“No, we’re going to get that blouse off you.” He had his hands almost up my blouse. His hand had pulled my blouse out of my skirt and was now half on my skin and half on the elastic top of my girdle. I was fighting him. Fighting him the way I fought my brother Dudley. Deadly, ferocious, biting his hand, clawing his face, kicking, cursing. I was a deadly fighter, a consciousless biter from way back. I bit his knuckle down to the bone and he screamed and let go of me and I opened the car door and kicked off my shoes and pulled up my skirt and began to run. I ran down the dirt road in the direction of the highway. I heard the motor start behind me so I crossed a ditch and climbed a wooden fence and began to run across the pasture. I could see the lights of Big Momma’s in the distance. It was a beacon on a hill and I ran toward it. I had torn my skirt up the side by then. I pulled what was left up around my waist and ran through the pasture in my nylon hose. I ran without looking behind me. I ran until I was sure I was alone. Dark and alone with only the lights of Big Momma’s in the distance. I stopped and caught my breath. My heart was pounding in my chest, my adrenaline at its finest, most divine. The darkness was around me. And something else. Dark fragrant shapes. Moving nearer. Moving their heads up and down. Cows. I was in a cow pasture. I was surrounded by cows and more were drawing near me. Cows or bulls. Oh, God, it was the pits of hell, the end of time, the living dream. This time I would not wake up, this time I would die. “Get away from me,” I screamed. “Don’t come any nearer.” The shapes moved back from me. Slowly, deliberately, the tide of shapes seemed to move away, to make a path for me. They were not bulls. I would not die. I walked through the shapes, waving my hands to keep them away. I could smell them and hear their breath. I could feel their breath around me, fragrant and fine and rich with grass and earth and hay. Slowly my anxiety shifted from being gored to stepping in cow manure and I began to worry about my feet, which were cut and scratched from running on the stubble. Tetanus. I would get tetanus.

A horn was honking on the highway. Stanley was calling me. “Rhoda, come back. Please come back. Tell me where you are. Call out where you are.”

“I’m over here, for God’s sake. I’m in a bunch of cows. I’m going to kill you for this, Stanley. My brother will kill you dead.”