But the first thing her eyes lit on when she let the pages fall open was a page of “begats,” which was no help at all.

Supper, which was cornbread, peas and carrots from the garden biled up together, and cabbage from the garden fried with a little fatback grease to give it more flavor, and a mess of poke salad, was extremely uncomfortable. Finally, Pa cleared his throat, and she alerted to him like a coon dog catching a scent. “Your Aunt Jinny done said y’all’s to come to her,” he said shortly. “Yore Ma thinks she can set y’all up. Y’all can come home when you’re stronger.”

And that was that. He went back to his food. Anna looked to Ma. Ma looked faintly triumphant. “We’ll pack up yore things ternight and y’all’ll leave in the mornin’,” she said. “The feller what brought the potions today will take y’all part-way, and another feller will get y’all the rest of the way. Jinny got it all arranged.”

Anna just sat there, stunned. She hadn’t even got her mind wrapped around the idea that she was being sent away—and now Ma said it would be tomorrow?

“Finish yore supper,” Ma said, sharply, as she continued to sit there with her fork in her numb hand. Mechanically, she obeyed, mashing peas and soft carrots with her fork and somehow getting them into her mouth. She chewed and swallowed, but it tasted like ashes.

She didn’t remember getting up to clear the plates like she always did, but somehow found herself drying while Ma washed, and Pa sat next to the cold fireplace in the one good chair. Ma was telling her how this was a grand thing, how Jinny would make her well again, and repeating herself a lot, and Anna May just let it all wash over her like rain she couldn’t get out of. Eventually Ma gave up, and sent her off to bed.

Like the other houses, this was a two-room “shotgun” house: bedroom in the back, kitchen and living area in the front. Anna plodded numbly into the bedroom, pulled off her dress and folded it neatly, leaving it on a stool. Then she washed up at the basin, pulled the narrow little trundle out from under Pa and Ma’s cast-iron bed, and crawled into it in her chemise and knickers. She was old enough for a corset . . . but like so many things, they couldn’t afford one. Ma still used the corset she’d got married in.

Ma was still talking, but now that Anna wasn’t there, she was saying different things. “Jinny was right. Anna bein’ so puny wouldn’t hev happened if we’d’a lived anywheres else.”

Pa snorted. “So I shoulda been a farmer like yore Pa? I ain’t got any idea of what end of a plow to hold. I’m a miner like my Pa was, and his Pa was in Wales, an’ that’s what I know. Where else is a miner supposed to work but a mine? Mining’s a good, honest living, and it’d been no better at the Burra Burra mine. No better pay, an’ ye cain’t even grow a blade’a grass there, let alone a garden.”