Read Her Own Place for Free Online Page A

Mama, there was this new way about him. I could never get used to it. He was always on the move. Always in a rush to go someplace. He was shell-shocked. And you know what that will do to any able-bodied man.”
    It had not all been bad. There had been times when things were good between them, warm and easy, like well-worn soft leather gloves. And there were her babies. Five healthy, beautiful children.
    Vergie Hudson looked about her daughter’s small room. She fingered the fringed dresser scarf and looked at the fancy pincushions, the round, cardboard Coty dusting powder box, the comb, brush, and mirror dresser set, and the blue bottle of Evening in Paris perfume. “Your husband may not have writtenyou letters but he sure was thinking about you. He bought you some right nice presents,” she said.
    Mae Lee’s voice quivered, she was crying again. “He said he did write letters to me, Mama, but his spelling was so bad he was ashamed to mail them, so he tore the letters up.”
    â€œHuh,” her mama grunted, “like you couldn’t have made out what he was trying to say. I wish he’d have mailed them. Oh, how my heart ached for you.”
    â€œJeff has been shell-shocked, Mama,” she repeated. That was safe. Mae Lee didn’t tell her mother that during all the years Jeff Barnes was in the army he had never left the supply department where he sewed on buttons and rank stripes. And that she, not her husband, had bought those things.
    Mae Lee’s mama started to moan softly. She moved to her daughter’s side and put her arms around her daughter, patting and rubbing her back as if she were a baby needing to be burped. “He’ll come back, baby,” her mother soothed. “He will come back to his little sweet family.”
    Mae Lee pulled away. She no longer cried. “Maybe he will come back, Mama, but he will never come back to me,” she said firmly. She took her hat off and pulled her long hair into a braid. “The first thing I’ll do tomorrow is ask Daddy to put new locks on the doors. I don’t ever want to see Jeff Barnes again in this life.”
    The next morning, Mae Lee’s daddy changed the locks, and said flat out, “Get yourself dressed, young lady, we’re going down to lawyer Gaines’s office to see about getting you a divorce. He’ll know where you have to go and what you have todo to make it legal. You don’t need the likes of one of them Barneses trailing in and out for the rest of your life.”
    Mae Lee gave herself six months to get over her husband. Six months to grieve inwardly and be sad. After that it was finished.

Part
 II

: 5 :
    Even with the help from Hooker Jones and his wife Maycie, keeping the farm going wasn’t easy for Mae Lee. Hooker’s wife was in poor health. And, although she rarely complained, so was Mae Lee’s mama. She had kidney trouble. Yet she was always there, helping out on the farm and with the grandchildren.
    â€œThe farm is too much for you,” Mae Lee’s mama would moan. “You need help. To be married. Besides,” she’d add, “you’ve got the hip set for more babies.” Then she would hint. “I don’t reckon you’d fuss too much if Howard Jamison would drop by for a few minutes or so Sunday. It’s been a while since that wife of his died. He’d make some lucky woman a mighty good husband.”
    Then her mama would look at her hard. “You need to start wearing your straw hat more and protect your smooth, light skin and get some rest. A man’s not going to want some woman that’s worn herself to a frazzle. As soon as weget caught up with our hoeing. I’ll come and help you out with yours.”
    Every time her mama had come to help, however, there had always been someone there to pull her away. On one occasion, after it had rained for days and the grass was about to take over Mae Lee’s