And she had known them all, most at least. At seventy-six, Helene was too old for field work but too proud to sit down all day. She had already relegated herself to watching more children than she could reasonably keep an eye on, long before the senior Parnell came to her and suggested she finally “get some rest.” This was shortly after he discovered he himself was moving toward eternal rest. Helene found comfort in the simplicity of her new role. Unable to remember her own childhood before almost seventy years of backbreaking work had begun, she refashioned it through the children she oversaw. The toddlers passed time giggling softly among themselves, laughing, staring at the moons on their fingernails, winding and rewinding the bandages on their feet that passed for shoes, making toys from buttons, sun-dried mud, and twigs. The older ones roughhoused, waited, flirted, courted, and playfully antagonized those even younger. They stood tall against the horizon outlining the tobacco or sweet potato fields that were their future and their fate, their spines and spirits not yet bent; occasionally, one of them would ask her to referee their stickball game or a round of marbles fashioned from fire-roasted clay. She always happily obliged, setting down the baby she held in a nest of leaves, leaning in close to the game, itching for one of them to beg her for a tip or an opinion.

Long before others knew, Helene had suspected Yoshi might be “in the family way.” For one thing the young girl had been craving dirt, tearing in secret at the Johnson grass to uncover the mushy blackness underneath. One day Helene caught her and inquired if she had been receiving her rations. Then Helene took mental note that there was still fullness in the girl’s breasts, fleshiness in the face, no hard edges suggesting marrow was just one layer away, though oddly her breasts stayed flat as a bird’s folded wings. Helene drew her own conclusions and waited for the girl’s midsection to tell. Yoshi’s sudden departure from the field and assignment to estate housework was all the evidence anyone needed; after losing too many would-be workers to miscarriages in the fields, Mr. Parnell had come to his senses and realized that maybe carrying women were entitled to a little bit lighter work. One of Miss Helene’s own had come unattached before he made that decision. Yoshi confessed to Miss Helene one day after a now-rare trip far and deep into the field from the big house where she cooked, washed, served, ran errands, and played with sun-haired babies. Over a still-steaming pan of leftover turkey meat clinging to a massive bone, she suddenly said:“Miss Helene, I gots me one inside.”