“So I see,” Helene said, tearing the meat apart as fast as she could. Her aged, rigid fingers were not fast enough for the children who had scattered in line; knowing there might not be enough by the time she got to the back, a mêlée had already erupted from too many attempting to cross ahead.

“Who the fella?” Helene asked without taking her eyes off the meat. She knew the answer. She sucked dramatically on the meaty strings caught between her teeth, so as to make its flavor outlast its swallowing so she could save the actual meat for the beggars in front of her.

“It’s Hind,” Yoshi answered.

Yoshi knew to leave it at that. There would be no announcement, no wedding, no signal or symbol to everyone else, no “taking up,” no jumping a broom. Hind’s dangerous good looks were fact but his loyalty was legend; with not enough capable men to go around, the senior Parnell had pegged the wide-backed and broad-shouldered Hind when he was just sixteen to be the bullet aiming for the womb of each and every girl over thirteen. No one knew how many he had fathered since, in the ten years that the Parnells had monthly chosen a new girl to spend their evenings away from her family and in Hind’s far-off cabin. For the fresh young virgins, the love glow smacked on their faces by thirty days of Hind refused to go away until they noticed another girl packing a satchel and marching in his cabin’s direction. Since Yoshi had finished her thirty glorious days, the first couple spent resisting but the last couple spent begging him to let her stay, she had watched a couple girls come back lit up, renewed. Most likely carrying as well. But her glow still hadn’t faded, and it had been a couple of months.

“Best get over it quick,” Helene warned as the glow shone, stern eyebrows raised to reinforce the command. The children frenzied and elbowed each other at the sight of only a couple slices left. Helene ignored them. She could only do so much with a carcass picked damn near clean by greedy and wasteful White folks, she knew. She continued:

“Ain’t gone be no family. You gots one so best get ready to have some mo’. Hind can’t wife you and the child ain’t gone never know the daddy name.”

Shamefaced, Yoshi had walked back to the house. And the last time Miss Helene was to see her, she would be on the crest of the Atlantic, swathed in dingy, torn sheets tarnished with our blood.