"
Other nights nobody would even look toward the mourners'
bench, no matter how loud the preacher called them to come or how
long we sang. Those nights we got to go home early, and that made
me glad and happy.
Every night I got sleepy. The last night of meeting, I tried
to get Mama to let me go lie down on the quilts where all the
babies were sleeping, but she said I was much too big to be
sprawled out on the floor by the side of the pulpit.
Yet, the very next minute, when I told her I wanted to go sit
on the mourners' bench so I could get baptized in the swimming
hole down at Rocky Head Creek, she said I was too little for
that.
I decided I'd never be the right size at the right time.
Summer dragged on and on. One morning in late August, a very
good thing happened to me. Grandma Ming made a new flour-sack
Dolly Dimple for me. She was pretty-the grandest doll ever
stuffed with cotton, Grandpa Thad told me.
When I ran home to show her to Mama, I thought she would meet
me out on the front porch and say, "Ah, Bandershanks, what's your
new dolly's name?" Then, I was going to say, "Sookie Sue!"
But Mama wasn't on the porch.
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