Grace. Natashia Deon

spilling weeds. But his kick snatches his other leg from under him and he lands flat on his back, moaning in the dirt. He rolls over and grabs his hoop before hopping up to a stand. He tosses the hoop to Ada Mae and hobbles back across the field to the road.

      “Look it, Josey!” Ada Mae say. “Look what I got.”

      “I thought he was gon’ pass us,” Josey say, bitter, brushing dirt off her knees. “Where’d my bag go?”

      Ada Mae squats down and rests her hoop on her thigh and reaches for a weed, pulling it careless, then slices her hand with it. She yelps and sucks the edge of her palm but Josey don’t ask if she’s all right. Instead she say, “Cain’t nothin good come from him favorin’ you, Ada Mae. Not all gifts is good gifts.”

      Cotton castaways float up from Ada Mae’s bag and get pushed away by the moving silence of her breath.