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south to town. The gas station’s in town. Jeff Barnes was heading north.”
    Mae Lee didn’t turn to face her mama; she just closed her eyes and gave herself a good personal silent cussing out. To think, she told herself, that I actually prayed, prayed day and night, for him to return alive from the war.
    She stood there, her eyes fixed on her own image in the mirror, a grown woman with tears making paths down through a layer of Sweet Georgia Brown face powder, crying when no one was dead. A grown woman crying over a man who no longer wanted her. She made no effort to straighten her navy straw hat, terribly crooked on her head because of her baby’s attempts to reach the red cherries.
    She wanted to run beyond the small branch of water just below her house to the banks of the big river and throw herself into the flowing waters. She wanted to scream out to her mama to leave. But she stood and listened, ashamed to turn and face her mama, forgetting that the mirror fully revealed her intense pain and shame.
    Her mama laid her grandbaby on the bed and stood beside Mae Lee. She looked at her daughter’s tear-streaked face in the mirror. She wanted to take her child in her arms and comfort her, but Mae Lee’s eyes told her no. It was the time for both of them to be strong.
    Her mama started pulling her mouth in at the corners again.“I tried to warn you about that Barnes boy,” she fussed. She hadn’t, but Mae Lee was not about to say so. You don’t tell your mama to her face what she did or didn’t say, not even when you are old enough to be a mama yourself. Not even when you know for a fact she didn’t say it.
    â€œYou were not the only one. There was your friend, Doris Ann. Her mama tried to tell her about them Barnes boys, too. But no, you both wouldn’t listen. Good-looking boys with eyes that light color, a high-brown complexion and good hair on their head don’t spell nothing but trouble. Everybody knows it. Everybody but young girls who won’t listen to their mamas and go fool crazy over them. You know what happened to Doris Ann—well, it’s happened to you.”
    Mae Lee wanted to remind her mama that she didn’t exactly have dark eyes, either. White folks called Mae Lee’s eyes hazel. At least that’s what the woman put on her job application. But still she said nothing. You didn’t talk back to your mama. A daughter wasn’t supposed to.
    Mae Lee watched her mama in the mirror. The cracked mirror gave extra anger lines to her mama’s face, already blown up with contempt. She wondered what her mama would have done if her daughter’d been like a certain war bride down the road. With a husband away at war, there she was, stealing every forbidden moment she could to be with one of the handsome young German POW’s brought in by the hundreds to harvest seasonal crops. Now, you talk about strange-colored eyes. It was a good thing the girl’s mama hurried up and got her out of Rising Ridge. No telling what color of eyes the baby that girl was expecting would end up with. If that had beenher—her mama would have had something to see. She would have died.
    Vergie observed her daughter lost in thought and eyed her suspiciously.
    â€œIs there another young’un on the way?”
    â€œNo, ma’am. I don’t think so.”
    â€œWell, there is one on the way. You’ll find out soon enough.”
    â€œOh, Mama, do you really think I’m pregnant again?”
    Her mama raised her eyes upward. “Why certainly. You married a Barnes, didn’t you?” She turned to look at her sleeping grandbaby. She shook her head. “But, oh Lord, them Barnes boys do make pretty babies.”
    Mae Lee started undressing her baby girl. Her tears still flowed. She cried not for him but for herself. Nobody used Mae Lee. “The war changed him,” she said slowly. “It was the war, Mama. After the war,