GodPretty in the Tobacco Field by Kim Michele Richardson

myself a kissing fortune. I peered out the window. Gunnar’s old tobacco barn sagged to its shadows and seemed to buckle into the earth. I drew the barn, detailing and shading just right, down to the tender poppies that hugged its weathered oak boards.
    I cut out another square of paper for someone else. I crimped the creases counterclockwise. Carefully, I sketched another barn and an automobile, adding chickens onto the special fortune-teller with some pretty tail feathers, fat wattles, and fancy combs. I drew a tiny basket onto the last fold. After an hour of shading and perfecting the hens and basket, I pressed it to my heart, then put it inside Mama’s pocketbook to cure along with mine. All my heartache seemed to disappear with it, leaving me lighter, and the tangled thoughts of the baby business and Gunnar’s meanness gone.
    Moonlight painted soft stripes across floors and I placed the purse on the sill to bask in its beams. Gunnar dared not come into my room. He considered it a breach of Southern manners, and had never once crossed the threshold since he brought me here. Knocking or yelling from outside the door was his calling card, but still I had to be careful; you never knew with a smart, eagle-eyed executioner.
    I fell asleep only to wake hours later in a sweat of tightly tangled sheets. I sat up and rubbed my face. It was wet from tears. I’d been dreaming of Patsy and heard her crying, and in the background there had been another noise: hens cooing.
    Despite it being the first night of August, I pulled on my quilt jacket and buried myself deeper under the covers.
    Before the first sparrows could gather in the bushes, I slid out of bed, wishing I could slide right back in and take what my dreams had cheated me of. Shaking off the slumber, I dressed, smiling as I stuffed a tiny cheesecloth-wrapped package full of seeds into my pocket. Then I took Mama’s purse off the windowsill, pulling out the fortunes I’d made.
    My finest, especially the one with the chickens. I felt hopeful. And as usual, more thoughts flowed and I took my pencil to each of the flaps, writing two names on the one I would keep and only one name onto the other I would give. I slipped them under the seeds in case Gunnar had his sneaky eyes on.
    But Gunnar was gone. He must’ve left early to work in the barn, so I hurried into the kitchen, grabbed a piece of bread, slathered on butter, and downed it. I buttered two more pieces, then stuck them inside my old Three States tobacco tin that Gunnar’d given me to scrub and use for my lunch pail.
    Dawn gathered in the hills as I sat down on a quilt next to a tobacco row and worked the latest paper fortune-teller I’d made, stretching my thumbs and pointing fingers inside the four-pocket slits. Every minute or so I would stop, cock my ears, or look around for my uncle.
    Landing on number six, I opened the triangle flap and peered inside at the boys’ names. Rainey, it predicted. “Bur Hancock, three, Rainey Ford, four,” I whispered, and let my fingers gallop the folds again. I blew wisps of hair off my sticky forehead, the humidity making them clump. “Rainey, six, Bur, five,” it read.
    â€œOne more Rainey . . . c’mon seven .” I closed my prayerful eyes and mumbled, lighting into the fortune-teller again, knowing I wouldn’t be satisfied until I reached my favorite number—seven—feeling foolish and carefree, but enjoying the tiny break before another long working day.
    Startled by the sound of rustling grass, I twisted around. Baby Jane Stump circled a tobacco stalk. The sun rose over the mountain behind her, sending fog-soaked rays tumbling to the fields.
    I blew out my breath. “You scared me, Baby Jane.” I squinted up at her, gathered Gunnar’s old shirt tight across my chest. “Quit sneaking around like that. I thought it was Gunnar. Lordy-jones, you nearly popped the hairs off my head.” I