“In that room there was a religious picture of Jesus’s mother on the wall, and a bed and a sink. One of the men—relieved himself into the sink while the other held my arms. There was a suitcase on the floor. I asked them if they believed in Jesus and they said sure, sure, they believed, and now I was to lie down on the floor, and I saw there was someone else in the bed, an old man and he was snoring and all the time I was there on the floor, the old man didn’t wake up once. I prayed to them, but I forgot everything nearly about praying, but they said—listen to what they said—they said they were sorry, but what was going to be done would be done. Then the fat man lay down on me first. The other man was little and smelled mildewed. I cried out—the fat man looked so terrible with his fat hanging over me—but he just took his trousers down and his belly was hanging there. I was afraid to make any noise, I thought if I made noise, the one on the bed would get up and he would have his turn with me too.”

The girl drew her legs up again beneath the blanket. Her inflamed eyes were wet but no tears fell.

“The little fellow kept saying he was sorry but the big one, his name was Mario, I heard him called that, just pulled up his pants and said hurry up to the other. Then they took me to the street and said don’t ever come back here with the police because we’ll be long gone and from now on you stay away from coons because that’s what you get from hanging around with coons. The little man whispered he was sorry again. I walked home. Nobody I saw asked me anything, even though I was crying and limping. When I got here, Cletus was sitting on the floor in the hall all bloody and half conscious and he started to cry when he saw me, even before I told him. Then I told him, and he said he had to go to the hospital and I must go with him. But I wouldn’t go, and Cletus tried to make me and then I got frightened of Cletus, then someone upstairs came out in the hall and we both came in here and were quiet for a while. Then Cletus went to the hospital.”

Annie got up from the bed. The girl let her go this time, and she went to the refrigerator where she found a half-bottle of milk. There wasn’t anything else on the shelf except a shrunken lemon and a crumpled gardenia lying on a white plate, its petals nearly black.