Cotton and Smoke: Chapter 2 Leaving

“She don’t half know what to expect. Katie’s ma stood with her arms loose at her sides watching her oldest daughter walk down the road hand in hand with her new husband. 
“Rafe does. He’s already got a place to sharecrop. They’ll do alright.” Her father shuffled back up the steps to the house. “Come on in. I’m hungry.” 
Her ma stayed put until the couple was out of her sight.  She covered her face with her hands and cried as quietly and as hard she could trying to get the hurt out fast. Fourteen years was not enough time to teach a girl everything she needed to know to be a wife and mother. Look at herself with babies always coming, mouths to feed, and him to keep happy. Girls ought not become wives until they’re grown, definitely not mothers while they’re still babies, but it keeps happening. Dora shooed some stray hens from the steps with her foot. 

    “Get on. Get out the way.” The chickens squawked loudly as they scattered, their wings raised in the air to slow their fall.
    “Get on. Get out the way.” They squawked loudly as they scattered, their wings raised in the air to slow their fall. She turned again, hand above her eyes, to look past the darkness of the trees, but her girl was gone, gone into womanhood like every other girl before her, gone before she was ready. Lord, the girl might as well died. She wasn’t coming home again. Maybe a visit, but not home. Not there when she woke everyday, not there so her ma could tuck her in again until a quilt. The woman jerked her hands away from her face and ran a few steps toward the road.
    “Franklin,” she hollered.  “I forgot to give her the quilts.” She turned and ran through the house past the children playing on the floor and the baby in his box.              “Franklin! I forgot to give her the quilts.”

    Franklin sat at the table cleaning soot from the lamp chimneys. “It’s too late now.” He shook out the rag and refolded it to find a cleaner spot to use. 

    “It’s only September, not even cold yet. Maybe they’ll come back before frost sets in. The girl is gone, Lucinda. You can’t change that.” He looked at her. The lines around his mouth were tight, but his cheeks were wet, and she could see damp spots on his cuff. 

    Lucinda squeezed the tears from her eyes with the butts of her palms and adjusted her apron. Franklin was right. Life is full of leaving, one leaving after another until we leave this earth and move on to heaven, and the best we can do in the meantime is just keep going. Tears don’t help. They just get in the way of doing what needs to be done.