Chapter 1
When they were sure the twister had finally gone, Patience and the other women laughed nervously. The children whimpered. Mother Barker's husband, the foreman, and the only man in the field, adjust...
Chapter 2
The women hummed together like light coming together after the sun had risen noon high, while pain and wonder wrapped around each of them in the humming. And the pain sat down on Patience and smoth...
Chapter 3
They were particularly interested in the new baby, Abyssinia. They women of Ponca City considered themselves midwives-in-common at her birth.She filled their conversations."Remember it like it was...
Chapter 4
"Stop, stop, stop, Abyssinia! Hand me that there piece here. Yes, this is it all right." And a smile wrinkled the corners of her eyes. "This is the one, all right." She gave the child a kiss on her...
Chapter 5
He began. "They say, if you put a pea under a mattress, a queen can feel the bump in the bed and will scream holy murder. And if you pile ten mattresses on top of that one, the queen will still fee...
Chapter 6
"Mama's making me something.""What color?""Blue. The prettiest blue.""Child, did you know blue is the color of the will of God? Is she about finished?" (6.92-95)
Chapter 7
Mother Barker examined Miss Sally carefully. She said a blackjack leaf went through Miss Sally when the big wind peeled the planks, one by one, off Miss Sally's old frame house and tossed them to t...
Chapter 8
Abby sat transfixed, the song going all inside her to the very edges of her nerves and clinging there. The music settled in behind her eyes where it threatened to spill out down her face, the way b...
Chapter 9
"It is not the physical wound I worry about," said Mother Barker.[…]"No, it's not the physical hurt that bothers me. I look in her eyes, and I see blood on the flower of her spirit," said Mother...
Chapter 10
"But you haven't got me fooled. What you need is some kind of punishment. They got you laying up here in bed, treating you like you're sick. Give me a chance, I'll straighten you out. Give me two m...
Chapter 11
Cherokee Strip Day arrived. On Cherokee Strip Day there was an annual parade in the name of the Iroquoian Indians who were relocated from North Carolina and Georgia to Oklahoma. The parade generall...
Chapter 12
Over at Abby's house, Mother Barker had set up a corner of the room to apply her folk medicine to Abby's body."The lightning bugs are out tonight, Mother Barker," Abyssinia said."Now that's the tru...
Chapter 13
One of them said, "I don't know how Brother Jacobs could hurt that innocent child.""And his wife took it hard.""Took Sister Jacobs a long time to choose a husband.""See how he do her.""She look for...
Chapter 14
Although Brother Jacobs was gone and Abby's speaking voice had returned, the Jackson world was not secure. The money saved from their cotton field labor was all used up, and the Better Way Barbersh...
Chapter 15
Then one day Patience got up off her knees and climbed up in the loft and brought down Strong's double-barreled shotgun. She polished its gray metal with a piece of flannel until it gleamed cold si...
Chapter 16
Abby let her voice drop two inches. "And after they wrapped her in her winding sheet, they buried her in a watery grave next to the coal-black snake. And today, in the spot where they both rested,...
Chapter 18
Abby watched Strong working daily in the field, and in the evening he chopped wood for the fireplace and spent the dark evenings gazing into the mystery of the flames—no flame was ever the same....
Chapter 19
"I know it was rosebay," Mother Barker said."Rosebay!?" said the astonished Abby. "Why, that'll kill you!""How could you tell it was rosebay?" someone asked."By the way it smelled," said Mother Bar...
Chapter 23
Mother Barker was quiet for a minute. Then she said, "My mama and her mama before her knew certain things." (23.46)
Chapter 24
"You're the only child we have, Abby. Even if Patience did give you birth and Strong is your daddy." (24.22)
Chapter 25
"I shall go where we all must go when my time here is over.""But how can you speak of it?" Abby wondered aloud already feeling a sense of loss."I already talked it over with Barker. He's in agreeme...
Chapter 27
"Call the police, they look at you like you're some kind of old dog," Lily said."Have you tried that?""No. Winnie Mae told me about the time she tried talking to the law. They think you must like g...
Chapter 28
Then she remembered him sneaking down here, prowling around the jars. "Last year it was the apricots. I should have known. Neglecting his own children to run away to that hussy in Lawton. How dare...
Chapter 29
She dreamed of her old adversary, Trembling Sally, the nuisance who stalked her slumber. Trembling Sally was a troubling woman in the rapids of her dreams, a drunken tempest raging in her inner ear...
Chapter 30
Soon the Ponca City women began to arrive. They came to join Abby in the celebration of the saving of the children's lives. They brought offerings of canned mulberries, okra, collard greens, smoked...