I was twelve years old when my mama died. I went to live with my grandmother and Violet. My grandmother was one of those southern women who brought to mind crisp white linen. Her clothes were always starched. She wore gloves and a hat to church on Sundays, even though it had gone out of fashion twenty years earlier. Grandma Rose was a widow woman who lived up in Shreveport. Violet had been with her since they were kids. Daddy said they called their home "Flower House" because it was Rose’s and Violet’s. As much as I loved flowers, I still didn’t want to go. I’d never seen her before, although my daddy told me that she came down to see my mama when I was a tiny baby.

    My daddy took me to Grandma Rose’s in August, six months after we buried Mama. He didn’t say much about it. Just came in one day and told me to start getting my things packed up because he was taking me up to my mama’s people that weekend. I didn’t know until later that it was my grandma who’d sent for me after Mama died. Daddy was never one to wear his feelings on his sleeve, and I didn’t understand why I couldn’t stay with him. I know now that it must have been real hard for him to let me go, even though it was the best thing he could have done. I was so busy missing my mother that I didn’t have a thought for his hardships. I was just a kid, after all.

    He rode the bus with me all the way up there. "Rainy, I know you’re gonna be mad at me for a while, maybe a long while. But I want you to know that I’m doing all I can for you."

    I glared at him and spoke slowly, aiming to hurt him as much as he’d hurt me. "So this is all you can do? Pack me off to live with some crazy old woman and her nigger maid?"

    The slap came across my lips as quickly as I got the words out. "Don’t you ever say anything like that! Don’t you ever use that word! Not ever! Not ever again!"

    That word. I’d heard the men outside the feed store spitting it out like nails at the wash women that passed by on the way to the mill. I’d heard it when there were rumors about the Johnson family house being burned down by men with covered faces. My mama always said it was a cruel and cowardly word. My father hated those men, hated what they’d done and what they were. My mother had gathered up almost our entire cupboard and driven it over to Mrs. Johnson’s kin. It was the worst thing I could think of to say. I was so full of fear that I’d used the word as it had invariably been used—to lash out at something I knew nothing about.

    My daddy was trembling and spoke quietly while the other passengers on the bus tried to pretend they hadn’t seen anything. "Everybody’s got the same heart beating in their body, Rainy. Everybody’s got the same pain when something bad happens. No need to twist yourself into an awful mean creature so I’ll know how you’re hurting inside. You think your mother would want to hear those kind of words rolling off your tongue?"

    I didn’t speak to him for the rest of the trip. I didn’t say a word; not even when he held my hand and took me up onto the porch of the big house. I looked at the dogwood trees in the yard and kicked the front step over and over again with the back of my heel. I ignored him while he went inside. He came back out with my grandmother. She strode up to me and took my chin in her hand.

    She was a tall woman with that funny gray hair that looked blue in the right kind of light. Her lips were painted pink and her eyebrows went up and down while she talked. I didn’t know what to make of her, but she smiled my mother’s smile at me and I felt a bit of comfort in the familiarity of her face. "Get your things, child, and go on upstairs. Violet’s up there getting your room ready."

    I disregarded my father’s goodbye and walked purposefully up the stairs. The house was bigger than I was used to and I kept a nervous hand on the banister. I walked down the hallway to an open door. I stood there with my bag until a large woman who had the same face as my grandmother, but with skin the color of maple syrup, looked up from smoothing the bed sheets. I suddenly realized why my father had reacted the way he had on the bus. The shameful legacy of that single hateful word became clear to me as I stood there looking at this woman who greeted me with my mother’s eyes.

    "Why, hello there. You must be Rainy. Come in! Come in!" She beamed and gathered me into her arms. She smelled like vanilla beans and coffee. I tried to remain passive and stiff, but I couldn’t. I eased myself into her arms. She squeezed me even tighter.

    "Oh, you poor little thing," she whispered, rocking me back and forth, "Don’t you think I don’t know what you’re feeling--not for one second. I lost my mama too, you see. When I was a small girl like you. Your old Auntie Violet knows more than you think. Everything’s going to be just fine now." I looked up at her and she nodded her head. I pressed my face into her neck and let loose a river of tears, understanding more than I ever wanted to, as the last of my daddy’s apologetic good-byes floated up through the open window.

Cate Compton is a native Texan who spent several years in Hollywood before finally having the good sense to return home. She spends her days working as a felony prosecutor, and spends her nights working on the next great American short story. A chronic dabbler, she happily divides what little spare time she has between her art and her writing. Her most recent work has been published in Comrades, Erosha, 3rd Muse, and Naked Poetry. Cate is also editor of the online literary arts journal Atomicpetals.