Chapter One

Mae let her feet drag, clutching her books to her chest, mentally scolding herself for her frequent absences from class. She was sixteen years old and already the oldest student in her classroom. But she was determined that she would graduate. Gaps of weeks and months would not deter her, she thought furiously while she waited to answer the summons from Miss Norma, the principal.

Standing just outside of the open door, she shifted from one foot to another, her hands shaking, waiting for Miss Norma to look up from the papers stacked in front of her on her desk. Finally, she lifted her head and motioned for Mae to come in, pointing to the chair in front of the broad cherrywood desk.

Mae sat, placed her books on the floor beside her chair, and loosened the buttons on her coat, fighting the urge to sit on her hands to keep them still. Her protests and excuses gathered in her mouth, ready to pour out at the first opportunity.

Miss Norma fidgeted with the glasses that dangled from the gold chain around her neck, lifting them to peer at Mae and then allowing them to fall back to the lace of the blue-flowered dress covering her sagging breasts. The lines in her lemon-yellow skin spoke of an age that aligned itself with the rumor that she had been teaching at the school since it opened its doors, some forty-nine years ago, in 1904. Clearing her throat, she pulled her thin lips into a line that caused them to disappear and spoke, her eyes riveted on Mae.

“How are you doing today, young Miss Mae?” she’d asked in that crisp, efficient voice that often echoed in Mae’s mind late into the evening, bent over the wash basin at home. She would repeat the lessons, striving to master each repetition in preparation for the next time she was permitted to go to school.

“I’m fine, Miss Norma. No reason for me to be complaining about nothing.” She was careful to pronounce the “g”s on the ends of her words like Miss Norma taught them.

“About anything,” Miss Norma corrected, lifting her glasses to look over at Mae, her mouth rigid with the disapproval she reserved for poor grammar. Mae slumped lower, folding into her chair, embarrassment coloring her cheeks.

“Yes, ma’m.” Mae felt beads of sweat trickling from her armpits and down her side to pool in the band of her wool skirt. She waited, the unease building steadily as Miss Norma seemed to assess her, pause to think, and then evaluate her further before she spoke again. Her mouth relaxed to show the fullness of her lower lip and turned up in the corners in an uncharacteristic smile that left Mae bewildered. Her heart tripped rapidly.

“I’m sorry about missing so many days in school,” she blurted, leaning forward farther. “It ain’t, I mean, isn’t my fault. I be in school every day if Verna didn’t stop me.”

Miss Norma’s eyes widened in disbelief, and she sat up straighter in her chair. “Children don’t call their parents by their first name, even if they are our stepparents,” she declared, her eyes piercing Mae and watching her squirm where she remained pinned until she sensed contrition on her part.

Mae’s stomach twisted into knots as she prepared for her expulsion. She’d shown herself to be rude, illiterate, and disrespectful. Her body tensed for Miss Norma’s following words as if awaiting a physical blow.

“Well, it seems,” Miss Norma continued, seemingly oblivious to Mae’s distress, “that although you have missed many days of instruction, you have somehow managed to obtain the highest test scores of any of the students in your class. You apparently have a propensity for learning that is unequaled.”

Mae’s mouth dropped open, and her eyes rapidly blinked as she struggled to understand, leaning more on tone than the words themselves, the meaning of some of them escaping her.

Mae sat up straight in her chair, her mouth falling open with comprehension. She stared at Miss Norma, half-stood, then dropped back into the chair.

“You mean I’m not getting expelled?” she asked, her words rushing out with a sigh of relief.

“Of course not. Whatever made you think that?” Miss Norma blinked owlishly at Mae, picking up the disparate threads of the conversation and piecing them back together for clarity. “As I said, it seems that you have managed to impress most of the faculty with your acumen and have been chosen as a candidate to take the teaching exam. We usually take the younger girls, but we’ve decided that, despite your age, you will be groomed for a teaching position at the Rayville Colored School.”

