GodPretty in the Tobacco Field by Kim Michele Richardson Page B

tucked-tailed dogs skittered away.
    Rainey set down his buckets and helped three of the smaller, barefoot and bare-butt kids off the porch. One of them slapped away Rainey’s hand and tumbled headfirst onto the ground. When the boy screwed up his red face to croon his injury, Mrs. Stump raised a warning finger. He took off wailing toward the woods.
    Rainey said, “Best get back to work now.”
    I nodded readily. “Me too.”
    â€œLet’s go,” Henny sang out.
    Mrs. Stump shook her head and pointed. “Henny, stay put. You go, boy. And, you ”—she stabbed a finger my way—“c’mon inside and haul one of them buckets in with ya.”
    Henny kicked a protest into the dirt.
    â€œMe?” I asked, wanting real bad to hightail it straight out of here, far away from any business of birthing and baby-buyers.
    â€œRoo”—Rainey looked at me—“want me to wait for you?”
    More than anything I wanted him to.
    Mrs. Stump lifted a hanging metal cup off the tarpapered wall beside the screen door and shook it at Rainey. “Keep your ass to the rows, darkie. Ain’t got no business around us white females!”
    I winced, knowing most folks around here felt that way, even the ones who the town thought beggarly. Once, Mrs. Stump whipped Rainey with a tree branch when she spied him rescuing one of her daughters after the little girl took a bad tumble in the creek. Gunnar saw it from his tractor and hurried over with me running alongside him. He snatched the switch out of Mrs. Stump’s hand, then swatted Rainey once on the behind with it, then again, saying, “I’ll take care of him, Mrs. Stump.”
    He gave a tongue-lashing to Rainey on touching white females, then on the way back, Gunnar’d quoted President Johnson like he always did, mumbling more to himself than to me or Rainey, “ ‘If you can convince the lowest white man that he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll even empty his pockets for you.’ ”
    Gunnar’d looked at me, and said, “Mighty knowledge in that, maybe even some of the Lord Almighty’s thoughts in there,” and then he’d repeated them twice more as we walked back across the field, and every time Rainey ran afoul with white folks like the Stumps.
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    Mrs. Stump banged the cup against the wall, startling the man and woman. “Git,” she snapped at Rainey.
    I snuck a finger toward Rainey’s tucked hand. “See you back at the rows.”
    Rainey didn’t dare touch it. Good night, he barely mouthed, a faint wiggle in his pinky.
    Mrs. Stump glowered, then looked at the couple who now had their round eyes set on me. “Mr. and Mrs. Emery, it won’t be much longer now.” She handed them the mug. “Fetch yourself some water if ya need to.” Looking around, she yelled, “Henny, where’d ya go? . . . Git in here!”
    Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Henny slip into the woods.

Chapter 6
    M rs. Stump caught the folds of my long cotton dress and pulled me inside before I could protest. Not four feet from the screen door, Lena was stretched out on the floor atop a stained tick-striped mattress, whimpering. Another long mattress butted up to the far wall, and a sagging brown couch missing a leg hugged another. The little air in the room was soured with mash, hotly baked, and stirred by the youngest Stump boy, Charles. The one-year-old slobbered out a lost tune as he crawled back and forth across the blackened wood floor.
    Above, a single bulb added to the harsh light spilling across the kneeling midwife, who hovered over Lena. She dabbed at Lena’s mouth with a whiskey-soaked rag and spoke softly. “C’mon. You gotta let this baby go, girlie. Push, ” Oretta urged.
    Lena cried out, “I ain’t giving away my