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Chester Sr. started chopping cotton for whites, and stopped a day shy of his seventy-eighth birthday only because his legs gave out. Gus reverenced his grandfather’s prideand sought nothing more desperately than to replicate it. Chester Sr. warned that pride comes before a great fall, but Gus said he was willing to fall if it meant he didn’t have to submit his labor to whites. Wilson smiled. It wasn’t that Gus didn’t admire his father; Gus loved Chester Sr. and respected the fact that they always ate. Gus simply hated that whites called his daddy “boy” and treated him like shit. So Gus explained his defiance as the only way he knew to keep white folks from destroying another generation of Peaces.
    To keep his family together, Wilson’s father took his master’s surname when slavery ended. Baxter Pace owned some three hundred slaves in South Carolina and sold one of Wilson’s uncles to a plantation somewhere in Louisiana. Hoping to find his brother one day, Wilson kept the Pace name at first in hopes that, wherever he was in the world, his brother might search him out. Yet once slavery ended and Wilson’s father made his way to Arkansas—where folks said money was growing on trees—he dropped the hope of ever seeing his brother again and added an
E
to “Pace,” thus naming himself what he desired most—Peace.
     
    Henrietta emerged from the master bedroom, feigning a smile. “It’s a girl.”
    “Yeah!” the brothers cheered. Their boisterous applause almost deafened Gus, who nodded and sighed with relief.
    “What’s her name?” Authorly asked.
    “She ain’t got no name yet,” Gus said. “Hell, she just got here. Yo’ momma gon’ think of a name pretty soon.”
    Not meaning to contradict Gus yet afraid the least omission might cost her, Henrietta said, “Her name’s Perfect. That’s what yo’ momma said.”
    “Perfect,” the boys repeated in chorus.
    What kinda name is that
, Gus thought, and grimaced as he retrieved the family Bible. Sol leaned over his right shoulder, spelling the name seven or eight times before Gus had it correct:
     
    Perfect Peace, May 17, 1940.
     
    “Who she look like? Can we see her? Can we hold her?” Mister’s questions came faster than Henrietta could answer.
    “No!” she snapped. The boys’ faces went blank. “I mean, not quite yet. It was a tough birth and yo’ momma needs a little time to recover. Just give hera little while.” Henrietta paused to collect herself. “Your mother’s tired now and the baby’s sleeping. He—I mean she’s really pretty though. Perfect—just like your mother calls her.” Henrietta hadn’t planned to say that, but in the midst of forced deceit, she didn’t know what else to say. She turned abruptly and reentered the bedroom.
    “I can’t do this, Emma Jean. I can’t.”
    Emma Jean nodded. “Of course you can. And you will. It’s already done. I have a beautiful baby girl and that’s the end of it.”
    “This ain’t gon’ work. There’s no way.” Henrietta’s strength dissolved like sugar in hot water. She sank onto the edge of the bed.
    “Listen,” Emma Jean murmured, grabbing Henrietta’s arm. “Just call her a girl and be done with it! There’s nothin’ to think about, nothin’ to rationalize, nothin’ to justify, nothin’ to pray about, and nothin’ to do except love her the way she is.”
    “That’s the whole problem! The way she is ain’t right ’cause she ain’t no she!”
    “Of course she is. She’s jes’ a little different from most other little girls, but she’ll never know that if don’t nobody tell her.”
    Henrietta stared at Emma Jean, perplexed.
    “I knew God wouldn’t let me down. After raisin’ all these boys, He owed me a girl.”
    Henrietta stood. “Don’t bring God into this, Emma Jean!”
    “What chu mean? God’s the One Who made this possible. And I thank Him for it.”
    “You know what?” Henrietta tossed her hands into the air. “Do what you want. But