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tires on the road. I looked out the window for the white head rag. Nothing. We traveled deeper and deeper into the darkness until finally the light overtook us and another day began.
    The sun hit us like salt on slugs. Every muscle, every dream hardened and cracked under the glare. It hurt to move, breathe, blink. I burrowed into the corner, my hand over my face. The car slowed. I peeked between my fingers as we came to a stop in front of a white wooden restaurant with two big windows. We eased our stiff bodies out of the car and stumbled toward the building.
    Brother Terrell called out: “We don’t have all day now.”
    Betty Ann pointed out the restroom to Pam as we walked through the door.
    Pam pulled on her mother’s arm. “Aren’t you coming?”
    “I’m staying here with Daddy . . . and Carolyn.”
    A look I could not decipher passed between the adults. Pam and I took Gary by the hand and headed for the bathroom. When we returned, Mama and Betty Ann were ordering breakfast: two eggs with bacon, grits, and toast for each of them, and the same thing for Pam and me to share. Gary would eat off our mother’s plate. The women handed the plastic-coated menus back to the waitress, and it was Brother Terrell’s turn. He cleared his throat as if to say something, then didn’t. I dreaded what came next. Without looking up from the pad she held in her hand, the waitress asked Brother Terrell if he thought he might order before lunch. She laughed a bit as she said it, but he didn’t respond. From the platform, Brother Terrell glided over the most difficult words of scripture with ease. Take him off the platform, replace the Bible with a letter, a contract, or a menu from a roadside restaurant, and he stumbled and stammered and sounded out the words like a kid learning to read. Everyday life rendered him functionally illiterate. My mother said it was God’s anointing that enabled him to read during services. She didn’t say why God didn’t cure him of his illiteracy and spare him the humiliation.
    He cleared his throat again and pointed to the menu.
    “I’ll have this here.”
    The waitress’s pencil hovered over her pad. “And what’s that?”
    “It’s the, the . . .” His face turned red. Pam and I stared at our laps, trying to avoid her dad’s terrifying vulnerability. Brother Terrell turned to Betty Ann and dropped his voice. “What’s that say?”
    “Three eggs, country biscuits, redeye gravy, and ham.”
    He handed the menu to the waitress and swallowed hard. “That’s what I’ll have.”
    She looked up finally from her pad and her eyes went soft. “The writing is so small on these things, it’s a wonder any of us can read ’em.”
    By the time the waitress delivered breakfast, Brother Terrell had recovered. She settled the platter of food in front of him, and the light clicked on in his eyes.
    “That looks like my mama’s cookin’. I thank you.”
    She smiled at him like she had never been thanked before and lingered for a moment, hip cocked, before unloading onto the table the other plates that lined her arm.
    Betty Ann took it all in with her big, sad eyes. “Aren’t chu sumthin’?”
    Brother Terrell sawed at his ham without looking up. Pam and I stirred our runny eggs into the grits. Gary crunched into a slice of toast coated with jelly—his mouth a sticky grape outline. Mama picked at her scrambled eggs, then gave up. She mumbled for me to scoot over, all the way over, and slid out of the booth to play a song on the jukebox.
    The car felt more crowded than usual that morning when we folded ourselves back into it. The grown-ups spoke only when they had to, and when they did, their words said one thing and their voices another. Pam looked over her shoulder at me from her perch on the console between the bucket seats her parents occupied. Her face was smug. She didn’t say anything, but I knew she was thinking, I get to sit up here and you don’t. I whined that it wasn’t fair that