Lorraine’s fingertip dips into the glowing saint pool and comes up ruby red. Wax dribbles and lodges in a groove on the oak table as she picks up the dollar-store candle made in China. Her mother has a much-older brother in Beijing whom Lorraine has never met. He gathers bewildered souls and leads them to worship in house churches.

             In the next room, an IV drips into her mother’s arm. Over and over, Lorraine flicks the corner of a laminated card against her teeth. Outside, a lawn mower roars. Voices of kids trail as though they are drawn from a television set left on in another room. Her father didn’t have a serious bone in his body, and she hadn’t spoken to her brother, Smitty, in months, but she found herself wishing for their chatter. If only her father and her brother were here to fill the silence.

             Her mother’s health aide, Sementha, had left the card last night. Patron saint of the infirm. Juliana. So young. Her head is tilted in contemplation, with wide, flush circles around her eyes as though she’s carried the cross of others her whole life. The story goes: in the Middle Ages, a priest placed a Eucharist on Juliana’s chest when she was too ill to eat, and it vanished. Poof. Into Juliana’s soul.

             The heart of the protector blazed orange and refracted light onto lopsided kitchen cabinets. A mother is a protector, a warrior.

            Lorraine lifts her final waxed finger from the candle and glances at the clock. Sementha should be here…by now. Sementha knows the significance of her name (it means “listener”) and she lives the part.

             To guard against harm is the essential job of a parent, Lorraine thinks. She’s only seventeen. Who will be there for her? Could she pray to the saints? Her mother, a believer, occasionally got down on her knees and prayed out loud. She prayed that her brother in China was safe; she prayed for money, a better job, a neighbor’s lost animal, or a good night’s sleep. Once, Lorraine hid under her mother’s bed, next to her tap shoes wrapped in tissue paper and enshrined in their original cardboard boxes. After a few hours, her mother sat on the bed, switched on a lamp, pulled her toes one by one, then knelt. Lorraine’s heart thumped as she listened for her name to be mentioned on her mother’s long locomotive of requests. Her mother had hope that things would turn out okay, and sometimes they did.

             Her mother would never tap-dance again; her feet are swollen and her ankles are lost in fluid. On a shelf in the living room, dried yellow roses sit in one of the lollipop tap shoes, like a shrine to her mother’s glory days.

             A wax-covered thumb drops red tears into the flame. Her thumb burns, and she presses it to her tongue.