i would have known right off, but paul d distracted me. otherwise i would have seen myfingernail prints right there on your forehead for all the world to see. from when i held your headup, out in the shed. and later on, when you asked me about the earrings i used to dangle for you toplay with, i would have recognized you right off, except for paul d. seems to me he wanted youout from the beginning, but i wouldn't let him. what you think? and look how he ran when hefound out about me and you in the shed. too rough for him to listen to. too thick, he said. my lovewas too thick. what he know about it? who in the world is he willing to die for? would he givehis privates to a stranger in return for a carving? some other way, he said. there must have beensome other way. let schoolteacher haul us away, i guess, to measure your behind before he tore itup? i have felt what it felt like and nobody walking or stretched out is going to make you feel ittoo. not you, not none of mine, and when i tell you you mine, i also mean i'm yours i wouldn'tdraw breath without my children. i told baby suggs that and she got down on her knees to beggod's pardon for me. still, it's so. my plan was to take us all to the other side where my ownma'am is. they stopped me from getting us there, but they didn't stop you from getting here. ha ha.

you came right on back like a good girl, like a daughter which is what i wanted to be and wouldhave been if my ma'am had been able to get out of the rice long enough before they hanged her andlet me be one. you know what? she'd had the bit so many times she smiled. when she wasn'tsmiling she smiled, and i never saw her own smile. i wonder what they was doing when they wascaught. running, you think? no. not that. because she was my ma'am and nobody's ma'am wouldrun off and leave her daughter, would she? would she, now? leave her in the yard with a one-armed woman? even if she hadn't been able to suckle the daughter for more than a week or twoand had to turn her over to another woman's tit that never had enough for all. they said it was thebit that made her smile when she didn't want to. like the saturday girls working theslaughterhouse yard. when i came out of jail i saw them plain. they came when the shift changedon saturday when the men got paid and worked behind the fences, back of the outhouse. someworked standing up, leaning on the toolhouse door. they gave some of their nickels and dimes tothe foreman as they left but by then their smiles was over. some of them drank liquor to keep fromfeeling what they felt. some didn't drink a drop — just beat it on over to phelps to pay for whattheir children needed, or their ma'ammies. working a pig yard. that has got to be something for awoman to do, and i got close to it myself when i got out of jail and bought, so to speak, your name.

but the bodwins got me the cooking job at sawyer's and left me able to smile on my own like nowwhen i think about you.

but you know all that because you smart like everybody said because when i got here you wascrawling already. trying to get up the stairs. baby suggs had them painted white so you could seeyour way to the top in the dark where lamplight didn't reach. lord, you loved the stairsteps.

i got close. i got close. to being a saturday girl. i had already worked a stone mason's shop. a stepto the slaughterhouse would have been a short one. when i put that headstone up i wanted to lay inthere with you, put your head on my shoulder and keep you warm, and i would have if buglar andhoward and denver didn't need me, because my mind was homeless then. i couldn't lay down withyou then. no matter how much i wanted to. i couldn't lay down nowhere in peace, back then. nowi can. i can sleep like the drowned, have mercy. she come back to me, my daughter, and she ismine.