“I wouldn’t make fun of you! I’d b-b—be ashamed!”
She was sobbing in earnest now.
“I’m sorry, Madge. I was just joking. If there’s really something the matter I want to help.”
“I wish you’d go back to sleep. I was about to tell Mimi something. I won’t tell you, because you’d laugh.”
There was a thin crescent moon tonight; the stars were shedding more light than it. The dim light made the figures of the tired girls look like discarded rag dolls that had been thrown helter-skelter on the junk pile. Arms and legs tangled. A patchwork of pajamas.
Mimi took it all in at one glance. The pale moon seemed to be casting a ghostly spotlight on Madge. She was pale as the young moon and her eyes were unnaturally bright. Mimi wondered why Madge had to be so different from those healthy, sound sleepers; why she was so tortured with her strange superstition? Mimi had never heard of anything like it before. She wouldn’t hear now unless Madge volunteered. She wouldn’t ask or beg her to tell. Death bells? The very name made goose bumps up her spine.
“Please, don’t you all think I’m queer, but it runs in my family. My grandmother always heard them when someone in our family died—I heard them when she died!”
Suddenly Madge put her hands to her ears and buried her head in Mimi’s lap.
“This doesn’t make sense to me,” Betsy said.
“To me either. But maybe it will.”