Bosman’s red truck is parked by the curb, with his daughter huddled in the back. She’s dressed in a thin cotton shift with bare feet and a black eye the size of a bird’s egg. I take one step and then another on the road to Keziah. We draw level with the truck and the girl throws her arms over the side, fingers flexed.

“Dee-Dee,” she says. “Dee-Dee is gone.”

“You mean Darnell?” Lottie asks.

The girl nods.

“Yes,” Lottie says in a quiet voice. “Dee-Dee is gone,”

“For me.” The girl stands and reaches for the sky, her hands grabbing at the air. “Butterflies for me.”

Lottie and I exchange blank stares. The girl has lost us. She reads our clueless expressions and sighs as if we are the ones who are simpleminded and need help understanding.

“Purple. Butterflies. For me.” She dances from one end of the tray to the other with a strange grace as she chases and grabs at phantoms. Then with a final lunge, she jerks and falls down onto the tray of the dirty truck. She lies with her arms and legs sprawled, a wisp of brown hair caught in the corner of her mouth.

“I ran,” she says with a knot in her voice. “I ran away.”

Lottie understands, and then I do too:

A cloud of purple butterflies hangs suspended in the air, their shimmering wings reflecting the sunlight. Darnell grabs for one butterfly and then another, always a second too late. The perfect present just out of reach. The purple wings are so close. The lip of the ledge is closer. Then the air takes him and the ground catches him, and the world goes dark.

Lottie has her answer to the why and the how of Darnell’s death, and I wonder if the truth hurts more than the fantasy she spun with Bosman at the center.

Mother comes out of her fog and pulls a strand of hair from the corner of the girl’s mouth. Her fingers trace an eyebrow, cheekbone, smooth jawline, and dimpled chin—every touch a sorry.

The door to the general store opens, and Bosman’s voice growls at his daughter. “Get up, you useless girl. Get up before I make you.”

Mother’s hand jerks back as if stung, and the familiar pressure that built in my throat at Darnell’s funeral builds again; a burning. Men like Bosman will always win if we let them. Are we forever helpless? Weak girls and women born to suffer in silence and do nothing to fight back? It breaks my heart to think so. Then, like rain falling, Mother’s favorite proverb comes into my mind: “When the ground is hard, the women dance.” I understand what it means now. Darnell’s death, Bosman’s cruelty, and Mother’s pain are the hard ground that we stand on. The ground itself can’t be replaced, but it can be changed. It can be made new. That’s why the women dance. They dance to bring joy. They dance to soften the ground beneath their feet. They dance for change.