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death, was a serious catch for an old, unemployable man. Besides, she had a Ford and owned her house. She was so valuable to Salem Money he never made a sound when the salt pork was halved for the two of them and all the children got was its flavor. Well, yes, the grandparents were doing them a big favor letting some homeless relatives live in their house after the family got run out of Texas. Lenore took it as a very bad sign for Cee’s future that she was born on the road. Decent women, she said, delivered babies at home, in a bed attended to by good Christian women who knew what to do. Although only street women, prostitutes, went to hospitals when they got pregnant, at least they had a roof overhead when their baby came. Being born in the street—or the gutter, as she usually put it—was prelude to a sinful, worthless life.
    Lenore’s house was big enough for two, maybe three, but not for grandparents plus Pap, Mama, Uncle Frankand two children—one a howling baby. Over the years, the discomfort of the crowded house increased, and Lenore, who believed herself superior to everybody else in Lotus, chose to focus her resentment on the little girl born “in the street.” A frown creased her every glance when the girl entered, her lips turned down at every drop of a spoon, trip on the door saddle, a loosening braid. Most of all was the murmur of “gutter child” as she walked away from a failing that was always on display from her step-granddaughter. During those years Cee slept with her parents on the floor, on a thin pallet hardly better than the pine slats underneath. Uncle Frank used two chairs put together; young Frank slept on the back porch, on the slanty wooden swing, even when it rained. Her parents, Luther and Ida, worked two jobs each—Ida picking cotton or working other crops in the day and sweeping lumber shacks in the evening; Luther and Uncle Frank were field-workers for two planters in nearby Jeffrey and very happy to have the jobs other men had abandoned. Most of the young ones had enlisted in the war and when it was over didn’t come back to work cotton, peanuts, or lumber. Then Uncle Frank enlisted too. He got in the navy as a cook and was glad about that because he didn’t have to handle explosives. But his ship sank anyway and Miss Lenore hung the gold star in the window as though she, and not one of Salem’s ex-wives, was the honorable, patriotic mother who had lost a son. Ida’s job at the lumberyardgave her a lethal asthma but it paid off because at the end of those three years with Lenore they were able to rent a place from Old Man Shepherd, who drove in from Jeffrey every Saturday morning to collect the rent.
    Cee remembered the relief and the pride they all took in having their own garden and their own laying hens. The Moneys had enough of it to feel at home in this place where neighbors could finally offer friendship instead of pity. Everybody in the neighborhood, except Lenore, was stern but quickly open-handed. If someone had an abundance of peppers or collards, they insisted Ida take them. There was okra, fish fresh from the creek, a bushel of corn, all kinds of food that should not go to waste. One woman sent her husband over to shore up their slanted porch steps. They were generous to strangers. An outsider passing through was welcomed—even, or especially, if he was running from the law. Like that man, bloody and scared, the one they washed up, fed and led away on a mule. It was nice having their own house where they could let Mr. Haywood put them on his monthly list of people who needed supplies from the general store in Jeffrey. Sometimes he would bring back comic books, bubblegum and peppermint balls free, for the children. Jeffrey had sidewalks, running water, stores, a post office, a bank and a school. Lotus was separate, with no sidewalks or indoor plumbing, just fifty or so houses and two churches, one of which churchwomen used for teachingreading and arithmetic. Cee