Gideon
who couldn’t read, vacuums to niggers who had dirt floors, and insurance to anyone for anything anytime. People in Julienne weren’t too interested in insurance. What was broke they could mostly fix, and when it came to dying, well, death didn’t seem to worry them much. Life seemed much more troublesome.
    Enos still went out every morning looking to make his commission. He still returned every evening with dust on his shoes and whiskey on his breath but nothing in his pockets. Rayette didn’t pay much attention to her father’s daily routine. He had never been very affectionate. Nor, for that matter, was he particularly talkative. He would not at her in the morning over breakfast, and he would nod at her when he came back home. Sometimes, after he would flop down on the big, comfortable chair in the living room, his shoes off, his toes poking through the holes of socks that had been darned too many times, he would say to her, “Get the jar.” The jar was given an honored place in the kitchen—on the second shelf, to the right of the icebox, right next to all the homemade jams—and it was kept full of moonshine whiskey. Every evening, when Enos would sit in that chair, he would hold the jar up to his mouth and drink from it until he had no choice but to sit because he could not gather his legs up underneath him. Once, when Rayette was seven, Enos had passed out cold, sliding half out of the chair, his legs stretched out onto the floor, his head resting on the seat cushion. The jar had fallen with him, and Rayette had gone to see what all the fuss was about. She picked it up and took a drink, a deep, full gulp, and the force of the whiskey hit her as hard as if she’d run straight into a brick wall. She choked and gasped and made so much noise that Enos rose from his stupor. The first thing he saw when his eyes finally opened was his little daughter, holding his beloved jar, letting its even more beloved contents spill onto the floor. He reacted the way he reacted to most things when he’d been drinking—violently. Enos slapped Rayette across the face, hard enough to make her head snap back. Hard enough to leave the imprint of his hand visible on her cheek for most of the week. Hard enough so she never forgot the hurt of it. Never stopped being afraid of him. Hard enough so that she never stopped hating him.
    That was not the first time he had hit Rayette, and it most certainly wasn’t the last. By the time Rayette was fourteen and was laughing with Billy Taylor every night up in the old tree house that Billy’s daddy had built, laughing and naked and tingling between her legs when she let Billy stroke her and kiss her all over, she had been beaten many more times than she could count. Enos had twice broken her nose with the force of his fist. Once he’d broken her eye socket. When Doc Greeby had come to the house that time and wanted to know what happened. Enos said she’d been playing baseball with the boys, was catching for them because no one wanted to be catcher, and been hit in the face with a swinging bat. The bruise was so bad the doctor didn’t even question it. Alone at night, she sometimes wondered how her father could hit her so hard that his hand could cause the same damage as a baseball bat. But she didn’t wonder too often, because then she’d also have to ask herself how he could kick her down the basement stairs, which he did once, and how he could light a match and hold it to her bare back. which he did twice.
    If Rayette started wondering, she’d have to wonder about her mother, too, and she didn’t like to do that, either.
    Sulene Boudreau, born Sulene Jackson, was a saint. At least that’s what everybody in town said. When Rayette would go into Julienne’s general store, run by Abigail Brock, that’s what Abigail said every time. She would pat Rayette on the head and say, “You know, honey, you are almost as pretty as your momma was. And your momma was the prettiest girl I ever

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