2

2 Hattie turns her attention to Ada Mae sitting at the table all gnarled up from working in a factory as a clicker who cut out leather shoe shapes with a knife what sort of job was that for forty years? the sort that gave her dowager's hump, rheumatism, that's what she still straightens and dyes her hair, currently an unseemly grey at the roots, pulled back from a face that's gone slack except for a mouth that holds all her misery like a drawstring tightened around a pouch

she's talking across the table to Sonny who's got emphysema, rattles as noisily as the washboard Slim used to play, worked down the mine at Bedlington until it closed, then as a barman, retired a few months before the smoking ban came in, too late, he'd inhaled more nicotine than oxygen from lunchtime to closing time for twenty-odd years Hattie's as likely to outlast him as him her all of her family live in the diseased atmospheres that wash about the centrally-heated homes they insist on living in greenhouses for bad bacteria her usually windswept Long Room is too hot for her now, what with all body heat on top of the fire at full roar and cackle the farmhouse has got so many cracks in the window frames it's usually warmer outside than in, keeps a person long-living and weather resistant, she tells the complainers, nothing wrong with being cold, she's been cold her whole life living in this remote part of the country near the Borders number of times she's come downstairs to mounds of snow under the Long Room windows after a blizzard's blown in shovels it out again, if it doesn't melt beforehand (best not to have carpets) she's not against a mild log fire, mind, heating the way God intended, the shirkers in the family complain when she gets them chopping up wood for a few hours in the woodshed when they visit when Hattie looks at her children these days she sees a pair of crippled wrecks who rejected life on the farm where they'd have stayed fit in body and mind she's only ever wanted the best for them, but children don't listen to their parents, do they? she admits it was tough for them growing up, she understands why they wanted to leave but once Ada Mae ended up working in a factory for so long and hating it, and Sonny went down a mine to work; they should have come back to live the outside life, to use their bodies as God intended, working on the land, and investing in an inheritance neither deserves

Ada Mae and Sonny got shoved down into mud once when they were young at the winter fair one minute they were standing behind her, eagerly awaiting the candy floss she was buying, the next they were on the ground covered in mud and tears the culprit had disappeared into the crowds if it'd happened on the farm, she'd have gone after the bastard with an axe and beheaded him with the strength of a woman who's been chopping firewood since her father gave her an axe for her tenth birthday she'd have thrown him in the trough for the hogs to demolish all traces, who'll go through bone like butter she'd have thrown carrots and cabbage in while she was at it (meat and two veg) any serial killer worth their salt knows you just feed your victims to starving sows no need for the palaver of digging graves in the woods in the middle of the night, or dissolving bodies in metal drums full of acid, like on those American crime documentaries that make her feel grateful to be living so far away from such goings-on Slim was less sympathetic when his children came home with their 'sob stories', as he put it, such as when a child pinched Ada Mae's arm to see if she bruised, or scratched her with a compass to see if she could bleed, and if so, what was the colour? or the boys asked Sonny if his colour could be scrubbed off, held him down, applied a scrubbing brush to see for themselves rise above it, Slim said as they sat around the table at teatime to have a glass of cold milk and jam sandwiches in the one hour of the day they convened as a family before more farm work beckoned cow-milking being first on the list it's teasing, that's all, Slim told them, don't come crying to me about it – if someone attacks you, attack them back and move on y'all ain't living in the segregated society I come from where you ain't got no rights y'all ain't got a fifteen-year-old younger brother called Sonny who was soaked in coal oil before he was strung up on a sugarberry tree and set alight while still alive in front of thousands cheering

a boy called Sonny whose murder by mob was photographed and sent across the country as a postcard because folks were so damned proud of witnessing his lynching y'all didn't discover that the woman who cried rape gave birth nine months later to a child so white, even her daddy came round to your daddy's house to apologize in person y'all ain't been through that now, have ya? so negroes, please, hold it down Hattie asked him to tone it down with the stories, it was scaring their children and would make them hate themselves, he said they needed to toughen up and what did she know about it with her being high-yaller and living in the back of beyond? you liked that I'm high-yaller, as you put it, so don't you go using it against me, Slim he said the Negro had reason to be angry, having spent four hundred years in America enslaved, victimized and kept downtrodden it was a powder keg waiting to explode she replied they were a million miles from America and it's different here, Slim, not perfect but better he said his little brother Sonny was the children's uncle and they needed to know what happened to him and about the history of a country that allowed him to be murdered, and it's your duty to face up to racial issues, Hattie, because our children are darker than you and aren't going to have it as easy they had these conversations until she was able to see things from his point of view they both followed the news about the civil rights protests, Slim said the Negro needed Malcolm X and Martin Luther King when they were assassinated within three years of each other he disappeared into the hills for a few days Hattie saw that neither of her children liked being coloured and she didn't know what to do about it Ada Mae painted herself as a white child in her drawings, and from the age of twelve Sonny never wanted to be seen with his father beyond the village, hated having to go to the cattle fairs with him as a teenager and he begged her not to bring his father to school events

she overheard Sonny telling a boy whose father dropped him home one day that Slim, who was leading sheep out to pasture, was a hired labourer Slim would have given his life for his children.