Mae struggled to understand everything she said, feeling like she needed a dictionary to decipher the big words Miss Norma spewed, finally seizing on the fact that she had been chosen to become a teacher. Her heart lurched in her chest, throbbing with hope. The whisper of a dream that she could escape this place coalesced, the one she thought had been buried in the grave with the remains of her dead mother.

She clenched her hands on her lap, the knuckles yellow beneath her tan skin, her body angled forward, eager to capture every additional word as a warm glow filled her, and Miss Norma continued.

“We do understand that there are some limitations in your home situation.” Miss Norma stood and walked around the desk to lean down and pat her clenched hands, clearly uncomfortable with this part of the conversation. Mae inhaled her scent of pressed powder and topaz sachet, her body relaxing back into the chair, feeling comforted.

She looked into the round, protruding eyes behind the lenses of Miss Norma’s glasses, reflecting pools of sympathy before she blinked, erasing it. Straightening, Miss Norma walked back, putting the desk between them, a barrier between position and emotions. Pulling out a handkerchief from her bodice, she coughed into it.

“I have devised a possible solution if you and your family are amenable to it.” She waited, and Mae moved to the edge of her seat. “You know Pastor and his wife Lena never had any children of their own?” she asked, pausing again to wait for a response.

Mae nodded, “Yes, ma’m. It’s a shame her being barren as a rock and sweet as she is.”

“Yes.” Her features arranged themselves to include that disapproving stare that rolled over Mae again, and she flinched. Miss Norma coughed into her handkerchief and sniffed before continuing, studying the rising blush coloring Mae’s cheeks. Satisfied that her silent chastisement had been received, she went on. “Well, they do have an extra room, and they said they would be willing to open their home up to you during the new school year. We’ll just need your folks to say yes and agree to the arrangements. Then we will be able to put everything into place. Is that something you think that you might want to do?”

A bright light ignited, illuminating within Mae’s head, bringing with it a swimming sensation that almost toppled her from the chair. She wanted to shout and run around the room. Instead, she choked out three words.

“Yes, Miss Norma.” She paused, overcome, additional words sticking in her throat.

Mae stood rapidly, arms stretched wide, to wrap around Miss Norma, then halted, stopped by the horrified expression on the woman’s face as she leaned away from the embrace. She settled for extending her right hand, which Miss Norma shook firmly, her mouth working itself back into the tight smile she had displayed earlier.

“Be here first thing on Monday morning and bring your father.” She returned to her paperwork, signaling Mae’s dismissal, an air of accomplishment settling around her. “And congratulations, Miss Kennedy.”

Picking up her books, Mae managed to walk sedately from the office, her steps measured and soft until she reached the front door, where she broke into a run. Kicking up dead leaves as she skipped through them, she threw back her head, her mouth open in a wordless scream of joy. God had finally answered her prayers.

Now, forty-five minutes later, she stood in her front yard. Her arguments and courage had evaporated with each step that brought her closer to home. She hugged the thin material of her ragged coat tighter around her slender form. The wind slipping through the threadbare fabric chilled her skin, causing her to shiver as she picked up her steps and moved more quickly toward the house. The light that had sustained her began to fade, rolling away in waves, leaving her bereft of her previous joy.

She took deep breaths and pulled her lower lip between her teeth, chewing it lightly in agitation. She lifted a silent prayer as she twisted the large white knob, letting the door swing inward to bounce off the wall.

“Close that door, fool. I swear you ain’t got the sense you was born with, or was you born with any?”

Mae’s eyes narrowed as she glared at her father’s second wife Verna, sitting on the small, faded green sofa pushed back against the wall of the cramped living room. It stood a few feet from the black potbellied stove that took up the center of the same wall. Verna’s hand rested on the small mound of her fourth pregnancy swelling beneath her house dress. Around her, two-year-old Sarah and three-year-old Josiah crawled and scooted quickly across the pitted linoleum covering the wooden floor, scrambling toward their sister.

“A fool know enough not to let all the heat out. And is you cutting your eyes at me?” Verna demanded, leaning forward as if to stand. Mae schooled her face into a look of exaggerated remorse, taking the venom out of her own gaze and replacing it with one of subjugation. Satisfied, Verna sat down again, her mouth puckered as if she had just bitten sour lemons.

