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keeps touching it. I know one thing, she better not let my daddy’s sister from Maryland catch her combing Sara Kate’s hair. Up there, Ruby Helen claims they made the people in some town change a picture of a little black girl combing a white woman’s hair while they watched a polo game.
    I can’t name all that food on the tables. Gaten pushes Miss Eula Mae’s wheelchair out of the sun into a shady spot. I go over and fan away the old nasty blow-fly buzzing around her food. When she finishes I see a dollar bill she has for me, in fingers bent over like a curved fork. Gaten is watching so I don’t take it. But when he looks away that dollar is in my hands like a flash.
    There was one thing I could tell right off. There was hardly a woman there who could stand Sara Kate. From a corner at the top of the stairs I can see in the dining room, but they can’t see me. A cousin draws on a cigarette and slowly releases the smoke through her nose.
    Ruby Helen laughs long, and hard. “I haven’t seen anybody do that since old man Dan Rivers died.”
    â€œGirl, you remember some old-timey stuff.”
    â€œRemember how he used to roll his cigarettes and wet ’em with so much spit they split open?”
    Their voices were drowned out by their loud laughter. I couldn’t imagine Sara Kate laughing like that. All I’d heard her do that day was giggle.
    Everleen comes in with a pot of soup. “I’m starting to bring in stuff,” she said. “Somebody go scrape out that ice cream in the churn and put it in the freezer. Poor old Gaten will want some later. He loves homemade cream. Bless his heart, he was too shamed to eat from the dasher like he always used to. His fancy lady friend sure cramps his style.”
    â€œSeems like your brother-in-law is going to bring home a lady,” someone says.
    â€œGaten won’t marry again.”
    â€œYou don’t have to marry a lady to bring her home.”
    Everleen pulls her mouth into a tight ugly spout. “Gaten Hill does.”
    The cousin is dipping a homemade white potato roll into the soup. Smacking and licking her thick red lips. Everleen’s jaw tightens. “Get a bowl, girl. Stop eating nasty in my soup.”
    They are talking about Sara Kate again.
    â€œCan’t you just die from all that beige and taupe she’s wearing?”
    â€œGirl, them some Gloria Vanderbilt’s pants.”
    â€œAw shucks now, go on, girl.”
    â€œWonder what’s wrong with her?”
    â€œI don’t know, but there is something that’s caused her to be rejected by her own men.”
    â€œI say she’s an epileptic,” Ruby Helen puts in. The cousin puts a small slice of egg custard pie in her mouth, all at once. “How in the Lord’s world did you come up with that affliction, Ruby Helen?”
    â€œI can’t stand it when someone talks with a mouth full of food.”
    The cousin swallowed hard. “So tell me, how do you know?”
    â€œIt’s the way her eyes get that blank stare. You can be talking to her, but she’s not there.”
    â€œShe could be in a deep study about something.”
    â€œWell, something’s wrong with her. Why else would she take up with a black dude?”
    In spite of how hard they try to put down my daddy’s new woman friend, trying to make her have some kind of sickness is bad. Next they will say she is retarded.
    I really think it’s her background that has upset them, and made them so jealous and hopping mad. You can look at the woman and see she is certainly not poor trash. UncleJim Ed told me she is an only child and would never starve if she didn’t hit a lick at work for the rest of her life. Not that it makes him like her any better. He hasn’t made up his mind that she is the right woman for his baby brother.
    He can’t find fault with the way she seems to care about Gaten. Nobody can. Not over the way