“But the butcher said he already threw it away. Would make good fishing, you should tell Joseph to stick one on his hook and toss it in your canal.”

“We ask de butcher to save dem for us nex’ time, I put it, you know, in my crab trap. I get stone crab wit’ it, big, beautiful like dis … ” I looked up quickly to catch my mother in the midst of a lie; her demonstration, honest to the point of vapidity, disappointed me: big was not bigger than her index and thumbs joining together to form a crab’s spadelike back, which left three fingers on each hand to wiggle for the legs.

Ursula plopped the hooves into the steamy water.

“In honor of Harry,” she dryly claimed.

Ursula used any pretext to swerve the conversation back to Harry. I thought she came over to forget Harry.

“He still up to such no-sense?”

“Oh, he denies it, but …” Ursula wriggled her nose emphatically, “I see it. I smell it. His collar’s a classic … His britches …” Ursula stopped as she looked at me.

I pretended to play with a stray lima bean as if it were a car, producing a brr-brr noise I was too old for.

“From what I can tell, somebody out there’s wearing ‘White Linen’, which I take as a personal insult because I’m sure she knows I’m the one doing the dirty laundry. Pig-dirty laundry!”

Ursula grabbed the lima bean I had momentarily parked on the kitchen tile and flung it down the garbage disposal.

“What’s linen?” I asked when the grinding had stopped.

“Go set de table, you!” snapped my mother, “Don’ always stick you big nose inside ot’her people’s oats!”

I was about to remind her that one can say “business” or “bee’s wax” but not “oats”, but the look on her face told me it was not the best time. If any human soul thinks they are going to persuade me to eat a pig hoof, they are making a big mistake, I muttered to myself.

Each time I returned to the kitchen, I caught fleeting bits of conversation. Harry was working all the time. He worked on weekends. He worked late at night. He went on business trips to Tallahassee. I guess being an estate agent was demanding, especially in a growing area like Cypress County. I felt sorry for Mr. Tatta. Just for that, Ursula was considering leaving him.

“Take wha’ you can get, you,” my mother offered Ursula her own slogan in life, both pecuniary and spiritual.

“Yuck!” exclaimed Cecilia when Ursula clarified for what exactly she was about to say grace.

My mother gave me the evil eye. I suppose she thought Cecilia had learned the word from me. I stabbed one lima bean after another. Black-eyed beans were Cyclops, but lima beans were eyeless and reminded me of something a caterpillar would gnaw its way out of. Ursula, trying to carry on the kitchen conversation, spelled every other word, but my mother was having trouble with the English spelling. Ursula didn’t speak Lithuanian. My mother didn’t speak Pig Latin.