Chapter 1
She sat down next to me one day
A black woman with what looked like a star on her face.
“I had a hard life,” she said.
Her voice was low, gruff, and growly.
“I’m 90,” she said.
“I was born just before the dust bowl hit.”
“I was born in Texas,” she said.
Texas got hit pretty hard by the Dust Bowl. A lot of people don’t remember that.”
“They think that time was just the Great Depression.”
“It wasn’t. It was the Dust Bowl too.”
“My grandparents had a school and I went there.”
“You made a mistake, they didn’t hit, they didn’t spank.”
“They beat. They beat until the blood ran.”
“They didn’t care where they hit either.”
“They used to whip my legs with a strap until the blood ran.”
“When I got older I was married.”
“His eldest daughter was only 2 years younger than me.”
“He lived to be 115 years old.”
“I bore him 21 children,” she said.
“I had 11 sons and 10 daughters.” She said
“I had twins 3 times, two sets of identical twin boys and one set of fraternal twins, boy and girl.”
“I had a hard life,” she said, “on that Texas prairie.”
“but through all of that there was one thing,” she said in her growly gravelly voice.
“I survived.”
