“Tante Lou, Miss Emma, Jefferson is dead. It is only a matter of week, maybe a couple of months—but he’s already dead. The past twenty-one years, we’ve all done what we could for Jefferson. He’s dead now. And I can’t raise the dead. All I can do is try to keep the others from ending up like this—but he’s gone from us. There’s nothing I can do anymore, nothing any of us can do anymore.”

           “You going with us up the quarter,” my aunt said, as though I hadn’t said a word. “You going up there with us, Grant, or you don’t sleep in this house tonight.”

            I stood back from the table and looked at both of the. I clamped my jaws so tight the veins in my neck felt as if they would burst. I wanted to scream at my aunt; I was screaming inside. I had told her many, many times how much I hated this place and all I wanted to go was get away. I had told her I was no teacher. I hated teaching, and I was just running in place here. But she had not heard me before, and I knew that no matter how loud I screamed, she would not hear me now.

            “I’m getting my coat, and I’ll be ready to go,” she said.