“Well, I’m gone do it myself. Livestock’s too expensive. You work, you toil, Lord knows you do, and you got to take care of what you got even if it ain’t much, even . . .” The woman starts getting out of bed as her mouth continues on and on like some never-ending record player someone left on in a room no one could get to. Thin as a pole, with skin the color of dried corn, her eyes are ringed with deep black circles.

“Maw, now just lay down. Please. Just lay down now.” The boy she calls Obadiah, if Obadiah he even is, is a thin, lanky child with thin mouse-colored hair and a plain straight-up-and-down face; his teeth are bad. On his face is such a hopeless expression that Ruth is almost moved to go over and comfort him. Almost.

“No. No, I can’t just lay down. Sun be up soon. Got to get breakfast. Milk that old cow. See bout them hens.” She stops abruptly and turns to her son, her hands still poised at the tubes she fully intends to jerk from her arms. “Did you hear them chickens last night? Bet there was a coon after them.” She goes back to unplugging her tubes.

“Maw, now stop that. Stop that, you hear. Quit it.”

But she is too quick and has already swung her feet to the side of the bed, making Ruth think, Where do these sick folk get this energy? Is it from their craziness?

“Obadiah, you seen my hoe? Where my hoe? I bet them damn Simpson children come by here yesterday and borrowed my hoe and didn’t bring it back nor say hello, goodbye, kiss-my-foot, nor nothing. Just like them. Damn white trash. I got to hoe my beets and my row of butter beans. They bad off with the weeds.”

The old woman is pushing to get out of bed as her son, baffled, gently tries to prevent her from getting up. It looks to Ruth, in some funny way, as if they were trying to dance.

“Nurse! Maw, please. Maw. Nurse! Nurse!”

“Lord, Lord.” Asa rolls his eyes and purses his lips. “Now I got to put up with this to boot?”

The four of them stand helplessly, staring, as the woman finally frees herself from her son. Like newly freed things she has a wild look in her eyes.

“No, no,” she says, pointing toward Ruth. “That ain’t the way you iron, gal. Let me show you.” And she walks, quick as a bird, toward Ruth, who jumps at the sight. As the woman reaches for Ruth’s purse, her son grabs her and begins gently to lead her back to her bed. She does not offer a fight. “But that colored gal don’t know how to iron.”

“Do you need any help?” Jimmy offers sheepishly, Ruth notes, and after the woman has gotten back in bed.