She tried not to breathe too deeply, because that always set off her coughing bad, but there weren’t nothing good here in town to smell anyway. Nobody that had a garden wasted space and compost on flowers. And some people, naming no names, didn’t keep their privies as clean as Ma did.

She dreamed most nights of running out of town, down to the Lake, all the way to Soddy Crick, or just out to them trees, where things was green and there must be the wonderful scents of green grass and flowers, and she could walk in the grass or paddle in the Lake’s edge. She’d never in her life done that, even though them woods was only a few streets away. When she was little and couldn’t help around the house and garden, Ma had tied her to the table to keep her from toddling off or touching the hot stove. Maybe Ma had done that because she’d tried to run off to the woods even back then, when she couldn’t get down the porch steps without crawlin’ down ’em; she obviously couldn’t remember. But as soon as she was old enough to hold a rag, Ma had put her to work, like every other kid in Soddy was, as soon as they was old enough. It was only once there were more kids in your family than there were chores that anyone got to play, and Anna was the only child in her family.

Not that there were store-bought toys to play with, but you could make toys easy enough, like corn dollies and corn horses out of shucks, and if you had a knife you could carve out whistles and all manner of clever things, and if you were careful they could last for months or even a year. And there were games you could play without much but a stick or a piece of rope, or a pocketful of conkers. Boys could always fish, and that wasn’t considered playing, that was putting food on the table, even when it was sham-fishing with nothing on the end of your line, not even a hook. As a young’un, she’d often looked up wistfully from scrubbing the porch or weeding the garden to see other kids playing tag or skipping rope, or trudging toward the Lake or the Crick with poles over their shoulders, wishing she could be one of them. Especially if she’d been a boy. If she’d been a boy, there wouldn’t be no house-chores to speak of, maybe weeding or hauling waste-coal, whitewashing the fence, but no cleaning and cooking. She’d have been one of them boys with a pole and a pail of worms, off for a day of freedom.

But Anna was the only one in her family to take on chores, and she was proper obedient. She’d always tried to do what she was told. So even as a little bitty mite, she’d done chores from the moment she woke up until after supper, when Ma would teach her letters and numbers until bed. There was a school, but Ma said she couldn’t be spared, and nobody in Soddy that mattered cared if someone’s Ma and Pa kept them out of school, ’cause so many households needed their kids to work. So even before she’d gotten so puny, she’d never got to run off to the woods and the water like some of the others did whenever they got a spare minute. Because Anna never had no spare minutes, Ma saw to that. Not even on Sunday. Sunday was for Service in the morning, then Sunday school, then Sunday dinner and wash-up, then Bible reading, then Service before supper, then supper, then prayer after supper until bed. Well, for her and Ma. Pa used to vanish after the morning service; now he just went to lay down and Ma couldn’t budge him except to eat—unless he felt good enough to go throw a line into Soddy Crick himself. Ma said that was sinful; Pa said that Jesus produced loaves and fishes on a Sunday, so there was no reason why he couldn’t produce some fish.