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came in for lunch I overheard her telling him all the things she’d had me do, like taking everything out of the linen closet and wiping the shelves down. When he told her he doubted if anybody coming to the wedding would run a white glove in there, she said, “I know, but it seems like such a shame to waste good seasonal help.” Then she told him she wanted to have me keep working in the house, cleaning, keeping things in order, and then she told him she also wanted me to serve and pick up at Tiny Fran’s reception. He said, “I thought you already asked one of the girls from the Butler place,” and she said, “I knowI did, but I like the idea of having this girl better.” All old Frances wanted to do was show off white help, a white girl walking around her living room carrying a tray. And all I could think was how that’d be a new low in the life of Ruby Pitt Woodrow. Sudie Bee would never have put on a black dress and a little white apron and offered little sandwiches to people, but then again, nobody ever asked her to. She’d have brought her nephew Whistle Dick to serve and keep empty cups and plates picked up, not much different from what I did at Tiny Fran’s wedding. I remembered mama and daddy’s anniversary party, how Sudie Bee peeked out of the kitchen door and caught Whistle Dick tasting something off the buffet. He came back in the kitchen and Sudie Bee told him, “Your mama say you ain’t got good sense, so I let you work for me doing something don’t take sense, and Mr. Pitt he pay you good money, and then you be sticking your old fingers in somebody’s food. You aint got to be no nigger just ’cause you black. And ain’t nobody in there ’gwine ask you to wipe they nose. You just picking up plates! You mess up and then what Sister ’gwine do fo’ money?” And all the time I was working at the reception, especially after I heard another one of Frances’s remarks, it was all I could do to keep my fingers off the wedding cake, and the more I thought of Whistle Dick, the more I wanted to. Then I’d have been out, just like he was when Sudie Bee caught him sneaking the pineapple slices off a ham.

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    R uby got here the week before Burr got married, married to damn old Tiny Fran and her already starting to poke out some with Roland, lounging around all day, swinging in the porch swing and pulling out the front of her dress and blowing down it, yelling up to her mama’s bedroom window about how hot she was. Her mama used to tell her to go somewhere and cool off. She’d tell her, “I can’t change the temperature. Big people get hotter faster, you know that.” And that’d piss Tiny Fran off, plump plus being pregnant. She’d hop up out of that swing and go inside, slamming doors, cussing like a sailor, saying how she was going to show her mama the back of her hand and so forth. She would too! And I’d think, Yeah, and either one of you let Lonnie know what all goes on and he’ll take and use one of you to beat the other one with. If I’d beenher daddy I’d have had to slap that sorriness back away from my supper table and said, “Get on away from here, you road whore!” I don’t have the patience of some people. He didn’t know ninety percent of what went on around his house, but I did. I mainly worked up around the yard, in the garden and all, and I got my eyes full more times than a few. He knew she was bad, but he didn’t have any idea, not like I did, of how hard she rode her mama. I used to tell Ruby, I’d say, “No wonder Frances Hoover’s a bitch.” A man stays in the field all day, just comes in the house to eat and sleep, he’s going to miss right much of what goes on. Then he’ll look at his girl one day and she’s swoll up with God knows whose baby and his wife’s about to die for some attention, walking around trumped up all the time like she’s the goddamn Queen of Sheba, and he’ll just have to shake his head and walk right back out of the house and get