Dreams linger like chocolate. Staining my thoughts momentarily, their secrets come apart like cotton candy.

Today before I woke: a jackrabbit with tall white ears appears in Ann's backyard as I step out of her rundown cottage. I argued with her sons and their families crowding the living room with jutting elbows and knees. They are greedy. Through gossamer strands of sugar-scented pink, I wake.

In reality you need a gas mask to enter the squalor at Ann's. At 80-something years old last year, she finally left in an ambulance at 4 am after falling outside. She had rolled onto her back, arms and legs wriggling in the air. She didn't like Nig-ras, and swore wild dogs stampeded through the yard. She hated the neighbors, those $unsabitches.

She left messages. Kendra. Kendra. You there! Call me. Can you call me? Kendra? Listening to the recording I heard the phone clatter down. Shit! Ann said.

On her front stoop less than a minute later I knocked. Her TV was loud enough to feel with my feet out on the porch. I went in.

Can you hear that! she said.

4 am waiting for the ambulance: She had used an apron to tie a straw gardening hat over her head. She covered her cold hands in socks. She looked like Mother Hubbard, The Turtle. I crouched behind her and waited for police to make the walk up her drive, their flashlights washing rutted stone left to right.

In a few hours I would be going to my grandmother's funeral. I shivered as my hair twisted in a chilly breeze and got stuck in Ann's gnarled grip.

My son is stuck in the car, she insisted.

Ann, your son is safe and fine. He is not stuck here. Her son(s) are nearly 50 and living who knew where.

No! Check my bedroom, it's warm where he was sleeping. I can feel it on the bed. Then he was out in the car...

Are you cold Ann? Can I sit you up a little more?

I squeezed behind her on the ground and propped her sitting up. I stuck my legs behind her and she fell back. Her straw brim hit my knees and knocked the strange apron/ turban off her head.

Policemen stood by with flashlights.

We called for an ambulance.

OK. I asked them, should we do anything?

Nope. You're doing fine.

Soon, paramedics pulled on latex gloves and turned to Ann.

How are you?

Skin hanging off her bones and folds catching shadows, Ann asked, what are you doing here?

We're going to help you.

Get out, she said. I felt muscles tighten somewhere in her back.

I said, Ann, it's OK to go with them. They can help.

Minutes later I watched red strobe lights slip through bare trees as the ambulance moved away. The police came closer. What was my name? Where did I live? Thank you so much ma'am.

I crawled back to bed next-door and shoved cold feet beside Jerry. I smelled like an 80-year-old woman, and would say goodbye to my grandmother as soon as the sun was up.

Ann writes me letters I can't really read. Both her sight and her ability to swing a pen around are gone. She lives with a daughter in Florida now, and I live here beside an empty cottage full of a strange past.

I'll write back. She is just a poor old woman waiting for a letter and her eyesight to return.