The Well and the Mine by Gin Phillips

smiled and waved, and I knew everybody’d know he’d walked me home by tomorrow morning.
    “Did you see Frankenstein ?” he asked after a bit.
    “No, I haven’t been to the theater in a while.”
    “ Dracula ’s coming next week. With Bela Lugosi. Do you like vampires?”
    “Don’t know as I’d say I’m fond of them.” I was afraid he’d ask me to go with him, but he didn’t. Just went on about vampires for a while. Awful—whoever heard of liking such things.
    The Brasher Hotel seemed busy enough, and men were standing in line to get into the restaurant on the top floor. I looked up and had a clear view of a man’s behind perched on the railing. From my angle, it didn’t look like a behind at all, all misshapen and smooshed, and I craned my neck a little as I kept walking. I didn’t crane it for too long.
    The sidewalk and the paved street stopped there, so we were back on red rock. I watched my skirt switch against my legs, and I tried to make my feet stir up as little dust as I could manage. If I put down my toes before my heels, I barely made a puff. I could see Henry’s feet moving alongside mine. He kicked up great storms of dust, but I kept concentrating on toe-heel, toe-heel.
    We walked past Nigger Town, the little group of shotgun houses that ran up the hill. No coloreds were out that I could see, but the path didn’t take us too close. The high school had a Kiwanis minstrels group that would make your sides hurt from laughing. They’d paint their faces black and dance around stage, mispronouncing things and falling all over one another. One year we had a group of real Negroes come and perform for the grammar school near Christmastime, and they weren’t nearly so funny. They didn’t seem to know at all how colored folks were supposed to act.

    Tess SUNDAY DINNERS WERE THE BEST DINNERS. WE ALMOST always had mashed potatoes, piles of them, so much you could take seconds or even thirds. And Mama also made gravy. Usually I liked white gravy the best, but I loved brown gravy on potatoes. And also you could put scoops of English peas in the middle of your potatoes and make a bird’s nest. And that didn’t count as playing with food.
    That Sunday Virgie walked home with Henry Harken I had fun with it. Jack, too. Soon as Virgie got in, Mama called us to dinner. Papa asked Jack to say the blessing—“Dear Heavenly Father thank you for this food this day and all your many blessings in Jesus’ name, Amen.” Girls could only say the blessing if no men were at the table.
    Jack shoveled in some potatoes and said, “You gone marry him, Virgie?” Then we watched her turn red.
    “Hush,” she said.
    “Did he kiss you?” I asked. “I hope you didn’t let him kiss you.”
    “You two don’t be talkin’ foolish,” Mama said, even though she was trying not to smile.
    “No,” said Virgie, trying to look all proper.
    I saw how the boys looked at Virgie, how they’d get flustered and punch each other in the arm when she walked by. Sometimes they couldn’t look her in the eye, which worked fine because she never looked at them either. It was an interesting thing to watch, and I felt sure no boys would ever act quite so ridiculous around me. They only act all stupid when you’re beautiful.
    “Did you want him to kiss you?” Jack asked.
    “That’s enough,” said Papa.
    I just couldn’t help it. “If he does kiss you, I bet you smell pomade.”
    Papa looked at me until I started shoveling potatoes in myself.
    But Jack added one more before Papa gave him the that’s-really-enough look. “You could name your babies Henrietta and Henry and maybe another Henry. Those Harkens are big on Henrys.”

4 No Pay for Slate
    Jack OF COURSE WE DIDN’T KNOW WHAT IT WAS TO BE hungry. Not really hungry. With Papa having land, food was never hard to come by. At least not for us kids—we just ate whatever Mama sat in front of us, after she and Papa had sweated and labored to get it out of the ground and clean