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and she always had a book in her hand. She swore reading was even better than eating a Dilly Bar. By and by, she developed a real appreciation for the English language, and when she heard words put together like “of biblical proportions,” she would try to squeeze them into every possible conversation for the rest of the day.
    “Daddy, that pot roast is so good it is of biblical proportions,” Martha Ann announced at the dinner table later that night.
    Sometimes she didn't make any sense at all, but it didn't change the fact that Moses had led God's people into freedom. And after giving it more thought, I finally decided that even if the Lord didn't save my mama, and even if Moses did end up wandering around the desert for forty years, it was still an exodus worthy of admiration, if not an inspiration for my own eventual great departure.
    My wanting to leave town had nothing to do with my daddy, although sometimes I wondered if that's what he thought. He really did do a good job of mothering us. He cooked our dinners, washed our hair in the kitchen sink so the soap wouldn't get in our eyes, and even dried our tears when our knees were bleeding or our hearts were aching. But I'm not sure if he really ever did understand my wanting to know something different.
    Daddy was just more concerned with raising us right than dreaming of places he'd never seen. He always said the good Lord had one Golden Rule, but I think Daddy had two:
Go to church on Sundays and set a good example every day.
And that was what we did. Our pigtails may not have looked as even and tidy as the other girls' and our dresses may not have been as perfectly pressed as theirs, either. And maybe we never learned how to embroider or needlepoint, but there were two things we knew better than any other girl in town: the Bible and Georgia football.
    Come September we understood that the weather was about to change and so was our way of living. It was time to put away the baby dolls and start tossing the football. We could throw a tight spiral fifty yards by the time we were nine and talk the game as much as the boys, something most of the other girls thought was very unladylike.
    “Catherine Grace, I swear it does sound like you are speaking gibberish when you start that football talk. Screen passes and draw plays, you know the boys aren't gonna find that attractive,” announced Ruthie Morgan at the lunch table one Monday when I was in the midst of recounting the winning drive that led the Bulldogs to a come-from-behind, six-point victory over the Tennessee Volunteers.
    Ruthie Morgan lived next door and was about as girly a girl as you could ever hope to find. She always wore a pink dress and had a pink barrette clipped in her hair. I bet it took her mama at least three tries to get that barrette hanging so straight. From time to time, Ruthie Morgan and I would jump rope together or play badminton, not because we particularly liked each other but because there was nothing else to do. Of course, it should be no big surprise that Ruthie Morgan and Emma Sue were good friends, even though Ruthie Morgan was a full two years older. I always called Ruthie Morgan by her first and last names, placing just enough emphasis on the first syllable of her last name to convey my abiding irritation with her.
    During football season, Ruthie Morgan would not step foot in our house, not that I really cared. Too bad for her, I always said, ’cause on game days we drank red Kool-Aid, ate red Jell-O, and dressed our Barbies in little red dresses all in honor of the fightin’ Dawgs. We screamed and yelled at that television set while Ruthie Morgan was probably stuck inside ironing her mother's linen napkins for Sunday lunch.
    Even though I would have never admitted this to her, or my daddy, I would have loved to iron some napkins for Mama. She would have set the temperature gauge on low so I wouldn't get burned, and I'd press on that iron till I smoothed every single crease and