The tobacco at Young’s and at Brookfield was being pressed into the hogsheads, good separated from bad, and readied for the market. An early snow had come and gone already. Trace mounds of white clung to the shady hollows around the brook, but as was often wont to occur in a Virginia December, th...
Mom rushed to the kitchen so she could fix supper. Tannie started back to her room to watch TV. Butt and I played paper football on the floor. Halfway down the hall, though, Tannie turned back and asked Mom, “Grace, do you need some help with supper?” Mom answered, “No. I can do it myself. But th...
He tried to lead Mamere onto the trailer, where dozens of others were restless and ready to go, but suddenly she refused to join them. My dam had seen more cruelty on this one day than ever in her life. “What if I was wrong?” she asked me. “Could I have made a mistake about this man’s intentions?...
An even bigger miracle? He agreed to give Filipia exactly one chance. Just one. Desperate, I reckon. She took it; I took it. And I’ll brag right now: those crusty horsemen stood back and learned something from an eighteen-year-old girl. A tiny, baby-faced girl. “Two days,” Gary barked at her one ...
Maiden negotiated my permanent transfer. For some amount unknown to me, the right to call me personal property passed from Monique to Mother. While the papers bound me to Mother officially, it was Claire to whom I now belonged. Neither Claire, nor I, needed a piece of paper or monetary exchange t...