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“Rock of Ages.” The sun shone, the birds sang. It was Myra Sue’s
turn to do laundry, and since we only used the clothes dryer in the
winter or when it rained, she would have to hang the wet wash on
the clothesline in the backyard. It was a job she dearly hated. All
Then I remembered.
the St. Jameses. As far as I was concerned, I’d done nothing wrong.
But what Mama says is Law, so I’d just have to do it, even if I
suddenly get sick. Not cancer or the black plague or even the flu,
looked puny. It was hard to do, let me tell you. You know as well
starving lumberjack and the aroma of bacon and eggs is filling the
they hit the hot grease. On the counter were a bunch of canning
jars filled with fresh cucumbers, and on the back stove burners
were two big pots of vinegar, water, and salt simmering for pickles.
The vinegar and bacon smells mixed together real nice. Mama
makes the best dill pickles you’ll ever have the pleasure to munch.
low-fat cooks whose food tastes like packing peanuts or the boxes
they come in. For instance, she uses bacon fat for flavoring. At
least once a week she fixes fried chicken and mashed potatoes and
baked squash, fried catfish, and fried corn fritters, and every bit of
soup made of brown beans and ham with cornbread and fried
potatoes on the side. We also eat meatloaf or pot roast with brown
gravy and roasted potatoes. On Mama’s hot, fluffy biscuits, we
spread real butter, not margarine. We drink fresh, whole milk, and
every single night, all year round, we have dessert. Everyone says
Grandma, who is merely plump and prefers it that way. She says,
“A layer fat under an old lady’s skin keeps her looking twenty
years younger.”
a rhyme she’d made up a long time ago when I was little. I used to
breakfast? Mama and Daddy had eaten earlier, right before Daddy
went out to do the milking, and it wasn’t like the two eggs on my
plate could see me. And I sure didn’t care two hoots how lovely or
revolting I looked to my dumb sister. Which was just as well
with a basket of dirty laundry. She was all scrubbed and brushed
with her blonde hair all big and curly. She probably thought she
Lucky Mama wouldn’t let her wear makeup or clothes like any of
passed.
her so she’d fall face-first into some dirty underwear, but if she fell
important, I’d be blamed for it. Plus, I’d have to do all her chores.
instead of like you’re three years old?” she hollered after me. Silly,
poison ivy, but the back door opened and Grandma walked in. She
lives in a little house on the other side of the hayfield. Her name is
Myra Grace Reilly. My sister and I are named after her. She goes
else about when she was a little girl, other than that her great-aunt
Maxie raised her. Great-aunt Maxie died the year before Myra Sue
Mama’s mother, but she acted odd and quiet and told me never to
friends’ grandmothers. They all wear their hair short, and they
usually dye it brown or red or blond, and they have jobs and go to
home, and has wavy gray hair she wears in a bun. Her shoes are
way ugly, but Grandma declares she’s long past trying to show off
trim ankles and pretty legs. She says anyone who wears high heels
is out of her cotton-pickin’ mind. That’s how she ruined her feet in
the first place, when she worked at the dime store during the war.
She has this big blue vein on her right leg.
When Myra Sue starts whining for new shoes with heels,
Grandma sticks out her leg with the vein, hikes her skirt up to her
knee, and says, “Lookie there, sis. Is that what you’re after? ’Cause
that’s what you’ll get if you wear them kind of fool shoes.”
“City girls wear high heels to the dances all the time,” my
sister told her one time, all uppity, as if she knows everything
about dances in the city—which she does not, let me assure you.
few weeks ago when we were all sitting in the living room playing
the latest craze, a game called Pictionary, where you try to guess
Disgraceful.”
Myra Sue had rolled her eyes like she does when she thinks
Good grief.”
came in, I forgot to try to look sick. I jumped up from my chair and
gave her a hug. She hugged me back and asked about my poison
ivy.
“Itchy.”
coming out of the laundry room. “Got your first load ready to hang
out already?”
Myra Sue gave her a pained smile. “Yes, and there’s about
like politics. It’s always there, always dirty, and there ain’t no end
in sight.”
Myra Sue grunted and went outside with her basket of wet
laundry. She probably thought politics were bugs that bite you on
I buttered a biscuit.
“Grandma?” I said.
“How do you drink your coffee that way, right out of the
your guzzle?”
Even on a day as hot as that one, steam rose from her mug.
Grandma put down her mug and tapped the rim for a
right out loud, “I do believe old man Rance has got designs on me.”
Mama had just poured herself a cup of coffee, and now she
turned around so fast it sloshed over her fingers and onto the floor.
Texas? The man who bought the Fielding place this spring? The
one who told us his wife died just last Christmas?”
“Yep.”
“Right now.”
had to leave the room just when things were getting good. Believe
Interesting Things. I left the kitchen, but I hung around out of sight
shelves. I kept real quiet, but I want to tell you something: I had
met that Mr. Rance, and there was something about that man I
didn’t care for. Not that I knew him personally at that point, but I’d
seen him at the store a time or two, and he came to church a couple
people when they weren’t looking at him, kinda like he was sizing
they’d look at him, he’d smile real big and get all friendly. I
wondered if anybody else had noticed these things.
Mama ask.
like a stalker?
Grandma said this real casual. Too casual, if you ask me.
farmer’s market.”
answered, “Well, that was nice. Peaches are kinda expensive this
horse, too.”
“Well, Mama Grace, that doesn’t mean . . . Well, that is,
mug back on the table. She sucked in a big loud breath and heaved
it out.
and nearly dropped the little ceramic elf I was holding. I love my
tiny hairs on my arms stand up when I think about her and some
man kissing.
Then Mama said in a very odd voice that sounded as if she was