But she knew their names. She knew, and covered her ears with her fists to keep from hearingthem come from his mouth.

　　Janey heated some milk and poured it in a bowl next to a plate of cornbread. After some coaxing,Baby Suggs came to the table and sat down. She crumbled the bread into the hot milk anddiscovered she was hungrier than she had ever been in her life and that was saying something.

　　"They going to miss this?""No," said Janey. "Eat all you want; it's ours.""Anybody else live here?""Just me. Mr. Woodruff, he does the outside chores. He comes by two, three days a week.""Just you two?""Yes, ma'am. I do the cooking and washing.""Maybe your people know of somebody looking for help.""I be sure to ask, but I know they take women at the slaughterhouse.""Doing what?""I don't know.""Something men don't want to do, I reckon.""My cousin say you get all the meat you want, plus twenty-five cents the hour. She make summer sausage."Baby Suggs lifted her hand to the top of her head. Money? Money? They would pay her moneyevery single day? Money?

　　"Where is this here slaughterhouse?" she asked.

　　Before Janey could answer, the Bodwins came in to the kitchen with a grinning Mr. Garner behind.

　　Undeniably brother and sister, both dressed in gray with faces too young for their snow-white hair.

　　"Did you give her anything to eat, Janey?" asked the brother.

　　"Yes, sir.""Keep your seat, Jenny," said the sister, and that good news got better.

　　When they asked what work she could do, instead of reeling off the hundreds of tasks she hadperformed, she asked about the slaughterhouse. She was too old for that, they said.

　　"She's the best cobbler you ever see," said Mr. Garner.

　　"Cobbler?" Sister Bodwin raised her black thick eyebrows. "Who taught you that?""Was a slave taught me," said Baby Suggs.

　　"New boots, or just repair?""New, old, anything.""Well," said Brother Bodwin, "that'll be something, but you'll need more.""What about taking in wash?" asked Sister Bodwin.

　　"Yes, ma'am.""Two cents a pound.""Yes, ma'am. But where's the in?""What?""You said 'take in wash.' Where is the 'in'? Where I'm going to be.""Oh, just listen to this, Jenny," said Mr. Garner. "These two angels got a house for you. Place theyown out a ways." It had belonged to their grandparents before they moved in town. Recently it. hadbeen rented out to a whole parcel of Negroes, who had left the state. It was too big a house for Jenny alone, they said (two rooms upstairs, two down), but it was the best and the only thing theycould do. In return for laundry, some seamstress work, a little canning and so on (oh shoes, too),they would permit her to stay there. Provided she was clean. The past parcel of colored wasn't.

　　Baby Suggs agreed to the situation, sorry to see the money go but excited about a house withstepsnever mind she couldn't climb them. Mr. Garner told the Bodwins that she was a right finecook as well as a fine cobbler and showed his belly and the sample on his feet. Everybody laughed.

　　"Anything you need, let us know," said the sister. "We don't hold with slavery, even Garner'skind.""Tell em, Jenny. You live any better on any place before mine?" "No, sir," she said. "No place.""How long was you at Sweet Home?""Ten year, I believe.""Ever go hungry?""No, sir.""Cold?""No, sir.""Anybody lay a hand on you?""No, sir.""Did I let Halle buy you or not?""Yes, sir, you did," she said, thinking, But you got my boy and I'm all broke down. You be rentinghim out to pay for me way after I'm gone to Glory.

　　Woodruff, they said, would carry her out there, they said, and all three disappeared through thekitchen door.

　　"I have to fix the supper now," said Janey.

　　"I'll help," said Baby Suggs. "You too short to reach the fire." It was dark when Woodruff clickedthe horse into a trot. He was a young man with a heavy beard and a burned place on his jaw thebeard did not hide.

　　"You born up here?" Baby Suggs asked him.

　　"No, ma'am. Virginia. Been here a couple years.""I see.""You going to a nice house. Big too. A preacher and his family was in there. Eighteen children.""Have mercy. Where they go?""Took off to Illinois. Bishop Allen gave him a congregation up there. Big.""What churches around here? I ain't set foot in one in ten years." "How come?""Wasn't none. I dislike the place I was before this last one, but I did get to church every Sundaysome kind of way. I bet the Lord done forgot who I am by now.""Go see Reverend Pike, ma'am. He'll reacquaint you.""I won't need him for that. I can make my own acquaintance.

　　What I need him for is to reacquaint me with my children. He can read and write, I reckon?""Sure.""Good, 'cause I got a lot of digging up to do." But the news they dug up was so pitiful she quit.

　　After two years of messages written by the preacher's hand, two years of washing, sewing,canning, cobbling, gardening, and sitting in churches, all she found out was that the Whitlow placewas gone and that you couldn't write to "a man named Dunn" if all you knew was that he wentWest. The good news, however, was that Halle got married and had a baby coming. She fixed o............