Mae quickly closed the door, stepping over the tangle of her younger siblings as they reached toward her legs and the hem of her skirt.

“Why you late this time? You been out there with that boy, Moses?” Verna sneered, her eyes rolling in Mae’s direction as she sucked her teeth, searching her face for evidence of guilt.

“No, ma’m, Sweet Mom.” Mae muttered, the endearment bitter on her tongue as it left her mouth. “It was Miss Norma at the school what kept me late.”

Verna’s eyes moved upward to lock on Mae’s, lingering on the almond shape of the girl’s dark eyes, the upturned nose, and the deep lines of the dimples that showed even when her plump mouth was at rest. A scowl swiped across her own sharp features as she drew herself up straighter on the couch, her hand rounding her stomach. At the same time, she smiled at the honorific she demanded of Mae, though she usually preferred to think that they could pass for sisters rather than mother and daughter, considering herself far to young to have a child as old as Mae.

“It ain’t nothing but a waste you spending all that time up at that school noway.” She stopped, her eyes moving around the room until they landed on the door leading to the back porch. “You needs to be working. The washing piling up, and them folks be needing they stuff back.” Her eyes returned to settle on Mae, lingering as the animus built between them. “I cain’t lose no customers because you late.”

Mae’s anger ignited and flared, the words releasing from her tongue and flying into the air before caution could stop them from spewing into Verna’s face. “Miss Norma say I might can be a teacher at the Colored School. And she can get me a room with the preacher and his wife until I finish.”

She watched Verna wince as if the words had weight, the color first draining from her face, then her skin turning scarlet with rage.

“I know you ain’t putting no store in what Miss Norma say. She been at that school since Mary met Joseph.” She spit out the words, simultaneously reaching down to the floor to snatch her daughter, Sarah, and put her onto her lap. She had unknowingly crawled into the crossfire of bitterness between them. “Probably ain’t nothing right in her head, especially if she think your dumb ass can be a teacher.” Her hand rose and came down to slap the child’s round thigh as she tried to wriggle free.

Frustration sprouted in Mae’s spirit, bringing with it a deep-seated desire to nullify Verna’s poisonous criticism. She let her eyes soften while her mouth relaxed, then channeled scathing words wrapped in sarcasm. “Why you say that?” she asked, her expression fixed into a masque of innocence. “Did she tell you the same thing when you was in school?”

Verna recoiled, her eyes narrowed, her breath coming in quick, short inhalations. A moment later, a howl split the air as Sarah received several more sharp, heavy-handed slaps.

“Shut up that noise,” Verna screamed, squeezing Sarah’s back against her chest, one hand over her mouth to muffle the sound, ignoring how the girl bucked against her restraining hand. Sarah’s head struck Verna’s breastbone repeatedly until she was finally wrestled into silence. She and Mae glared at each other in the thick silence of the room.

Mae glowered at Verna, wanting to pull Sarah free from her lap as Verna continued to pinch the child’s legs. She could see bruises on the child’s tender flesh as Verna peered from beneath her thick, lowered lashes at Mae.

She knew she was being baited, Verna daring her to move, punishing her with the child’s pain. Her hands balled into fists at her side. Pushing her shoulders back and steeling herself, Mae ignored Sarah’s cries, locking her mouth closed and refusing to exchange any more words. She needed to put some distance between Sarah’s tear-streaked face and herself before she lost the barely maintained slender threads of control left within her.

Turning on her heel, Mae threw open the door, stepped outside, and heard the resounding clap as it slammed shut behind her. With the door between them, her shoulders slumped, and she allowed the tears to fall, dripping down her face, the remnants of any joy she had felt earlier beginning to leak out with them.

“Damn it all,” she swore to herself as she stomped across the porch, pounding out her frustration on the rotting boards. Nothing had gone the way she’d planned while walking home. It had all fallen apart as soon as she had seen Verna, swollen and squatting on the couch like a toad. Her plan of coming in on her best behavior, starting her chores, and smoothing the way for the conversation dissolved into madness. She should have figured that Verna could mess up hell itself.

