DEAR GOD,

I spend my wedding day running from the oldest boy. He twelve. His mama died in his arms and he don’t want to hear
nothing bout no new one. He pick up a rock and laid my head open. The blood run all down tween my breasts. His daddy
say Don’t do that! But that’s all he say. He got four children, instead of three, two boys and two girls. The girls hair ain’t
been comb since their mammy died. I tell him I’ll just have to shave it off. Start fresh. He say bad luck to cut a woman
hair. So after I bandage my head best I can and cook dinner—they have a spring, not a well, and a wood stove look like a
truck—I start trying to untangle hair. They only six and eight and they cry. They scream. They cuse me of murder. By ten
o’clock I’m done. They cry theirselves to sleep. But I don’t cry. I lay there thinking bout Nettie while he on top of me,
wonder if she safe. And then I think bout Shug Avery. I know what he doing to me he done to Shug Avery and maybe she
like it. I put my arm around him.