“Mammy,” she said loudly, “Mammy, listen to me. It’s Scarlett.” She grabbed the edge of the mattress and tried to shake it. “Look at me,” she sobbed, “me, my face. You’ve got to know me, Mammy. It’s me, Scarlett.”

Will’s big hands closed around her wrists. “You don’t want to do that,” he said. His voice was soft, but his grip was like iron. “She’s happy when she’s like that, Scarlett. She’s back in Savannah taking care of your mother when she was a little girl. Those were happy times for her. She was young; she was strong; she wasn’t in pain. Let her be.”

Scarlett struggled to get free. “But I want her to know me, Will. I never told her how much she means to me. I have to tell her.”

“You’ll have your chance. Lots of times she’s different, knows everybody. Knows she’s dying, too. These times are better. Now you come on with me. Everybody’s waiting for you. Delilah listens out for Mammy from the kitchen.”

Scarlett allowed Will to help her to her feet. She was numb all over, even her heart. She followed him silently to the living room. Suellen started immediately to berate her, taking up her complaints where she had left off, but Will hushed her. “Scarlett’s suffered a deep blow, Sue, leave her alone.” He poured whiskey into a glass and placed it in Scarlett’s hand.

The whiskey helped. It burned the familiar path through her body, dulling her pain. She held out her empty glass to Will, and he poured some more whiskey into it.

“Hello, darlings,” she said to her children, “come give Mother a hug.” Scarlett heard her own voice; it sounded as if it belonged to someone else, but at least it was saying the right thing.

She spent all the time she could in Mammy’s room, at Mammy’s side. She had fastened all her hopes on the comfort of Mammy’s arms around her, but now it was her strong young arms that held the dying old black woman. Scarlett lifted the wasted form to bathe Mammy, to change Mammy’s linen, to help her when breathing was too hard, to coax a few spoonfuls of broth between her lips. She sang the lullabies Mammy had so often sung to her, and when Mammy talked in delirium to Scarlett’s dead mother, Scarlett answered with the words she thought her mother might have said.