Her Own Place Read Free

her dress, but that didn’t bother her. The pink slip was a fine one. It was silk. Her mama bought good underthings.
    After church services one Sunday, a gust of wind had blownthe preacher’s wife’s new crepe dress up and the words “Not For Sale” on the back of her homemade petticoat flashed in the full view of onlookers. No bleach or lye wash in the world could take out the lettering on the white cotton government flour bag. After that Mae Lee and her mama never wore a homemade petticoat again.
    Mae Lee scrubbed her even-set teeth with Arm & Hammer baking soda mixed with a little salt until they glistened, nibbled on fresh sprigs of mint to freshen her breath, and waited.
    When Jeff Barnes came, he was in a uniform. He was so good-looking. She thought she’d die if she couldn’t marry him.
    Under the watchful eyes of her father he sat on the davenport as close to her as it was proper, stealing occasional glances at her until it was time to leave.
    The day they were married down at the county courthouse, Mae Lee was determined not to notice that while her mama grinned broadly, her father didn’t smile once. All she could see and care about was the handsome young soldier at her side.
    The young couple spent their wedding night in Jeff Barnes’s mama’s company bedroom. Mae Lee put the small valise her mama had packed for her under the four-poster bed. She ran her fingers across the pretty cotton chenille bedspread. “This is mighty pretty,” she said, her voice shaking. Her new husband grinned. “So are you, Mae Lee.”
    The next day Mae Lee stood alongside the highway waiting for the Greyhound bus with her new husband, tall and proud. She wore the same outfit that she had been married in, a softpowder blue suit with matching blue ribbon streamers on her white straw hat. Her long brown hair was swept under in a pageboy style that framed her light golden skin and wide-set eyes. Her soft chin was determinedly set to be cheerful as she clung to the tall, handsome young man’s arm.
    Mae Lee was glad that the bus came quickly. She struggled for something to say, and so did he. Her husband kissed her good-bye and boarded the bus. She waved good-bye until the bus disappeared from her view, then removed the hat and picked up her valise. With her straw hat in her hand she walked home to her parents’ house.

: 3 :
    With husbands, sons, and even some daughters away at war, many farmers were forced to let their crops go. In some rural communities, it was almost as if nobody lived there anymore.
    Mae Lee’s daddy was determined not to let the crabgrass and jimsonweeds overtake his cotton crop, and, as in the year before, he had his daughter’s help. Only now there was more farm work to do. His newly married daughter had insisted on her own additional farm crops. She had talked with her father long into the night about the best cash crops to plant. When she decided she would also farm sweet potatoes and peanuts in addition to her few acres of cotton, her daddy forewarned she’d have a hard time with the hoeing to keep the grass out of all those crops.
    In the early spring, with her daddy’s help, she’d bedded her seed sweet potatoes for plants and had plants ready to transplant into the fields as soon as they had late spring and early summer rains.
    While his daughter hoed, Sam Hudson plowed. He worked his mule Maude in the morning, Molly in the afternoon. When he caught up with the plowing, he helped his daughter. They hoed from early dawn to sundown, stopping only for a noonday dinner break to eat the food that Vergie Hudson cooked before going to her job in the munitions plant. At day’s end, Mae Lee would milk Starlight and help her daddy feed and water the livestock.
    Mae Lee was always sure to be home around noontime. That was when the mailman usually arrived. Every day for almost a month she’d rushed to the mailbox hoping there would be a