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thought it would have been better if there were more books to read—not just
Aesop’s Fables
and a book of Bible passages for young people—and much much better if she had been permitted to attend the school in Jeffrey.
    That, she believed, was the reason she ran off with a rat. If she hadn’t been so ignorant living in a no-count, not-even-a-town place with only chores, church-school, and nothing else to do, she would have known better. Watched, watched, watched by every grown-up from sunrise to sunset and ordered about by not only Lenore but every adult in town. Come here, girl, didn’t nobody teach you how to sew? Yes, ma’am. Then why is your hem hanging like that? Yes, ma’am. I mean no, ma’am. Is that lipstick on your mouth? No, ma’am. What then? Cherries, ma’am, I mean blackberries. I ate some. Cherries, my foot. Wipe your mouth. Come down from that tree, you hear me? Tie your shoes put down that rag doll and pick up a broom uncross your legs go weed that garden stand up straight don’t you talk back to me. When Cee and a few other girls reached fourteen and started talking about boys, she was prevented from any real flirtation because of her big brother, Frank. The boys knew she was off-limits because of him. That’s why when Frank and his two best friends enlisted and left town, she fell for what Lenore called the first thing she saw wearing belted trousers instead of overalls.
    His name was Principal but he called himself Prince. A visitor from Atlanta to his aunt’s house, he was a good-looking new face with shiny, thin-soled shoes. All the girls were impressed with his big-city accent and what they believed was his knowledge and wide experience. Cee most of all.
    Now, splashing water on her shoulders, she wondered for the umpteenth time why she didn’t at least ask the aunt he was visiting why he was sent to the backwoods instead of spending the winter in the big, bad city. But feeling adrift in the space where her brother had been, she had no defense. That’s the other side, she thought, of having a smart, tough brother close at hand to take care of and protect you—you are slow to develop your own brain muscle. Besides, Prince loved himself so deeply, so completely, it was impossible to doubt his conviction. So if Prince said she was pretty, she believed him. If he said at fourteen she was a woman, she believed that too. And if he said, I want you for myself, it was Lenore who said, “Not unless y’all are legal.” Whatever legal meant. Ycidra didn’t even have a birth certificate and the courthouse was over a hundred miles away. So they had Reverend Alsop come over and bless them, write their names in a huge book before walking back to her parents’ house. Frank had enlisted, so his bed was where they slept and where the great thing people warned about or giggled about took place. It was not so much painful as dull. Ceethought it would get better later. Better turned out to be simply more, and while the quantity increased, its pleasure lay in its brevity.
    There was no job in or around Lotus that Prince allowed himself to take so he took her to Atlanta. Cee looked forward to a shiny life in the city where—after a few weeks of ogling water coming from the turn of a spigot, inside toilets free of flies, streetlights shining longer than the sun and as lovely as fireflies, women in high heels and gorgeous hats trotting to church two, sometimes three times a day, and following the grateful joy and dumbfounded delight of the pretty dress Prince bought her—she learned that Principal had married her for an automobile.
    Lenore had bought a used station wagon from Shepherd the rent man and, since Salem couldn’t drive, Lenore gave her old Ford to Luther and Ida—with the caution that they give it back if the station wagon broke down. A few times Luther let Prince use the Ford on errands: trips to the post office in Jeffrey for mail to or from wherever Frank was stationed, first Kentucky, then