Standing still, she counted to ten in her head, breathing in and out the way Miss Norma had taught them at school. Bending from the waist, she picked up the uneven pieces of wood from the stack, oblivious to the slivers leaving splinters in her hands. Inside, three-year-old Josiah had joined his bawling to that of his sister, and she stopped to peek in the side window, then stepped back, horrified. Verna was kicking at the boy to silence him. Josiah flinched, hiccupped, and stilled at her feet, mouth trembling and choking on his cries.

Mae’s eyes rounded in fury, her patience snapping as the wood slid from her arms and clattered to the porch. She raced forward, her open palms slammed against the door, this time heedless of how it swung inward and ricocheted off the wall. Entering, she crossed the space in three quick strides to stand over Josiah, nestling the boy between her spread feet, then yanking Sarah free of Verna’s lap and into her arms. Her chest heaved, the heat of her anger blazing in her eyes.

“Don’t you hit neither one of them no more,” she hissed from between clenched teeth, holding Sarah balanced on one hip with one hand, her other hand balled into a fist raised over her head. “What’s wrong with you? These is babies! How you gon’ hit and kick them like that?” Mae yelled into Verna’s upturned face as she fell back onto the cushions of the couch, her hands raised defensively to cover her face and stomach.

“What the hell going on in here?” Her father Ben’s thundering voice filled the room, halting Mae and Verna, freezing them into a tableau of acrimony.

They turned to stare at him as he filled the open doorway, his eyes swinging from one to the other. Ben was a big bear of a man, broad shoulders straining against the wool of his coat, his large hands hanging inches below the sleeves of his jacket. His once-handsome face was lined, etched with the pressure of years of providing sustenance for his family, the loss of one wife, too many babies who never drew breath, the demands of the young girl he had taken as his second wife, and the balm of the whiskey that soothed the raging disappointments that ate his soul.

“Cain’t a man get no peace when he come in his own selfs house?” he shouted, his head rotating on his thick neck, glaring at both women.

Verna’s eyes instantly filled with tears, her mouth quivering as she shrank further into the cushions, a look of wild-eyed hysteria distorting her features.

“Oh, Jesus, Ben, you gots here just in time. She was gon’ hit me,” she shrieked, tears pouring liberally down her face as she sobbed. “I done told you before I be scared to be with her. Ain’t no telling what she gon’ do,” she cried, wrapping her arms around her upper body and rocking back and forth as she spoke through quaking lips.

Mae’s father’s eyes locked with hers, wildly searching hers for understanding. “Mae, Mae, what going on?”

“I was just trying to stop her. She was hitting Sarah, and SHE KICKED JOSIAH!” Her voice steadily rose until she screamed, first holding Sarah out toward him, then pulling her back against her chest, rubbing at the reddened flesh on the child’s thighs. Stepping back, she eased Sarah to the floor to place her next to Josiah and smoothed her skirt from where it had bunched up on the side. She lowered her head, eyes cast to the floor, unable to meet her father’s accusing glare.

“She telling a tale!” Verna wailed, leaping to her feet to press herself against Ben’s tall frame, weeping convulsively into his chest as his arms encircled her. He leaned down, kissing the crown of her head, murmuring soothingly, his hands running up and down her back.

Sweeping his arms beneath her, Ben turned, lifted Verna, and walked back to the couch, lowering himself to the cushions and cradling her against his chest. Mae remained standing, a forlorn figure isolated in the center of the room, the toddlers crawling between her legs, oblivious to the drama unfolding over their heads. Her shoulders sagged.

“Now, Verna, sugar, tell me what happened,” he demanded before turning his gaze back to Mae, pinning her with a withering look. Her feet anchored her to the shame and disapproval pulsing between them, helpless as Verna hitched and stuttered out her tale.

