To Make My Bread by Grace Lumpkin

branch, and after that it was only a little distance to the road.
    The church, a small log building, was up a short trail at the left. Across the road, on a slope, was the burying ground. Emma’s husband and the three children who had come between Kirk and Bonnie were laid away there. There were no flowers in the burying ground. The graves lay flat and plain on the slope. The dead were dead and there was enough to do caring for the living. There was not a woman around that country who did not have one child or more in the ground. When a woman was ripe she gave birth, and if the child died, it did not help much, after the first days of sorrow, to weep. What was done was done.
    Sunday School did not last very long. When it was over the women stayed on the benches inside and talked. Bonnie hung around Minnie Hawkins and Sally McClure and some of the older girls. They were near the window and outside stood Kirk and Basil and Jesse McDonald. The boys pretended that they were interested in talk, but the girls knew well enough why they were there.
    Bonnie moved up close to Minnie, who was talking to the others in a low voice so the women wouldn’t hear. Ora was eying the girls. She was not sure she wanted her Sally talking so intimately with Minnie Hawkins, though she had nothing against Minnie, not anything she could show. Minnie had a beautiful white complexion. Her blue eyes and black hair made her the prettiest girl around the valley. She was plump where the others were rather skinny. Boys and men eyed her whenever she came into any gathering. And this perhaps was the reason the women did not trust her very much. Then they remembered her mother. But the very fact that the boys and men were interested in Minnie made her more interesting to the younger girls. Ora’s Sally would have followed her anywhere.
    Minnie felt Bonnie’s face nosing at her shoulder. She lifted her hand, laid it on Bonnie’s cheek, and not ungently pushed her away.
    â€œThis talk ain’t for young ones,” she said. The other girls laughed. Even Sally, who was Bonnie’s own kin, laughed. The little girl went back to Emma feeling left out and disgraced.
    The men stood outside in the cleared place in front of the church. John had slipped away from Emma and hung behind Granpap away from the boys, though they probably would not have noticed him since they had plenty to hold their attention. There was a song they had sung after the preacher in church that said:

    It was an easy song to remember and half under his breath but loud enough for the girls to hear, Kirk with his hat pushed on one side, perky and insolent, sang softly into the window, which had no panes, but was an opening for light to come in:

    Halfway through, Jesse McDonald joined in, singing low like Kirk. Even Basil joined in on the last line. But he kept one eye on Jim Hawkins, who was standing around in front with the other men.
    John was giving most of his attention to the boys and he hadn’t heard the men talking. Just then Granpap, who was sitting on a log behind John, spoke out so loud even the boys hushed and listened.
    â€œDavid danced before the Lord,” Granpap said.
    The preacher hadn’t yet come for midday meeting. Hal Swain, because he could read, carried on Sunday School.
    â€œI’m not saying it’s wrong—nor right,” Hal Swain shook his head. “But the preacher’ll be telling us it’s wrong before the day’s out.”
    â€œLike he told us last year and the year before that,” Granpap added.
    â€œAnd next winter, if it’s a good winter, we’ll be at it same as ever.” Fraser McDonald spoke up from the steps where he was whittling a green Judas tree stick.
    â€œIf I thought it was wrong,” Jim Martin, who was twice as tall as his little wife, Jennie, boomed down from where he was standing by the church, “I’d quit. But I haven’t ever seen the wrong. We danced in my