She met me regularly at Crossroads for Coke or coffee. We had gone to the roller rink once after it was outlawed, and one of the girls had passed her a cigarette. She inhaled greedily as if it were food, the red tip lighting up our dim corner like neon. One moment of sin. Then she folded over in a fit of coughing. Everybody laughed. It was fun to see the church girl fall.

There was another night I had gone with her to the biker bar in town. It was karaoke night—eighteen and up, ladies always free—and Lisbeth said she had her eye on the prize, two hundred dollars in cash. I think she just had her eye on the stage, a small raised platform in the back by the bathrooms. The stage lights shone out sickly green from the rims of old coffee cans. The host was an old man who had been to our farm. We nodded at each other, in the way of those who know not to say more. Nobody checked IDs.

Lisbeth liked the attention. That wasn’t godly, but I knew that about her. There was no way I was going to remember the songs she picked, not that night. I could barely watch her for watching the men, keeping tabs on them, keeping them away from her. They lined up at the foot of the stage, staring up at her. Their faces blurred, glazed with drinks. There were so many plastic cups. The bass was too loud, the floor sticky. Smoke and weed smoke threaded the air. The lights made Lisbeth’s pale dress translucent; I could see the lines of her sensible bra. Sweat stood out on her forehead like pearls. Any one of the men could have reached out, grabbed her ankle. Reached up, felt her breast. By the end of the song, she was flushed and gasping.

One of the men did reach up then, through the applause, and handed her a cup. She grabbed it and drained it before I could push through the crowd to the stage.

“It was sweet,” she said. “It was sweet, just Coke.”

“It wasn’t just Coke.”

It was sweet, she kept repeating, when she fell into my arms after her next song, when she tripped trying to get off the stage. Her skirt flipped up and some of the men hooted. She was loose-limbed and friendly, running her hand down the prickled face of a stranger who stooped to help me, gazing at him like he was God.

“Don’t touch him, you don’t know him,” I said.

“Does it make a difference?” she said dreamily.

“I like that girl,” the man said.

I kicked open the door to the bar, but the cool night air did nothing. There was a drunk vomiting into the road. I thought of my mama.