Stop a sneeze before it comes to the table or death will visit soon.

“Girl!” Pa shouted, and slammed his fist on the table. “More scrapple. I tole you plenty of times, I don’t want nothin useless on my farm. You’d best start earnin your keep.”

“My farm,” he’d said, but as long as I were alive, it would always belong to my grandpa. Pa never worked the farm; he were born tired and raised lazy.

I scrambled acrost the dark kitchen and scraped the leavins out of the iron skillet and onto his plate. Pa never looked up or thanked me. He leant low over his food, turned his spoon sideways, and pushed big chunks of greasy scrapple into his mouth.

I hid my eyes behind a curtain of hair and looked for the best way out. Though I knowed every bit of this kitchen, from the ceilin beams hung with herbs to the wide pine floorboards, I needed a clear pathway, free of guns and legs. When Pa got into one of his moods, I had to get out of his way—and fast. I felt the hot flush move up my neck and flare into my cheeks the way it always does when I am mad. I didn’t want Pa to feel my scairt or see my mad or I’d get kicked like one of the huntin hounds.

I might not have worked out in the fields, but I weren’t lazy. I were the one who cooked our food, kept up the cabin, done the washin, mended, and tended our garden and animals. I squared my chin and bit down on my tongue to keep it from waggin me into trouble again.

My brothers and Pa left the table without a word; the door left open behind them. They walked out onto the porch, and Delia and Bathsheba, Grandpa’s hounds, uncurled, shook, and loped after them. I heard a round of barkin and yippin, as though the hounds thought they was goin on a coon hunt.

I stood at the window and watched till they passed my tomater patch and turned the corner at the barn; then I pulled Mama’s quilt off my bed and took it outside. I shook it good, spread it out along the porch rail to air, and run my hand over its fineness. My mama had worked the straightest, tiniest stitches into her quilts, but my needlework on my old pieced Hannah doll, it looked like the jaggedy scar that runs up the side of my leg.

I went back indoors and sank down onto the three-legged stool. The long cherrywood table, cut and milled on Grandpa’s land and built by him, were strewn with food and grease. Grandpa, my mama’s father, had been the onliest piece of softness in the family, a big, curly-headed Irishman who called me Girl like all the others, but when we was alone, my name were always Sweet Girl. And when we was alone and I cried over the things Pa and my brothers done to me, well, Grandpa always told me that bad beginnins are a sign of a good endin. I hoped I didn’t have to wait too long for the good to come.

Grandpa teached me what I knowed about the stars—turned them from strangers to friends. He showed me how to plant by the moon and what wild herbs were for pickin and eatin, healin or hurtin. He learnt me how to shoot a gun till I were near as good as him. By my eighth birthday, I could hit a corncob stuck on top of the fence clear acrost the barnyard. He knowed all the animals and how to talk to them and care for them. He give that charm over to me to carry on. Two years ago, on the day he died, I felt like most of my world, leastwise the good parts of it, went into the grave with him.

I needed to pay Grandpa some respect. After I finished up the breakfast mess, I’d clean his table proper-like and work some of my beeswax into it to bring on a shine.

I picked up my sand bucket and lye, but afore I began scrubbin the floors, I set down and leant on my elbows. “Mama,” I said aloud, “I made it safe through this mornin without gettin into trouble.” My stomach grumbled. I slid some of the leftovers off of Pa’s and my brothers’ plates and sopped up the juices and grease with a heavy piece of yesterday’s corn bread. “Thanks, Mama,” I said. “You remembered my birthday and made me a cake.” I closed my eyes, gnawed into the corn bread, and smiled. It tasted like angel food.

From outside, I heard somethin scuffle acrost the front porch. I jumped up and tucked the last of the dried-out bread into my pocket alongside some minty wintergreen leaves and the lucky buckeye Grandpa had always carried with him. Lord save me if Pa ever found me sittin down in the middle of the day. I blanked my face, smoothed my apron, and picked up a pile of dirty plates. The sound come again. I walked toward the door, then stopped midstride and listened. Catoctin Crick, so much a part of my life that I don’t usually hear its noisesomeness, filled the cabin with its rain-fed roar.

The floorboards thrummed under my bare feet as someone walked along the porch, then stopped near the Catalpa tree. I stood, plates askew, cocked my head like a hooty owl, listened. Then I shivered. My head prickled like it did this mornin when my brother Samuel sneezed at the table—a sure sign of death comin soon.