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Macon until it was time to board the southbound rails that would take him to Georgia and Cee and who knew what else.

THREE

    M ama was pregnant when we walked out of Bandera County, Texas. Three or maybe four families had trucks or cars and loaded all they could. But remember, nobody could load their land, their crops, their stock. Is somebody going to feed the hogs or let them go wild? What about that patch behind the shed? It needs tilling in case it rains. Most families, like mine, walked for miles until Mr. Gardener came back for a few more of us after dropping his own people at the state line. We had to leave our wheelbarrow full of stuff in order to pile into his car, trading goods for speed. Mama cried, but the baby she carried was more important than kettles, canning jars, and bedding. She contented herself with a basket of clothes held on her knees. Pap carried a few tools in a sack and the reins of Stella, our horse that we would never see again. After
Mr. Gardener took us as far as he could we walked some more. The sole of my shoe flapped until Pap tied it up with his own shoelace. Twice, draymen let us ride in their wagon bed. Talk about tired. Talk about hungry. I have eaten trash in jail, Korea, hospitals, at table, and from certain garbage cans. Nothing, however, compares to the leftovers at food pantries. Write about that, why don’t you? I remember standing in line at Church of the Redeemer waiting for a tin plate of dry, hard cheese already showing green, pickled pigs’ feet—its vinegar soaking stale biscuits
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    It was there that Mama heard the woman ahead of her explain to the volunteer how to spell and pronounce her name. Mama said it was the sweetest thing and the sound of the name was like music amid the argue and heat of the crowd. Weeks later, when her baby, delivered on a mattress in Reverend Bailey’s church basement, turned out to be a girl, mama named her Ycidra, taking care to pronounce all three syllables. Of course, she waited the nine days before naming, lest death notice fresh life and eat it. Everybody but Mama calls her “Cee.” I always thought it was nice, how she thought about the name, treasured it. As for me, no such memories. I am named Frank after my father’s brother. Luther is my father’s name, Ida my mother’s. The crazy part is our last name. Money. Of which we had none
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    You don’t know what heat is until you cross the border from Texas to Louisiana in the summer. You can’t come up with words that catch it
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    Trees give up. Turtles cook in their shells. Describe that if you know how
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FOUR

    A mean grandmother is one of the worst things a girl could have. Mamas are supposed to spank and rule you so you grow up knowing right from wrong. Grandmothers, even when they’ve been hard on their own children, are forgiving and generous to the grandchildren. Ain’t that so?
    Cee stood up in the zinc tub and took a few dripping steps to the sink. She filled a bucket from the faucet, poured it into the warming tub water, and sat back down in it. She wanted to linger in cool water while a softly suffering afternoon light encouraged her thoughts to tumble. Regrets, excuses, righteousness, false memory, and future plans mixed together or stood like soldiers in line. Well, that’s the way grandmothers should be, she thought, but for little Ycidra Money it wasn’t like that at all. Because Mama and Pap worked from before sunrise until dark,they never knew that Miss Lenore poured water instead of milk over the shredded wheat Cee and her brother ate for breakfast. Nor that when they had stripes and welts on their legs they were cautioned to lie, to say they got them by playing out by the stream where brambles and huckleberry thorns grew. Even their grandfather Salem was silent. Frank said it was because he was scared Miss Lenore would leave him the way his first two wives did. Lenore, who had collected a five-hundred-dollar life-insurance payment upon her first husband’s