he was bullish and leathered and she smelled like Pine-Sol. She never yelled and she never smiled and she never gave anything to me for free. Trying to love her was like walking in a minefield, except I was too young to even appreciate that metaphor and so I just felt skiddish mostly.

Miss Reenie always had a way of reminding me where the line was (as if I knew there was a line there to begin with). But she and I have different histories, I guess, and what made sense to her, seemed just plain rude to me. I wondered about color. I remember afternoons coming home from grade school, me and Fin would pass by gangs of white boys throwin’ stones down onto the colored girls… from up offa the Choptawk River Bridge…throwing stones and throwing words that hit me hard…like gunfire. I knew I should do something, but I didn’t.

I just stood there frozen, against … how I was raised. On that day, at 14 years old, I finally knew shame and I carried it dutifully, more than my share. I wondered, what am I tied to? What am I tied to? Meemaw always used to say to granddaddy...

Pappy, I believe if you had any more apron string tied around you, you could hang y'self from the outhouse roof and still have plenty left to give y'self a good wipe before croakin!

I suppose she meant he was a mama’s boy…or somethin like that. Maybe I’m tied to this place the way he was to his mama… this place that cradled me like a mother when I had none of my own to speak of. Odd thing is though...my daddy was a yankee, strange man, strange views in these parts. He marched on Washington and taught us about Dr. King and told us if we ever disrespected a negro, he would hang us from a live oak tree so we would learn the lesson.

If I had picked up a stone and thrown it at one of those white boys, would I have earned the right? At least a colored girl knows the war she’s in. I know now why Miss Reenie would never take anything from me, not even my gratitude. To thank her would have made her feel… beholden. Beholden to a white woman, a fate worse than...

- from the play Miss Reenie, (part of the The Fin and Euba canon)