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don’t give a goddamn how brainy she is, she don’t act natural. It ain’t right for a girl to be running all around with the boys at all hours. She climbs trees, takes cars apart, and worse, she tells them what to do and they listen to her. She don’t want to learn none of the things she has to know to get a husband. Smart as she is, a woman can’t get on in this world without a husband. We can’t be sending no girl to school as it is. It’s the boys we got to worry about. Them’s the ones will be earning livings. You make too much of her head.”
    “Molly is going to college.”
    “Big talk.”
    “My daughter is going to college.”
    “Your daughter, your daughter. That’s a laugh. That’s the first time I heard you say that. She’sRuby Drollinger’s bastard that’s who she is. Where do you get off with this daughter crap?”
    “She’s mine as much as if I’d been her real father and I watch out for her.”
    “Real father. What right have you got to talk about being a real father? If you’d been a real father I’d have my own daughter and she wouldn’t be like that wild hellcat you stick up for. She’d be a real little lady like Cheryl Spiegelglass. Your daughter, you make me sick.”
    “Honey, you’re all upset. You don’t know how you’re sounding. Molly is yours, just as if she was your own. A child’s got to have parents and you’re her mother.”
    “I am not her mother. I am not her mother,” Carrie shrieked. “She didn’t come from my body. Florence had babies come from her body, and she tells me it’s not the same. She knows. She told me I’ll never know what it’s like to be a real mother. What do you know? Men don’t know about these things. Men don’t know anything.”
    “Mother, father, what’s the difference, Cat? It’s how you feel about the child, it’s got nothing to do with your body. Molly is my daughter, and if it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to see that girl gets a chance in this world neither one of us had. You want her to spend her life like us, sitting back here in the sticks, can’t even make enough money for a new dress or dinner in a restaurant? You want her to live a life like you—dishes, cooking, and never going out except maybe to a movie once a month if we can afford it? The child’s got brightness in her, Cat, so let her be! She’ll go to big cities and be somebody. I can see it in her.She’s got dreams and ambition and she’s smart as a whip. Nobody can pull one over on that kid. Be proud for her. You got a daughter to be proud of.”
    “You turn my guts. She’ll be somebody. That’s all I need, Molly traipsing off to a big city like Philadelphia and thinking she’s better than the rest of us. She’s got high ways now. You make her worse. She’ll go off to college and a big city and forget you ever lived. That’s the thanks you’ll get. She don’t care for nobody but her own self, that kid. She’s a savage animal, locked me in the cellar. You don’t live here with her every day and see her like I do. She’s wild I tell you. And how far’s she gonna get with all her brains considering her background? We ain’t people that can do her good in fancy places. She’ll be ashamed of us. And she’s a bastard to boot. You got pipe dreams for your daughter.” She hit on daughter with such bile it made me shudder.
    “Cat, my mind is made up. Molly is having her chance whether you like it or not. She’s getting an education. Now you learn to live with it, and you’re not to lock her in this house with you. Let her run all over the whole goddamn county and let her knock shit out of Cheryl Spiegelglass. I never liked that kid anyway.”
    “I have one think to say to you, Carl Bolt. We’ve never had a fight between us until that child came under our roof. And we never would have a fight like this if you could have given me a baby, but you had syphilis, that’s what you had. You ain’t fit to be nobody’s father. If I could have