"A new TV is no big deal. My Mama just got a tattoo," boasted six-year-old Stephanie. "A rose and a butterfly and it's beautiful." She pumped her chubby legs with a vigor that set the swing into a wild motion, as if underlining the importance of such a tattoo. "Your mama doesn't have a tattoo."

"No, but my great-grandma does," answered Justin, his chin jutting out defiantly. The boy leaned against the swing supports, kicking up little puffs of dirt with the toe of one sneaker.

Stephanie scrunched up her face in disbelief. "Great- grandmas don't have tattoos, dummy. They have freckles on their hands and smell like powder."

"Mine does," he insisted.

"A tattoo of what?"

"Numbers."

Stephanie let her legs go limp. The swing slowed and she bumped her shoes on the worn gullies beneath her feet. "Numbers?" Her forehead crumpled into a scowl. "Nobody gets numbers tattooed on 'em. They get pictures - I've seen hearts and birds and roses with butterflies like Mama's, and once I saw a guy with a big snake that took up his whole back and the snake's neck went over the man's shoulder and the snake's mouth was open and getting ready to bite the man's belly button."

"Snakes don't have necks, Steph." He pushed himself away from the support. "C'mon. I can prove it. She's sittin' on that bench. Last one there's a rotten egg." Justin took off in a burst of pent-up energy with Stephanie close behind.

"Why's she sleeping?" Stephanie whispered.

The old woman sat on the playground bench in the dappled shade of a large oak. Her head nodded then jerked back, nodded then jerked, like one of those dogs bobbling their heads in car rear windows. Splotches of shade and sun danced across her pink dress, sweater and sparse white hair.

"Grammy Anna sleeps a lot. 'Cause she's old, I guess. But she's a cool grandma -- brings us to the park almost every day and buys us ice cream. And when it's rainy, she can always think of neat things to do."

"Where's her tattoo?"

Justin placed a finger to his lips, demanding silence, then slowly pulled back the loose sleeve of Grammy Anna's sweater. A string of numbers lay among the freckles and crepey skin of the old woman's forearm.

"That's not pretty!" Stephanie scoffed. "Why would anyone want that?"

"Shhh. Don't wake her up. I dunno. Mama said something about Grammy Anna got it when she and Grampa went to camp."

"My sister Jennifer's been to camp lots of times and she's never gotten a tattoo. Where's your grampa?"

"Heaven. He died at camp. When my Grandmother Sara was just born."

Stephanie's eyes grew large and her mouth pursed into a little "O". "Really? Wow! Jennifer never said nothing 'bout camp being dangerous. I wond--"

Anna's head lolled back and she slumped toward the end of the bench. Her cardigan fell open and Stephanie saw a broken wooden disk safety-pinned to the old woman's dress.

"What's that?" she asked, her fingers lightly touching the medallion. It was broken almost in half from top to bottom and Stephanie's fingers traced over the raised carving of a hand, fingers extended, on the medallion's surface. "It's broke. Why would she wear a broke thing? What is it?"

"I dunno," Justin said. "Just one of those dumb things ladies wear. Like earrings. Why would you wanna stick needles through your ears so you can have stuff hanging off 'em? C'mon, let's go see what the other kids are doing." The boy took off in a blur of sneakers, freckles and tousled hair.

Anna woke abruptly, a thin bead of perspiration across her lip and a tight feeling around her rib cage, as if someone was gently, but persistently, squeezing her. She felt a chill, made worse by the perspiration, and her left arm was almost numb -- tingling -- where she'd been leaning against it. She swiveled on the bench to look for the children she'd brought to the park and spotted them chasing a red Frisbee on the far side of the play area.

Her gnarled fingers retrieved a tissue from her pocket and she dabbed at her lip and hairline. She was starting to feel slightly nauseous. I'm not well enough to walk back home, she thought. She was too old to be responsible for so many children so much of the time. Too old and tired. What would happen if she passed out? Who would stop the children from running out into the street? Or they might be abducted. So many crazies running around nowadays.

How many children had she watched from that bench? How many little ones with their jump ropes and skateboards, baseballs and baby dolls? A long column of children, grandchildren, great- grandchildren and neighbor children marched through her mind. Their noisy babble as fresh in her memory as her breakfast that morning, with only the years between them vague, blurry.

The playground sounds receded in her ears, the din of children at play became thin and distant. Her skin felt clammy and cold, like the frogs Little Will used to keep in his terrarium.

Must get the children home before I become ill.

As she pushed herself off the bench the pressure in her chest started again -- not gently this time, but abruptly, as if a vise clamped down on her and was trying to dislodge her insides.

Anna's world exploded into darkness.

The flashing blue lights caught the children's attention and they scampered toward the blue-black uniforms like puppies to their supper dishes. Justin spotted the pink and white mass an instant before a policeman fluttered a cloth over Anna's face.

"Get back, kids." The policeman made a barricade of his arms to stop the jostling throng of children.

