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it, but only a little. She had the beauty, the currency, to marry outside her class, but the truth was she would have been uncomfortable with a richer boy, with a people who might have looked down on her, or worse, on her people.
    His family was legend in the mill village. The Bragg men drank corn whiskey, played poker, rolled dice and settled arguments with fists and knives and sometimes just acted a little peculiar, but worked hard in the mill, never refused a plea for help, gave away truckloads of food from gardens and hog killings, and asked only to be left alone, at least until the sound of glass breaking and women crying. Their women were long-suffering, loyal unto death, and lost in love, and if they had not been, their men would have rotted in jail.
    “They was respected people,” Carlos said, “with a few vices.”
    My mother’s own daddy made whiskey, but drank and laughed, drank and sang, never took a sip in front of her, never let it change him from a good man into something else. Why on earth, she wished with all her heart, could it not be that way again?
    She remembers a smell of citrus the first time he took her to meet his mother and father. “He had been down to Florida, and their house was full of the biggest grapefruits, oranges and lemons I ever seen,” she said. She knew better than to ask how he got them. A man who could not drive past a rosebush or window box without committing larceny could not be expected to pass a thousand acres of citrus growing at the side of the road.
    His mother and father, little people like him, greeted her at the door. She noticed, with some embarrassment, that she was the tallest person in the room. Bobby, his father, was ironed so stiff he seemed to be all sharp angles and flat planes, like a paper doll with a little, round, white-topped head perched on top. He wore a starched white shirt buttoned to the neck, overalls so new and stiff they made a racket like plywood rubbing together when he walked, and immaculate, black, wing-tip shoes.
    Velma was tiny like her man, and had the kindest face my mother had ever seen. She was already gray-haired, a slightly stooped little woman who worked a full shift at the cotton mill, cleaned houses, helped raise other people’s children and spent every other free moment trying to keep her husband, a rapscallion and brawler when he was well-oiled, from harm at the hands of police, card players, drinking buddies, his own sons, and himself. My father was her baby, the pride of her life. He called her Momma, and called his daddy Bob.
    My mother noticed a tension in them, sitting there knee to knee, and when she looked closer she noticed that Bob was quite drunk. It seemed that he had gotten lit and picked a fight with Velma, and had not sobered up enough to tell her he was sorry. “He got real, real red-faced when he drank, and he was red-faced then,” my mother said.
    “What’s wrong, Bob?” my father said.
    “She’s got a man hid in the house,” he said.
    Velma rolled her eyes.
    “She ain’t got no man in the house, Bob,” my father said.
    “I tell you she does,” Bobby said.
    Here my father was, trying to impress his new girl, while his daddy was having a delusion. My mother just sat, staring at her lap, and whispered: “My, them lemons sure do smell—”
    “I heard him, goddammit,” Bobby said.
    “—nice,” she squeaked.
    My father vaulted to his feet.
    “Come on, Bob, we’ll find him.”
    He went from room to room, looking in closets.
    “Not here,” he shouted.
    He ran to the kitchen, and jerked open the refrigerator door.
    “Reckon he’s in here, Bob,” he said.
    His father sat, his face redder.
    My mother wanted to laugh, but just sat, politely.
    It was like the circus to her, with midgets and everything.
    The one thing that worried her was the way his mother looked at her. “I thought she didn’t like me, ’cause she just sat there, and looked at me so sad,” my mother said. As they left, Velma