“It woulda been closer to Jinny. Close ’nuff we coulda lived with her. We wouldn’t owe nothin’ to the Company,” Ma countered. “We coulda saved the rent money we’s spendin’ now. ’Tween me an’ Jinny, we’d hev a garden wuth hevin’.”

“Fancy me and Jinny livin’ under the same roof! And her always lookin’ crosswise at me, like I cain’t provide for my own damn family!” Now Anna knew that her father was angry, because he never swore unless he was really angry. “Y’all didn’t have no complaints when I brung you here!”

“That was afore—”

“And this is now. I’m givin’ in ’bout Anna, even though I think it’s a load of heathen trash, like Jinny’s witchy potions, because it’s plain the girl ain’t no help to y’all no more, but I’ll be damned if I sit here with you naggin’ at me and let y’all tell me what a man should do to provi—” And that was when Pa broke into a fit of coughing, and Ma rushed to get him a drink of one of those potions and said soothing words, and apologized, and begged him to forgive her.

Anna would have loved to have heard Pa say “Anna’s staying,” rather than “It’s plain the girl ain’t no help no more.” But . . . that hadn’t happened. And wouldn’t happen. Pa had made up his mind, and when he did that, there was no changing it. And it appeared that her fate had been sealed. Her chest felt so tight now she could scarcely breathe, and her eyes burned.

She knelt and said her evening prayers, quick as quick, then pulled the quilt over her head as she had as a child to block out the rest of the world and pretend she was somewhere else, like King Solomon’s Palace, or with the Pharaoh’s daughter, because it would have been lovely to take care of little Baby Moses. Not that she had many ideas what those places looked like, but that was part of the fun of trying to imagine it. There had been a picture in her Bible of Pharaoh’s daughter finding Moses in the bulrushes, in which the Pharaoh’s daughter was wearing what looked like nothing more than a bit of cloth wrapped around her and tied at the waist, with a strange round collar-like necklace and a kind of scarf over her head, draped in stiff folds, but that didn’t give her any ideas about how the Pharaoh lived. As for King Solomon, there had been two pictures. All the one picture showed was a couple of big pillars and a throne with Solomon on it, draped in what looked like a lot of shawls, on top of what looked like a sort of loose bag-garment. And the other showed Solomon and a different Pharaoh’s daughter in the same get-ups, promenading in front of a bunch of girls playin’ harps and tambourines and dancin’, and all of them done up in the same sort of outfits.