But Retha was a good, hardworking woman. She could cook better than Miss Edna when she set her mind to it. Only time Papa ever said a kind word to her was after he ate one of her Sunday meals—that breaded fried chicken what she dipped in a special batter she called it, with all kinds of spices, the crust was better than the flesh; and skillet bread, just a fluffy and light, good with some fresh-caught, hot-fried catfish. She could make plain food, hog mawls and turnip greens and field peas, taste like something you ain’t never had in this world. Peach cobblers, sweet-potato pie. Her buttermilk biscuits on a cold winter morning, I can smell them now, right light, with cane syrup and crisp bacon, oh, she could fry it just right so it wont burnt, but was still crunchy. Miss Edna couldn’t never cook no bacon that way.

But it scared me how that woman worked. I guess that’s why I began to worry so about her. Why did she work herself so? In the house she’d clean, sweeping floors, scrubbing the floors, dusting, cleaning the windows, making the kitchen shine, and when we finally got a bathroom, making that shine, too. Cooking, cooking. For two head, for three head. Work. And in the fields, tying tobacco, helping to set it out, grading the cured tobacco. Corn. Helping to break it and put it up. Cucumbers. The hogs, helping to slop them, keep them up, kill them, and then smoke them. Raising chickens, killing chickens, cleaning and cutting up chickens. Keeping a garden, collards, string beans, tomatoes, beets, mustard greens, sweet corn, squash, butter beans. Then the canning and the pickling, and when we got a freezer it was freezing. Work. Seems that was all she knew. I know I expected her to work, to be beside me . . . a man with a farm needs a helpmeet. He don’t need, can’t use, a woman that won’t work. So I’m grateful. But . . . I just can’t put my finger on it. Maybe it was her face. Was it bitter? No, she won’t no bitter woman. There won’t no scorn nowhere about her. Was she sad? Could a been. But the thing is she never said a word. Oh, we’d talk about folk, about the work, but did she ever say how she felt? Did she ever once break down and say she loved me? That she hated me? Did I?