"That's my Grammy!" Justin cried as he tried to lunge past the officer.

The policeman held his ground and squatted down to the boy's level. "What's your name, son?"

"Justin Krelnic," he answered, tears spilling down freckled cheeks. "Is she sick? She was sleeping. We didn't wake her up. I swear we didn't." Justin saw the familiar gnarled fingers, with the thin gold band, laying on the grass. Her palm was open, fingers reaching toward the sky, as if she were asking for something. One shoe was askew, and while Justin could see the safety pin still piercing the fabric of his grandmother's dress, her medallion was gone.

"Where's your mother, Justin?"

"Shopping with my grandma."

"You said this was your grandma."

"Grammy Anna is my great-grandma. Mama's shopping with Grandma Sara."

The policeman steered Justin toward a female officer with kindly eyes some distance from the now-covered Anna. Justin told her where he lived and where he thought his mother had gone shopping. The officer wrote it down on a pad clamped to a clipboard.

"Stay right here, Justin. I'll be back in a minute, then you're going to ride in the police car. Did other kids come to the park with you and your grandma today?"

"What about Grammy Anna? I can't leave her here!"

The officer smiled sadly, patted Justin's cheek, and asked again if his grandmother had been watching other children.

"Just Stephanie and Aaron. Stephanie lives next door. Aaron is my cousin."

The officer gathered Anna's other two charges, promised them all a ride in the police car, told them to stay put, then returned to the cluster of officers waiting by the patrol car.

"Go with the officers, Justin. It's okay. They're just going to take you home to your mama."

Justin whirled around toward a melodious voice, surprised someone had crept up behind him. A pretty woman with sparkling eyes and rich, auburn hair rolled and pinned into an old-fashioned style like his grammy's, stood nearby. There was something familiar about her. She was holding hands with a tall young man in baggy clothes and the kind of cloth cap Justin had seen in the black and white movies his grandmother loved to watch on TV. The woman's dress swirled gently in the spring breeze.

"Who are you? How'd you know my name?"

The woman laughed -- a sound like wind chimes tinkling in a summer breeze -- "You know, my darling Justin. Deep inside -- beneath all the do's and don'ts and rules and regulations -- you know. Be a good boy, Justin. Grow strong and smart and loving." Still smiling, she glanced at her companion, winked, then turned back to him, waved gaily and drifted away.

"What did you say, honey?" the policewoman asked.

Justin wheeled about to face the officer, his mind still struggling with the numbers he'd seen tattooed on the pretty woman's bared arm. "Huh?"

"I asked, What did you say?"

"Nothing. I didn't say nothing."

The officer looked puzzled. "Thought you did. Come on, then. Let's go for that ride." The woman touched Justin's shoulder briefly, then guided the three children toward the patrol car.

He glanced back over his shoulder, trying to catch another peek of the pretty lady and strange man, when something softly hit the back of his head.

He stopped and looked around. A small, round wooden disk lay on the grass behind his sneakered foot. He picked it up.

It was newly carved -- the wood was still creamy white, slightly rough in spots as if the finish sanding had not yet been completed, and a soft scent of pine pitch still clung to the disk.

"Isn't that pretty! Did you just find it?" asked the policewoman.

"Naw. It's my mother's," Justin lied, automatically. He'd learned, in his seven years, that it didn't pay to get into detailed explanations to adults. He shoved the medallion into his pocket. "I better give it back to her when I get home."

The house swarmed with relatives and neighbors bearing casseroles, Justin puzzled over whether he should give Grammy Anna's carved medallion to his mother or grandmother.

Sara had noticed its absence when she had identified her mother's body. "Mama was never without it," Grandma Sara had cried, "not from the day Papa smuggled it into the women's side of the camp. It was all we had left of him. No pictures, not a lock of hair, nothing. Just the medallion."

Justin had almost handed it over that moment; he'd never seen Grandma Sara cry before. But something held him back.

He searched out a quiet spot on the back porch where the moonlight streamed through screened panels and the clatter of crickets drowned out the chatter of the adults.

Justin turned the medallion over and over in his hands, tracing its carved hands whose fingertips barely met in the middle, and feeling the slight roughness around the edge. This wasn't really Grammy Anna's, so maybe he didn't have to give it back. Hers had been old and worn, dark brown and broken. This was whole, unbroken.

He traced his finger around the edge and found a tiny bump. Squinting his eyes, he looked more closely at the wooden disk and found the slightest trace of a seam running from top to bottom. And as much as Justin couldn't understand how it came to be, he knew instinctively his mother and grandmother would understand even less.

He'd seen the way Anna had smiled at his grampa. He'd seen how beautiful she was and how . . . complete she was. And they had thrown the medallion to him. Not to someone else, but to him. They must have had a reason.

He put it back in his pocket with the Double Bubble, two paper clips and a Hot Wheels, then went inside to join the family. A smile lifted the corners of his mouth. Growing up might not be so awful after all, now that he knew there really was a forever.