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strength was in keeping us all moving forward and in holding the pieces of our sorrow together, but we were living with shards of it. You never knew when one was going to prick you or how sharp it would be.
    Sooner than later, the greens and my final nub of bread were gone. My stomach rumbled on. The ache of it filled my body from toes to ears.
    Despite the way I’d misled the welfare man, Philbert and I did a pretty good business trapping and selling meat. We’d catch frogs, rabbits, muskrats — basically whatever creatures happened along our stretch of the creek. We could sell it all to white folks, who apparently would eat just about anything. Maybe that was the secret to always having food on the table: no standards. Mom definitely had standards, and we all kept to them. For instance, I was hungry enough to eat a pig, a rabbit — heck, I’d have eaten a muskrat when things got really bad — but Mom still refused to serve it in the house.
    With the money we got selling the meat one afternoon, a few weeks after the government man’s visit, we bought some potatoes and some eggs. I figured Hilda could boil them up nice and they would make a decent dinner. The store guy looked at us a little funny when I laid the money out on the counter. Lately, he was used to us coming around for the welfare parcels. I could see them stacked in the corner, small brown boxes stamped NOT FOR SALE , waiting for other families to come along.
    Papa would be proud. Tonight we were paying customers. Didn’t even have to put a cent on credit, which Papa used to forbid. Buying on credit was a system created with no way to ever catch up, he’d say.
    We stepped outside, me swinging the sack of food. I had it clenched up in my fist real good, though. No way would I drop our dinner.
    “They’ve got a nice melon patch over at the Bolls’,” I said.
    Philbert nodded. We were always in sync, Philbert and me. Without another word, we changed course. We circled around so that we could come up from the woods side rather than the road side. Mrs. Boll was bound to be inside, cooking up the fresh muskrat we’d sold her, so we might have a clean shot at swiping a couple of melons and not being noticed.
    I’d already made up my mind that we weren’t going to crack them open and eat them on the spot. We’d bring them home and let Hilda cut them up for supper. Since we had the bag of what we’d bought, a little extra wouldn’t raise her suspicions. Tonight, the Littles were going to eat like old times.
    Behind the Bolls’ property, we crept out of the woods. Tiptoed straight into the melon patch, all viny, with melons ripe for the picking. The melons had grown large and oval. We knocked on their tough green flesh to be sure they hadn’t gone soft, then we scooped up one each and hightailed it back toward the woods.
    Hot damn. I had a melon under one arm and a sack of eggs and potatoes in the other hand. It was gonna be one fine supper. I wanted to stick it in the face of the welfare man. We were fine. We were gonna be just fine.
    “
You boys, stop right there!
” a woman’s voice rang out behind us.
    Of course we didn’t stop. We kept on running, even though I recognized the voice. Mrs. Stockton, one of our neighbors and a friend of Mom’s.
    “Malcolm and Philbert Little!” she called as we were scrambling. There was no purpose in running after that point. The jig was up. If we ran, she’d just be on our porch waiting when we got home.
    Mrs. Stockton was a beefy, no-nonsense woman in a plain blue skirt and blouse. Her thick shoes shushed her through the grass toward us at a surprising clip. When she reached us, there was a high red in her cheeks from the exertion. Or the anger. Hard to say.
    She circled the Bolls’ melon patch as if checking to be sure we hadn’t done any damage. We stood dutifully with our heads bowed, while she muttered woefully about “these niggers and their antics.”
    Mrs. Stockton loomed over us finally. “Come