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growin’ up, 32
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    but it sounds like you still managed to enjoy life. Didn’t your mama ever have any men friends livin’ in the house with y’all before she married your stepdaddy?”
    It took me a moment to respond. “Just one,” I said stiffly, my eyes on the floor.
    “Well, I hope he took up the slack that Daddy left behind.” Lillimae sniffed. “Was that man in the Church?”
    “Uh-huh.” I cleared my throat and rubbed both my eyes. “But he wasn’t the kind of man I wanted to replace Daddy.”
    “Regardless, a man was there to keep y’all company. My mother-in-law always tellin’ me that a piece of a man is better than no man at all.
    She can’t wait for me to take that half-ass son of hers back so he can stop crampin’ her style. Every time I turn over in that big bed by myself, I know what she means. Bein’ alone ought to be a sin. If that man was willin’ to stay in the house with your mama, especially you bein’
    by another man, that was a double blessin’. Wasn’t it?”
    It took me a moment to respond. “Something like that,” I said vaguely. Yawning and stretching my arms, I rose and headed out of the kitchen.
    I didn’t sleep much that night and when I did, Mr. Boatwright’s face dominated my dreams.
    It was like he was still raping me.
    CHAPTER 9
    Iwas glad Daddy got up early the next morning to go fishing. It was a ritual that he had started before I was born. I was surprised that he didn’t want to spend as much time with me as possible. But in a way, I was glad to have the space I needed to sort out my feelings. As happy as I was to be in the same house with him, I was still uncomfortable.
    Surprisingly, I felt particularly at ease alone with Lillimae. Her looking so much like me helped.
    Lillimae and I ate a huge breakfast of grits and bacon before we re-treated to the front porch glider. Still in our bathrobes, we sat fanning our faces with old magazines as we watched one noisy, beat-up old car after another crawl down the street.
    The sun had already started its assault. The people in the houses on both sides of us had come out on their porches trying to cool off.
    The same old man I had seen watering his lawn when I’d arrived was watering that same lawn again.
    I was glad that my half-sister was the type who liked to talk. She seemed to enjoy telling me about how proud she was of Daddy and how he had raised her and her two siblings alone.
    “We didn’t give Daddy half the trouble a lot of kids give their folks.
    Oh, our baby sister Sondra was a little on the wild side durin’ her teen years. She got pregnant when she was fourteen, but she couldn’t stop 34
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    dancin’ up in the clubs long enough to carry the baby to full term.
    She settled down after her miscarriage long enough to finish school and join the army. Our brother Amos, he fooled around with some of them drug dealers and gangs, but he came to his senses after somebody shot at him on the street one night. I was glad when he joined the army, too.”
    “Do you miss not having a relationship with your mama’s family?” I asked.
    A weak smile crossed Lillimae’s face. She sniffed and nodded.
    “Somebody pointed out my mama’s mama to me one day when I was eleven. She was workin’ the cotton-candy stand at a carnival. I went up to her and introduced myself.”
    “What did she say?”
    “She didn’t have to say anything for me to know where I stood with her. She hawked a wad of spit as big as a walnut in my face. Me, her first granddaughter. I heard she treats the other two daughters my mama had with her white husband like queens.”
    Just then, a noisy, dusty blue Chevy, dented in the front, a red door on the driver’s side, crawled around the corner and stopped in front of Lillimae’s house. A young white woman, glancing around nervously, kept the motor running as she rolled down her window.
    Lillimae gasped. “That’s my uncle’s wife. That’s Roxanne. The one I told you