The Well and the Mine by Gin Phillips Page B

the eighteen years I’d known her. Got to where it seemed like another woman pulling out her sewing. She pulled her fingers back from her mouth and narrowed her eyes at me. “But you ain’t talkin’?”
    “About it?” I breathed out, ran my fingers over my hair. “Don’t see no reason for it. It’s done. That baby’s in a better place.”
    “What about his mama?”
    I’d thought about that, but I’d ladled it into a jar and sealed it up tight. “Ain’t my concern. That’s for the sheriff.”
    I’d got the preserves done—pear and fig—and pickles’d be done the next day. Enough to last through next spring, plus a jar or two for Albert’s brothers who were bound to come by looking for whatever they could get. Just had the beans left to do.

    Tess WE COULD GO OVER THE LIST ONLY IN OUR HEADS during church—no pencils and paper—because you had to sit straight and pay attention the whole time or you’d get a pinch on your arm from Mama. If I was caught writing, Papa’d probably whip me when we got home. Virgie was too old for being whipped.
    It was awful hard to sit still, because even though there was a breeze outside, all the bodies heated up the one room like so many person-sized fireplaces. We all sweated except for Papa; most everybody’d picked up a fan from the stack by the door on the way in. Square with little folded pleats, they advertised Garrett as “sweet, mild snuff,” which made it sound like taffy or mints. During prayer, all you could hear was those paper fans whuh-whuhing through the air, and the old men hacking up phlegm. (I asked Papa about that one time and he said it was the mines that did it, made your spit hard and solid where it caught in your throat. Then Mama came in and he had to stop explaining because she didn’t care for us to discuss spit and the like.)
    The Baptist church had a stained-glass window, but we had no color in ours. The steeple had been reattached with metal bolts after it got blown off once, but other than that little reminder of some sort of excitement a while back, it was a dull building. Just two columns of pews, small windows, plain wood floors. Nothing to look at but the people.
    There were lots of hats and nice dresses and shiny shoes with ankle straps. Virgie wore a two-piece green dress that Mama said was starting to fit too tight. It was hard for anything to fit her too tight—she didn’t stick out anywhere. Mama’s corset, which Virgie helped cinch, made her seem softer and rounder under her navy blue dress and jacket. Papa just looked uncomfortable in his tie and white shirt that Mama ironed early in the morning along with the tablecloth. Mostly the other men looked as itchy as Papa in their suits, but the women looked scrubbed and pleased in their getups. We’d had plenty of time to look at everybody since most of the church had come up asking about the baby and wondering how we were doing, especially me. But most of them hardly looked at me when they asked how I was holding up, and nobody let me get more than a word out before they asked what it looked like and how we got it out and who we thought did it. Papa sat there not saying a word, and Mama answered mostly with shrugs and tight smiles and “Couldn’t say.”
    The preacher was friendly looking with white hair puffed up like a cloud and a young face. He led singing, too, better than most of them, his big, deep voice settling in my belly like a swallow of hot soup. He’d come in town for a contracted meeting, so we’d be back at church most nights, probably. Maybe he’d be up at Winfield or Eldridge some of those nights, and we might stay home, depending.
    The first song we sang was the bleeding sheep song.
Tho your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow
Tho they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool…
    We sang about washing a lot. Water and blood.
    Lola Lowe wasn’t there. Other women were, with their babies in plain sight, and I checked them off the list in my