Chapter One

In the grocery store, the floors shone like hot wax, reminding me of school days and stories of boys with mirrors on their shoes. I was feeling tired in my seventh month of pregnancy as I rolled my watermelon belly down the produce aisle. The sticky sweet smell of fruit made me sick. It, too, reminded me of my youth.

"The fruit doesn't fall far from the tree, Jessica," my ma used to say. And I never questioned her about this, although I didn't fully understand the expression. Ma had an expression for everything, it seemed.

I was thirteen years old the summer that I came into womanhood. It was hot and sticky that year—the kind of weather that made you want to peel off all your clothes and lie beneath a shade tree somewhere. I remember that heat and the flies and mosquitoes. And the buzzing. The unbearable buzzing ... It was a bad year for insects. Humidity brings them out, I reckon.

It was during this year, 1976, that I became familiar with the ways of women. Or perhaps I should say that I learned the direction and the role that most women within Maitland Valley were expected to take, back in those days. Weren't much for folks in the valley to do except work hard, play hard, and sleep. It was grown-up play, in particular, that had me curious. And frightened. I was so terrified, and yet intrigued, by the notions of sex and all of the consequences that surrounded "having sex." With adolescent hormones racing, my imagination provoked near nightmares! And the mere thoughts of becoming like my mom had me sitting 'neath the moon spilling my guts to God&md