Now Mrs U tells me
Mr U is never home at night.
She says he is unkind.
He threw up into his dinner plate in the middle of the party. And she had to wipe it with a wet cloth, pretending it did not really matter to her.

Once I'd asked granma, how old were you when you married ija? Did you love him then? And were you beautiful? Did your folks really send the pumpkin? Two legged, over the mountains? All alone and by itself?

And grandpa had hobbled to the fields and squatted there looking dignified."Ah! The tomatoes are doing fine this season. But the corns don’t look so good."

Now she tells me, I was only nine, he was thirteen. I clung to my father when they pulled me away.

And she strains at her eyes,
Wrinkled, weighed with the folds,
Blue with cataract over the pupil,

“My folks put legs to the pumpkin and they send it walking to this house. And he, he put wings to its sides and sent it back to our home, flying over three high mountains. Ours is the finest family, he'd said, finest in all hills”

next: ma