“She come in here late again.” She paused, watching the contours of his face tighten, letting the information dig at him. With each damning sentence, she would glance at Mae, then shudder before continuing. “I ain’t been feeling good today, what with the baby and all.” She pulled Ben’s hand to rest over her stomach as she talked, using her thumb to stroke the rough skin on his palm. “I was sitting here waiting, and she wasn’t here, and she know I needs her help. I cain’t do this by myself, and you already working hard as you can. We need that little bit of money I make. She done left me with all them clothes on the porch still needing to be washed.”

She moved her hands upward, allowing them to wind themselves in the rough spun cotton of his shirt as she talked, looking up to give him the full benefit of her direct gaze. “I bet you anything she been mooning over that boy, Moses, again, even after you done told her to stay away from him.”

Mae saw her father’s back go rigid, his shoulders pulled back, and she felt her dreams burn to ash. Nothing she could say now would persuade him differently once Moses’ name had been mentioned. Verna’s words tumbled around her, burying her deeper in a tomb she could not extricate herself from. She wanted to bawl at the injustice, knock Verna from his lap, take her place, and beg him to understand. Why couldn’t he see Verna for the conniving, miserable heifer she was? The words swam around in her mouth, eager to be spit free.

“And I told her so about what you done said about that boy.” Verna continued, unable to conceal the undercurrents of deception and her manic glee from Mae while her father remained deaf to it. “Then I ask her to change Sarah’s diaper, and she tell me to change my own stinking baby. That ain’t her job. Next thing I know, she slapping Sarah’s legs, and then she gon’ start hollering about how she ain’t washing nothing, she ain’t watching no babies, and she gon’ be a teacher.” Her words rushed out in her haste to paint a vivid picture of her victimization, her body attuned to the hardness of Ben’s muscular frame against her, feeling his anger fueled by her words.

She chose her next words carefully, playing his emotions against him, inhaling the whiskey fumes coating his breath. “Miss Norma done fill her head with some craziness about her being a teacher herself. Now, she too good to be with us.” Verna drove in the final stakes to his pride with her last sentence. “She say she ain’t gon’ end up with some poor-ass hick farmer getting swolled up with babies like me.”

Mae’s eyes bulged, her mouth dropping open in amazement as she listened to Verna, her ears unbelieving.

“Nah, Papa, that ain’t true. It ain’t happen like she say.” Stuttering, she began to refute her stepmother. She should have stopped her sooner. “I mean, that part about Miss Norma saying she think I can be a teacher, that part be true, and I was gon’ tell you soon as you come in,” she cried, scrubbing her hand down her face, an unconscious reflection of her father’s own gestures of frustration. Mae stopped, searching his face, hoping to see a glimmer of understanding relax his features.

Nothing came, and she pushed on. “What she say about me maybe staying with Pastor Brown and his wife through the semester, that be true too, but it ain’t what we was fussing about. She fibbing, Papa, I swears before God. She was the one hitting Sarah. Look at her legs if you don’t believes me.”

Mae lifted Sarah, holding her thigh toward her father so he could see the faint traces of red welts against her golden skin and igniting a new round of wails from Sarah, her brother joining in. “See them marks what she left?”

“YOU CALLING ME A LIE?” Vera screamed, her wails escalating over Mae’s voice and the children’s cries, creating a cacophony of sounds that threatened to drown reason from Mae’s mind.

“You saying you ain’t call me no baby-breeding heifer, not fit to do nothing but pop out babies?” Verna wept. “Look at her now, standing there all high and mighty. Grown enough to call me a lie. After I done did my best to be a mama to her.”

“YOU AIN’T MY MAMA!” Mae shouted, her hands tightening back into fists at her side, her eyes narrowed to slits, focused on Verna. She did not see her father moving, sliding Verna from his lap and pushing her gently to the side as he leaped to his feet, moving impossibly fast for a man his size. He stood and faced his daughter, towering over her diminutive form, his hand rising and coming down in a blow that rocked her backward on her heels. She stumbled, clutching at the air, her arms pinwheeling to catch her balance and not fall on the children underfoot. Mae felt her cheek exploding in pain, the side of her face swelling instantly. Both hands went to hold her cheek, scalding tears spilling over her hand, hoarse sobs wrenched from her throat.

