And now, of course, even if she didn’t have chores from morning till night, she’d never get as far as the woods, much less the Lake or the Crick, as tuckered out as she got, so quick.

So she just tried to imagine what the woods might be like, and did her best not to think about the fact that she was surrounded by Company houses full of tired, shabby people like her, in this tired old coal town, where the Company owned everything but your soul and every house on every street was the same till you got to the part of town where the few good houses were, for the bosses and suchlike, or the part where the freehold shanties were.

The only difference from house to house was what kind of chair, if any, you had on the front porch, and how many people got crammed into the two rooms. And if you were really pressed for space and could find or buy some boards, you could cram all the kids into a loft you could build across the rafters. Anna knew that compared to most here, their living arrangements were spacious, with her sharing the bedroom only with Ma and Pa. There could be six or eight kids rammed into some of these places, the loft packed edge to edge with corn-shuck mattresses, with a granny or granpappy or two bedding down in the living area thrown in for good measure.

Her hands were busy shucking peas, while she tried to keep her mind on anything other than the urgent voices in the house behind her. Because they were talking about her. She dreaded the times when the talk came down to being about her. Because no matter how it started, it always, always came down to the fact of her poor health, her small size, her weakness, her coughing, and how Something Needed To Be Done.

Ain’t my fault I’m sickly. Not like I did this t’ m’self.

She actually could remember a time when she’d been healthy, able to take on any chore Ma set her, and always obedient like the Bible said to be. Plain cooking, cleaning, sewing, working in that sad excuse for a garden behind the house where the plants were always covered in soot—though at least the soot kept the bugs off. And the garden did produce enough to make sure that in summer they were never hungry.

It was when she turned womanly that she started sickening. Tired all the time, short of breath, coughing, little appetite and always nauseous. Just this spring, after the potions Aunt Jinny sent stopped doin’ much good, Ma insisted she be looked at, and they found the twenty-five cents to take her to the Company doctor. But that didn’t help. The Company doctor couldn’t find nothing wrong with her, ruling out consumption immediately. Just as well. The likes of them couldn’t afford sanitariums in Colorado or hot springs in Arkansas. Ma had thinned up her lips and looked angry as they left the doctor’s office; she’d plainly expected more for their two bits, which could have bought a lot of beans. Pa said, “She’ll grow out of it,” and that was an end to it as far as Pa was concerned.