...and that's when I get to wondering, what would happen if I told her she something good, ever day?

I come home that morning, after I been fired, and stood outside my house with my new work shoes on. The shoes my mama paid a month's worth a light bill for. I guess that's when I understood what shame was and the color of it too. Shame ain't black, like dirt, like I always thought it was. Shame be the color of a new white uniform your mother ironed all night to pay for, white without a smudge or a speck a work-dirt on it.

She dumb.” I sigh. “But she ain’t stupid.

it always sound scarier when a hollerer talk soft.

I intend to stay on her like hair on soap.

It weren’t too loo long before I seen something in me, had changed. A bitter seed was planted inside of me. And I just didn’t feel so, accepting, anymore.

And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.