Free GodPretty in the Tobacco Field by Kim Michele Richardson

black dress pushed.
    I sat on the hard chair next to Gunnar inside a small office, swinging my nervous legs.
    â€œI am someone, and the only one,” he answered.
    She asked him lots more questions about church—religion— and faith healing. With each of Gunnar’s answers, her mouth cramped until it looked like her stretched lips might crumble like bad bricks.
    â€œWe feel she should be baptized Catholic right away—the one and only true faith,” the woman said. “It’s your duty and the only way to rid her of her parents’ demons.”
    Gunnar’s jaw twitched on his reddening face. “No better than serpent faith. I’ll raise her as I see fit,” he growled, “and not with your idol-worshiping statues, hoodoo candles, and Latin tongues!”
    My knees slapped each other, hammered up and down. Faster and faster. The room got quiet; then the lady flattened her bone-white hands on the desk. She asked for “papers” the way Gunnar sometimes talked about having a title paper for an automobile trade. Without missing a beat, she’d grabbed a switch beside her chair, reached over, and lit my wild legs with it. Gunnar slammed his fist down on her desk and stormed out, leaving me bawling.
    A long week would pass before he returned with some papers that he gave the lady in exchange for me.
    I remembered being a little scared and curious about the tall man I’d only glimpsed a handful of times. But that day, I clutched his big hand, eager to escape the grim-looking lady.
    Even though living with Gunnar had been a nightmare, those weeks inside the orphan asylum proved no fairy tale either. Still, I had to wonder if it might’ve been better if he’d left me.
    Right away his big house struck me as too big for only him and me. Mama and Daddy had a small home with useful things that didn’t have a particular place. Gunnar’s house was high and mighty with stuff collecting a gray dusty death in darker spots. Flashes of fancy linens, silver and china in fancy floral wallpapered rooms that nodded a power over the visitor, but never got used. Worse was the firefly quiet, no radio, no song, supper chatter or laughter, just grunts and grumblings, his heavy footfall, and the clinking bourbon bottle. Wasn’t but a week in his house when I’d started to miss the sound of the other orphan kids.

    Picking up my step, I tried to put more distance between me and the Emerys.
    I caught myself humming “Walkin’ After Midnight” as I swept down the mountain’s second switchback, pounded the verses down and around the next, and another, until I was helplessly screaming the chorus past the Emerys’ shiny automobile and all the way to the bottom of Stump Mountain.
    I couldn’t stop now that I had it back. The song looped, grated the rawness inside me like the day I’d lost them forever and the graveyard bird had stolen the old song for good.
    â€œ ‘ I’m always walkin’ after midnight searching for you! ’” I barked on Royal land until hot tears bent me over, slapped at my rocking shoulders.
    I thought about Mr. Stump slowly dying from the drinking same as my daddy.
    I prayed for baby Eve to live.
    I wondered if Lena would forever feel the cord-cutting like me, and where her angry fist would land someday, somewhere, on some other road out of here.
    Lifting the hem of my dress, I fanned my hot face, wiped my eyes. Blinking, I caught a glimpse of rustling through the trees on the side. I straightened, shaded my eyes against the sun’s glare, and spotted Carter Crockett’s red ball cap bobbing, flashing against the leaves like a lightning bug.
    Henny called out to me and came running from a thicket in the other direction. She latched hold of my arm. “What happened?” she asked, out of breath. “Tell me about the baby—”
    I jerked away. “Not telling you nothing, miss