Sonia unstraps herself from the car seat and vaults out in the direction of two goats.

“Whoa, little girl. Wait a minute,” I say. In the forty-five-minute drive out here, I explained that the girls she’s about to spend her day with might not talk very much. “Just like school,” I said. “Remember that.” But then, of course, the Ray girls would be at school on a Friday.

A screen door, tilted on its hinges, swings open, and Sharon steps out onto a porch that isn’t quite parallel to the ground. She’s in frayed overalls and a checked cotton shirt; a blue bandana tied on her head with the knot on top keeps her hair in check but doesn’t cover it. Ropes of muscle line her forearms, where the shirt cuffs are rolled back, and in one hand she’s holding a wrench. In the other, a plastic drywall bucket.

Sharon Ray could be a modern Rosie the Riveter, if Rosie had been forty-something, black, and wearing a silver-toned word counter on her wrist.

She smiles from the porch, sets the bucket and wrench down, and walks to where Sonia and I are standing. Then she tilts her head slightly to the right, toward an outbuilding that seems to be in better repair than the family’s house. We walk in silence to the barn, Sonia wide-eyed at goats and chickens and three alpacas roaming freely around the property.

“What’s that?” Sonia says, pointing toward one of the furry beasts.

“Shh,” I say.

Sharon smiles again but says nothing until we’ve reached the barn. She slides a wooden beam as thick as a man’s thigh aside and pushes the door open. Smells of sweet hay and not-so-sweet manure hit me like a slap.

“Nothin’ like a little horseshit to wake you up, is there?” Sharon says. “Sorry. I mean poo. I forget myself sometimes.”

“It’s okay.” I’ve never been one to mince words around my kids.

“So, you’re Sonia?” She bends down and takes my daughter’s left hand, running a thumb where Sonia’s wrist counter should be. “I’m Ms. Sharon, and I think we’re gonna be good friends, you and me. You like horses?”

Sonia nods.

“Use your words, girl. You got ’em, right?”

“I told her—,” I start.

“You’re probably wondering why I’m talking so much.” Sharon unsnaps the silver band on her left wrist and slides it off. “Fake. Del made it for me last year, once he figured out how to get the real one off. Made three more for our girls.” She turns back to Sonia, as if nothing she just said could possibly be more interesting than livestock. “So, that one in the back, he’s Cato. Next to him is Mencken. And that bullheaded roan mare over on the side is Aristotle. How ’bout you go say hello to them while I talk to your mama?”