Ben breathed in deeply, rubbing his hands across his face, then again down the front of his pants legs while his breath bellowed in and out. “Little gal, you done lost your mind. Where the hell you think you is when you can talk to your mama like that. This my house! Mine. And Verna is your mama now. Your little grown ass better be knowing it.”

“But she fibbing, Papa,” Mae muttered, feeling the skin around her eye tightening and throbbing, seeing the blur of his hand raised again as she squinted through her good eye. She flinched, ducking away from the anticipated blow but still unable to stop her treacherous mouth from speaking. “You know I won’t never do nothing to Sarah or Josiah,” she pleaded, her uninjured eye swimming with tears. “And I ain’t been seeing no Moses neither.” She finished petulantly, her lower lip sticking out, trembling with the effort to staunch her weeping.

“So, what was you fixing to do when you was standing there when I come in with your fist raised?”

Her eyes lowered to the floor. She had no defense to his question. “I’m sorry, Papa,” she said softly.

Ben hesitated, his eyes softening momentarily in the face of her remorse. He took a step toward his daughter, his arm outstretched. “Mae?”

“You taking up for her?” Verna wallowed from side to side, struggling to stand, brushing past Ben. “So, now you calling me a lie too? I guess I knows what I needs to do.”

Startled, Ben reached out for Verna’s arm as she passed, stopping her progress. He spun her around and pushed her back down to the couch, his face hardening again. “Just sit the hell down, Verna. I’m sick to death of being stuck between the two of you. Cain’t get a minute of peace!” Anger, frustration, and pain churned across his face as Verna angrily swiped at her tears.

He stood back so that he could look at both of them. “Mae, I done seen how grown you thinks you is right here. Heard it for my own-self. Old enough to start hollering at grown folks in my house and calling them a lie.” He leaned forward to glare directly into her face. “You sure as shit done start smelling yourself, and you likes the smell. But you ain’t grown yet.”

He patted his pocket and felt the hard, familiar shape of the whiskey bottle within. Pulling it free, he twisted off the cap, put the bottle to his lips, and threw his head back to take a long swallow. He felt the comforting burn down his throat and sighed as it settled into a pleasant warmth radiating through his stomach.

“So, a poor-ass hick farmer like me ain’t man enough to takes care of you no more? That’s why you needs Pastor Brown taking care of you? I ain’t man enough to take care of my own, right?”

“It ain’t like that, Papa. It’s just Miss Norma say maybe I could be a teacher.” Mae watched his Adam’s apple moving up and down, hearing the gurgle of the amber liquid as he drank. She saw that more than half the contents were gone when he lowered the bottle to retwist the cap and return it to his pocket.

Her words trailed off as she looked into her father’s eyes, looking for the love that sometimes sparkled there, that had been her everyday due before Verna entered their lives. Reason faltered in the face of his liquor-fueled accusations. Each word from her only served to twist the maze of Verna’s half-truths and innuendos. The sly and calculating look of drunkenness stared back at her, and she wondered how many bottles had preceded this one.

Ben paused, sucking in a deep breath as he searched the ceiling for words that would bring his world back, a world where his daughter looked up to him, where he could be proud of what he did as a man, the living he scratched out of the unyielding earth. He weaved slightly before focusing his gaze on Mae. His words slurred slightly, his voice escalating until it thundered in the room. “Ain’t nobody gots to take care of me or mine, Mae!” He pounded his chest to emphasize his statement. “You knows that. Ain’t no way I’m gon’ let no man, preacher or not, come in like I cain’t take care of my own. Especially not no uppity-ass bitch Miss Norma.” He paused, then shook his head as if clearing away the thoughts. “She ain’t never like me. Say none of us Kennedy boys was worth cat piss.”

Mae felt her heart folding in on itself, shriveling under her father’s rant. She willed new tears not to fall, refusing to relinquish that final victory to Verna.

“And far as you talking to Verna like that, she still your mama whether you thinks it or not, and you gon’ respects her.” He stopped, breathing deeply, then continued. “That boy probably have been sniffing around you, got you acting a plumb fool.”

