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sudden and stares straight up at this chimney. I know she can not see me really but it is like she is staring right at me. And then she smiles. She knows she can do anything, or have anything she wants. They stand likethis in the hot sun awhile and then keeping one arm around his waist Selena walks Uncle Junius into the tenant house through the open door. Her girls head off down toward the creek dragging Godfrey who fights them all the way. They disappear from view. Now the yard is quiet once more with no one present except for Virgils old dog that dreams a running dream in the sun and Daddy Rex who sits outside his cabin but never saw a thing since he is blind. And as for me my heart is beating very hard in my chest and I feel like I can not breathe. I know for sure that everything will be diffrent from now on.

    June 5, 1872
    Dear Diary,
    Oh now we are having a time for Selena the housekeeper is bossing us all around, we must clean up the house to a fare thee well for the grand arrival of Uncle Junius sister Cecelia, or Sissy as he calls her. Aunt Cecelia to you, Selena says to me. Her daughters Victoria and Blanche will call her Mrs. Worthington . And now they are here too, in the house, helping to clean though they are lazy. Victoria is a big mean strapping girl like her mother, thirteen years old, but Blanche age eight is skinny with flyaway hair and knobby knees and elbows and a big grin. I like her better. They keep stopping to look at things, they touch everything. Old Bess does not like it. In any case Liddy must now boil out all the bed linens, and yesterday Washington and Spence had to carry all the bed ticks and pallets out to the yard where they beat them with sticks and allowed them to air in the sun while Selena and the rest of us scoured the bedrooms scrubbing the heart pine floors and rubbing the beds and dressers and chests with tallow to give a shine. Spence carried a whole mattress on his head with one hand. Selena was like a whirlwind with her elbows flying. Then she pulled up her skirt and got down on her hands and knees to thrust the broom under the bedsteads and sweep up piles of dust and God knows what all. Her rump stuck way up in the air but she did not care. We were in the girls bedroom.
    Just look at them dust devils, she said, for some of the piles of dust and hair held together like little tornados.
    Ooh, ooh, screamed her girls, dead mouse, dead mouse. They danced all around the dust devils pointing.
    Selena rocked back on her heels and wiped the sweat off her face with a rag she pulled out of her bosom. She stuck out her bottom lip and blew her black hair up out of her eyes. Lord God. Its a pig sty in here, Selena said, like it pleased her.
    Old Bess stood in the door with her hands on her hips.
    Well what are you looking at, Selena said.
    Old Bess said not a word.
    Selena had me sweeping out the closet making a great big cloud of dust that stuck to my face for it was hot in there. Horses sweat, men perspire, ladies glow, my mother always said, but that was back before ladies worked.
    Selena got back down under the bed to take another swipe with her broom.
    Victoria pushed me aside as she ran into the closet and started pulling out drawers in the bureau. Oh look oh looky here, she said holding up a long white ruffled petticoat.
    That was my mothers, I said. It goes over a hoop skirt.
    Well wheres the hoop then? Victoria said, and I said, Over there, and showed her where the hoops were leaning up against the closet wall. The cloth strips that held them together had gone for bandages. Victoria threw the petticoat down and pulled out a silk camisole and held it up to herself. It had lace around the neckline. Why look it is just my size, she said, though Mamma had been real little and dainty. There in the hot dusty gloom with the camisole glowing white and Victorias dark messy curls all down in her face I suddenly saw how pretty she will be one day.
    I hate Victoria.
    Take it then, I said, and