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under me.
    “Olivia, honey,” he said. “We got a telegram from the hospital in Buelton. Your ma’am’s coming home at the end of summer!”
    I shook my head.
    “We’ve got to start getting ready for her.”
    It was not possible. This woman who called herself Pap’s wife belonged in Buelton, where she could not touch us. Well, as long as I lived I would neither love her nor call her my ma’am. Pap had betrayed me.
    I twisted away and ran down the back steps to the garden, where I flung myself down. My face to the wet earth, I prayed that Junk’s mama would claim me first. I begged God to let me eat chitlins without throwing up—to flatten my nose and kink myhair. I asked it in the name of the potato garden with its turned-up plants and rubbery stalks. I asked in the name of sliced green tomatoes and cucumbers, summer squash and pickled watermelon. In the name of the Reverend Timothy Culpepper, I prayed to be colored.
Yessir
. Amen.

6
    L ove Alice was Junk’s wife, first, last, and always. I wondered what Miz Hanley thought about her son having brought home a child bride.
    When she could, Love Alice met me in town. One of our favorite things was to press our noses to the windows of Dooby’s drugstore, French’s Hardware, and other places along Main Street. We were doing that one cloudy day when she heaved a sigh and sat down on the sidewalk. I sat, too.
    “Something wrong?” I spat on the toe of my boot and rubbed it with my finger.
    Love Alice was barefoot, the soles of her feet being a lighter brown than the rest of her, almost pink—and her hands were, too. Her heels were thick and yellow with calluses, the way the heels of Pap’s hands were from plugging whiskey jugs.
    “I plumb wore out, O-livvy,” she said.
    “Miz Hanley makin’ you do all the work?”
    “Oh, it ain’t that.” She giggled. “It’s that Junk man. But I shou’n’t tell you thangs—what a man do to a woman.”
    It struck me then that Love Alice was privy to secrets only married people knew. “My pap’s told me everything,” I said.
    “All of it?”
    “I’ve seen dogs,” I said importantly.
    She leaned so close I could make out each freckle. “Well,” she said, “when a man climb on a woman—that got a name.”
    “What name?”
    She lowered her voice even further. “Mountin’.”
    “Mountain?” I said.
    “Yes’m. When a man do his bidness.”
    I had never got ahold of why this occurred, nor, until now, had I known its name. “How come a man’s got to?”
    “If he don’t,” she said, “he’ll puff up like a toad—”
    “Love Alice Hanley, you’re making that up.”
    “I ain’t, either,” she said. “You seen them ol’ men what sits in front of Mr. French’s store? Fat as pigs? Well, you can bet yo’ life they ain’t mountin’.”
    “Junk tell you that?”
    “I figured it out my own self. You want to hear this?”
    I did.
    “Well, it build up all day, but a man got to hide it. Won’t do fo’ him to go around, his trousers pooched out. I as’ Junk what a man do if he don’t have a woman to come home to.”
    I was not sure I wanted to know. My pap had no woman—but this chance might never come again. “What did he say?”
    Love Alice giggled. “He say a man take hisself out in the woods and do his
own
bidness.”
    I couldn’t imagine. Old man French was unmarried and skinny as a hoe handle. “How?”
    “I as’ the same thang. Junk show me his hand, curl up his fingers. I say yessir, that’d do it all right.”
    I wondered why nobody had revealed this to the geezers who slouched on Main Street in their tipped-back chairs. Then theywouldn’t have to leave their trousers unbuttoned, or suffer bellies like ripe watermelons.
    “Anyway,” Love Alice said with a sigh, “Junk think ’bout me, out there inna field, mm-hmm, but he wait. Some nights we barely get through our supper fo’ he take me in the back room—leavin’ his mama at the table, fit to bawl.”
    “Why’s she upset?