Ben sighed, the whiskey spinning his thoughts, then stopping. His eyebrows arched upward, his features alight as his next thought sprang forward, taking precedence, painted by the shame Verna’s words had planted in his mind.

“And you know what?” He did not wait for her to reply. “You through with that school. You too damned old to be going no way.” He gritted the words out, slamming his fist into the palm of his hand, his aggravation finally finding an outlet in his decision. “We needs you here at the house. Verna got the baby coming, and we needs the extra money you can bring in. You grown enough to do that.”

Mae’s mouth dropped open, stunned. She stared at her father, dumbfounded, as the last flicker of hope was snuffed out in her eyes. Behind him, she saw the corners of Verna’s mouth raised briefly in a triumphant smile before she lowered her face into her hands and continued sniffling loudly.

“You done had enough book learning. It be time for you to be done with that foolishness and come down off that high-ass horse you been riding today. You ain’t no better than nobody here. Now, you get yourself right. Then maybe we sees about somebody coming to court you.”

“But, Papa,” she began. “Please, I can get the work done and still go to school. Please don’t make me stop. I just wants to finish.”

“Ain’t no buts,” Ben interjected, breathing the whiskey fumes into her face and ignoring the hurt in Mae’s eyes before she turned and moved stiffly forward.

“Get on outside and pick up that wood on the porch.” His voice rose again, climbing back to the rafters as he seemed to consider all that had transpired in the room.

“AND CLOSE THAT DAMN DOOR. Letting all the heat out with it standing open.” He called to the slumped curve of her retreating back. “And don’t you never let me see you raise a hand to Verna again, or I’ll whip the skin off your ass myself.”

Mae felt her father’s anger and disappointment burning a hole in her back as she walked away and wondered how she had allowed everything to dissolve into such disaster and misery. The possibility and promise from the early afternoon shrank and shriveled her heart into nothingness.

Her shoulders fell, pulled by the gravity of her defeat, her hands dropping to her sides as she felt the tears she’d been holding back begin to fall. Stepping carefully over Sarah and Josiah, she made her way through the open door, closing it carefully behind her, making sure that it did not slam.

She gathered the discarded pieces of wood into her arms, her tears splashing down to land on the cold pile. She stood, too weary to brush them away, staring toward the woods that bordered the land their house sat on. Her sight lingered on the small crosses nestled against the tree where her mother was buried. She couldn’t read them from where she stood but mentally traced the letters carved into the smallest one, “Samuel Kennedy,” Verna and her father’s firstborn son. The boy he had always wanted. The boy she had never been and could never be.

Her memory conjured the roundness of his limbs and the sound of his laughter as she bounced him on her lap, bringing him through the mists of the past. She remembered him screaming incessantly. His little face was perpetually beet red, his arms flailing, and his back stiffening when Verna tried to hold him, only quieting when she thrust him into Mae’s arms.

She’d only been twelve herself, Verna, a mere nineteen. The baby seemed to baffle and confuse Verna, the constant demands of his care wearing against her, whittling away at her happiness. She became mean, shunting more and more of her demands onto Mae. Mae didn’t mind. She loved Samuel. Loved him until the day she came home and found Verna sprawled across the bed, sleeping peacefully, Samuel lying beside her, still and blue.

People said it was an accident, that Verna must have rolled over on him in her sleep and smothered him. Others said it just happened sometimes. Babies stopped breathing. They took a breath in and never let it back out. Mae didn’t believe it.

She had seen how Verna looked at him with anger and frustration when she would order Mae to take him, mumbling under her breath that he stank and needed to be changed. Mae had seen how Verna glared at her when she watched her cooing at Sammy as she cuddled him in her arms or he grasped her finger tightly in his chubby fist.

Only she had witnessed Verna shaking him, yelling in his face before dropping him onto the bed she shared with Mae’s father, things she never did when he was around. The empty space held in her heart for Samuel pulsated, longing for him, and Mae sighed aloud. Verna had taken him away from her. Verna had taken Mama’s place. Now, it looked like she had taken Papa and her future too.