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hear. And though she didn’t know the details of the events, the shoes proclaimed that the woman who’d owned them before lived hard.
    She slipped the shoes over her reddened feet and said a prayer to a God she wasn’t sure she knew, that her feet wouldn’t grow infected. She stood up and lifted her skirt, turning her foot side to side before letting her skirts drop over the ghastly sight. She begged herself not to allow self-pity a home inside her heart. If she went there, there’d be no way to get back. Yet, the dismay at her station. It was there.
    Katherine came into the house with a bucket of water, forcing Jeanie away from the enticing self-pity.
    “Don’t touch a thing, Katherine,” Jeanie said. They had work to do, cleaning things up before they set to the real work.
    “It doesn’t seem as though there’s anything to make dirty or break, Mama.”
    “This place is filthy. Poor Templeton is batching-it. We can’t expect a man to do everything around the house. He’s got crops to sow and bring in.”
    “Hmm,” Katherine said.
    “This is a prime example of why a woman’s place in the world is firmly…“ Jeanie took the bucket from Katherine and shrugged, unable to finish the nonsense she once so happily dispensed to anyone who would listen.
    “Well, we women,” Katherine said, standing rod straight, imitating her mother’s stance and pursed lips, “are having a day of it. This home expressing exactly why women are obliged to tend the homes of men.” Katherine swooped her hand outward as though putting the house on display. “There are no more pressing circumstances for a woman in the home, than in an uncivilized place like this,” Katherine said.
    Jeanie playfully pulled a section of Katherine’s hair making them both giggle.
    Jeanie would have told Katherine she rethought her position on women’s rights, but one—she wasn’t sure she had, and two— she didn’t have time to discuss such things anymore.
    “We better get to dinner,” Jeanie said.
    They scoured the house for food and cooking tools.
    Not that there was much space to search. Templeton’s home consisted of one large room. Off to the left, in the back, there was an alcove. Jeanie, limping again, went to it and peered inside the space. “Well, sweet heaven and hell,” Jeanie said.
    Templeton’s urine sat in a ceramic chamber pot, nearly filling it up. She sandwiched the sides of the pot between her palms, picked it up, trying not to wrap her fingers around the rim, while trying not to slosh any liquid from the vessel. “Mercy heavens, damn and hell.” Jeanie whispered the curses.
    Katherine’s head whipped toward Jeanie.
    “You didn’t hear that, Sweet Pea,” Jeanie said. Once they’d scrubbed down the cook-stove and washed their hands as best they could, trying to limit the wasted water, they worked fast, though not prettily. Out behind the house, they set up for preparing dinner—something Jeanie had never done herself. Not like this.
    Jeanie wanted to cry at what she was doing. “We’re not crying people. There’s no room for self-pity. We’re not crying people.” Jeanie repeated the mantra to herself as she clenched her jaw and used a dull knife to skin the jackrabbits. The ripping sound as she separated the rabbit’s coat from his muscle and fat made her skin prickly, chilling her. The sweet and sour odor of blood filled her nose and seemed to settle in her mouth as though she were eating the creature raw.
    Jeanie’s eyes watered and she gagged, turning to throw up her empty stomach.
    “I can do this, Mama,” Katherine rubbed her mother’s back and took the knife from Jeanie’s hand. Jeanie straightened.
    “Nonsense, my Sweet Pea. No.” Jeanie took the knife back. She held her breath and started to skin the second animal. Gagging again, she finally let Katherine finish the dirty work while she chopped the carrots and onions she’d found in a storage space above the bedstead.
    Jeanie wanted to make