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in church, even with our hand-waving and shouting Amen .
    I stood there with a silly grin on my face, but then Claudie gave me a shove, and I took a shuffling step and then another and slung my skinny hips and tried swiveling them, and before long, I had it down. I wasn’t as smooth as Claudie, though, because somehow the moving seemed part of her—like music was in her the way words were inside me.
    It seemed, that afternoon, we were a kind of temple , and I wondered at that new strange word that had bloomed in my head.
    On Friday, we tired of rehearsing and went off to wade in the green shallows of the river and make a plan to visit all our neighbors first thing in the morning, inviting them for that evening, lemonade served. It was suppertime just now, and I asked Claudie in, but she glanced over at Plain Genie, who was sitting on the bank, sucking her thumb, and Claudie said no, she and Genie would be gettin’ on home.
    I went in to eat and to tell Auntie the plan and that I needed drinks enough to serve all the people who might show up tomorrow night.
    “And who’s gonna pay for the lemons?” she asked.
    “Don’t we have some in the refrigerator?”
    “We do not, and even if we did, child, you embarkin’ on free enterprise, and you’d owe me for them lemons, you understand?”
    “No, ma’am.”
    It was just Auntie and me tonight, Uncle Cunny off playing Friday-night poker.
    “Cunny taught you to count out money,” she said. “Tomorrow you go on over to the Tiger Market and buy six lemons. I’ll front you the price. But you owe me what they cost, and you’ll give it back.”
    I would split the nickels with Claudie, all right, but I was not about to take out the cost of lemons.
    “And you do it before you girls share a penny. That way you’ll both be paid equal.”
    “But, Auntie—”
    “No, ma’am,” she said, her feet planted in front of the stove. “That’s how it will be, or it won’t be at all.”
    To save my life, I couldn’t make myself subtract the price of the lemons. Subtraction was unkind. Taking things away hurt something fierce, and I couldn’t think why they’d teach such a thing in school.
    I had an idea. I kept seventy-five cents upstairs in a sock, under my bed, and I would take that sock with me to the market tomorrow. Then, when we collected admission, Claudie would just have to give me half the price of the fruit. Everybody knew they lived off food stamps and ate beans every day. Not one of them owned shoes till they went to school, and their clothes came from the donation box behind the Oasis of Love Bingo Hall and Prison Camp Center.

    Saturday evening was surprisingly cool. Uncle helped us line up chairs, and near six o’clock he drove down to the Maytubbys’. When he came back, he opened the door and helped Miz Maytubby and Alvadene down. A whole pile of Maytubby kids spilled out of the back. Then Uncle came to where I was standing with a cigar box, sometimes shaking it just to hear the coins rattle, and he counted his guests and dropped in two quarters. “Miz Maytubby,” he said, “it’d please me mightily to help you to a seat on the front row.”
    I looked over at Plain Genie, and at Alvadene in her tight shorts and her blouse with the sleeves cut out and her bosoms straining against the buttons, and the baby asleep on her arm.
    Miz Maytubby, I heard, took to her bed for weeks after Denver showed up with his white-lady wife, and even now, she looked as if she’d come straight from there, in a faded pink duster and barefoot, her hair slept on. In spite of that, she had a lifted and somewhat delicate chin and swipe of pink lipstick across her mouth. Claudie looked proud.
    Mr. and Mrs. Sherrard and Miss Minnie Roosevelt came arm in arm, under a tattered parasol, and the brothers Oaty. At the very last minute, Miz Millicent Poole tottered down the road, her legs black and blue. She swayed into a seat. The Best Reverend Ollie paid her way. Auntie went to speak with