Her daddy, my Grandpa Lambert, nearly had a fit because he said there had been bad blood between the Lamberts and the Mullinses for a hundred years. Five months after he left, I was born on the top of Ruby Mountain.Then, when I was three years old, Vernon Mullins, a coal miner for the Ruby Valley Coal Company, started courting my mama. My own daddy, who was not married to my mama, had gone off to the war in Europe in December 1941, and was never heard from again. As we sat there all crowded around the table with the smell of coffee and the clatter of dishes, it waslike we were a real family as normal as any other. Then I picked up my five-subject composition notebook and two number-two pencils, and I was ready for high school.Downstairs, Mama had made pancakes and sausages.

I was plain, and that's all there was to it.I put my perfectly pink lipstick into my genuine plastic pocketbook along with my compact. My complexion was kinda sallow and my eyes pale blue, like Mama's. I weighed only ninety-five pounds after a long drink of water, and I was only five feet tall in thick soles. I slipped a pair of shorts on under my dress because I had absolutely no hips at all, and the shorts rounded me out some.Then I took the bobby pins out of my brown hair and brushed curls around my face, dabbed on a bit of lipstick and compact makeup, and stood back to look at myself in the mirror. When we were gone, she could go back to sleep, undisturbed, for the first time in three months.I had my school clothes neatly laid out on a chair-a dark plaid dress with a straight skirt, and black-and-white saddle oxfords with bobby sox. Mama always did that on the first day of school to show her good intentions. She wandered downstairs, where Mama was fixing breakfast for everybody. Then Beau and Luther, my half brothers,who were trying to act like their daddy, did the same thing.I hurried back to the bedroom, where Phyllis turned over in our big double bed, mumbled something, and hit the floor. The next thing I knew, Vern, my stepfather, was pounding on the bathroom door, telling me to get a move on. Nobody could have heard me, but as soon as I started running water the whole house came alive. I got up, careful not to wake my half sister, Phyllis, and tiptoed out into the hall, and into the bathroom. I could feel it.It was real early on my first day of high school in the fall of 1956.

Something wonderful was going to happen today. It was like the rush you get in the movies when the cavalry comes charging over the horizon blowing their bugles to save the settlers. ONE I rolled over and opened my eyes and a sudden thrill went through me.

Weeping Willow by Ruth White