I know I am not dead because I see her running toward me now. Her red hair fans out in this cold gray morning air, her green coat flaps open letting the breeze wrap around her chest, and her shoe laces fly untied slapping her ankles as she runs across this scrubby, frost-covered yard.

I stand by the truck here waiting with my baby, Darly, wrapped around my hip, and Mitch sits over there with the engine revving up, dying down, and revving again, he says to keep the engine turning, but I know it's to churn the quiet morning air into nothing but noise. To ease his pushing, I ran from the house with Darly bouncing, laughing on my hip, and I yelled to Marta, "Hurry, Daddy's waiting," and she comes fast now because even at six years old she knows not to make a man like him wait.

She runs, and I watch the white vapor float from her mouth, and I see she is so like me with my red hair, my dark green eyes, and my way of running with my mouth wide open, my arms flying, but my legs steady and fast. I'm afraid I've shaped her so like myself that she, too, will live a life underwater while others breathe the sharp real air.

I can see it has started. Already she loves old storybooks and pictures of the long dead who stare in a black and white trance. Already she collects dried weeds and rocks worn to odd shapes and colors rarely seen above ground. And she does odd things like the way each morning she picks a fairy tale to live by. She plays out the parts and pretends the world is just a story that's been written and has to be lived through to the end. Already her teachers call her deep. I never wanted a deep child. I just wanted a happy one who ran games and laughed like all the other giggling girls.