapped at my legs.

I shook and shuddered.

“Hey,” said Jenny, looking around the street to see if I was waking up any neighbors. “Hey, now. Shhh, honey. Come on. It’ll be okay. You don’t want to wake up those Crowley boys, do you?”

Jenny put an arm around me and gave me a few pats, maybe thinking that the gesture would quiet me, but the feeling of a real live mother unraveled me even further, and I wailed like a newborn, opening the dark hole of my mouth and sobbing against her cheek until she pulled me all the way toward her so my head was resting against her, and she held me and held me, wiping the dirt away, saying things mothers say like, “I know. I know. It’s over now. It’s all over. It’s going to be okay.”

Jenny Karlo held me a long time on the dirty lawn in front of the grave.

I could see Mother move behind the curtain.

“Look,” said Jenny, “your mom’s awake. Let’s get you inside.”

I looked at my filthy hands, my legs and bare feet so covered in dirt, they had turned the color of earth.

“No,” I said.

“You can just tell your mama you had a bad dream and sleepwalked out here. Then tomorrow you can go down to the garden store and buy a nice magnolia or something. Turn this mess into something pretty.”

“No,” I said again. “I’m not going back in there.”

I was surprised at the certainty in my voice, but I could tell that it was true.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” I said, shuddering. “I am sure.”

Jenny looked at me. “Okay,” she said. “Well, I guess you’re coming home with me, then. You know Nana Jean?”

I nodded.

“I thought you might.”

Jenny took my hand. We began walking together down the quiet sidewalk toward Nana Jean’s house, the stars low in the sky, our shadows stretching before us from the streetlights.

“Wait a minute,” I said.

Jenny stopped short. “You changing your mind?” she asked me.

“No,” I said. “It’s just that I forgot my backpack. It’s over there by the grave.”

“All right,” said Jenny. “Hurry up and get it.”

It didn’t take long to gather the Necessaries scattered all around the yard. Tweezers and Carrot Scraper and Letter Opener. I returned with Backpack swinging on my shoulder. Jenny reached over and took him from me. She hoisted him up onto her back, and we continued walking down Trowbridge Road. “Holy guacamole,” she said. “What do you have in here?”

She shook her shoulders. I could hear Letter Opener and Carrot Scraper jangling.

“Oh,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant, “just some Necessaries.”

“I get it,” Jenny said, nodding gravely. “I have Necessaries too.”

She opened her purse, took out a pack of cigarettes, shook one onto her hand, found a lighter in her back pocket, and lit up. Jenny took a long drag on the cigarette and then blew smoke over her shoulder. “You asked me what happened to my face before,” she said, looking far away. “You still want to know?”

I nodded. “Yes,” I said.

“It was a birthday present. From my boyfriend, Donny.”

Jenny pantomimed a roundhouse punch.

“That is a really bad present,” I said.

“Sure is.” Jenny sighed.

She blew a smoke ring into the lightening sky. It drifted like a halo from her lips and hovered over the sidewalk.

“Come on,” she said, taking my hand again. “Let’s go home.”