her. She’d asked her parents for cowboy boots, which would have matched the vest perfectly, but they’d given her a charm bracelet and a comb-and-brush set instead.
“Come with me,” Sarah said, stubbing out her cigarette with a hard twist. “Excuse us, Iris.”
“Yessum,” said the strange lady. Jo followed her mother into the living room and and stuck out her lower lip as Sarah put her hands on Jo’s shoulders and pushed until Jo was sitting on the couch.
“You are making Iris feel unwelcome,” Sarah said.
“I’m sorry,” said Jo. “Only why did Mae leave? I miss her! I want to see her! I want to see her and I want to see Frieda!”
Sarah pressed her lips together until they were a skinny red line. “Birds of a feather must flock together,” she said. “Do you know what that means?”
Jo shook her head. Sarah made her God-give-me-patience face, and Jo heard her take a deep breath.
“Well. Birds of a feather mean people who are like each other. Flock together means they stay together. So people who are like one another stay with people like them.” Sarah looked into Jo’s eyes. “Mae and Frieda have their own people. People like them. Their own friends. And you have your own friends too.” Sarah looked right into Jo’s eyes. “Do you understand?”
Jo did not. “Frieda is like me. She likes to play kickball and marbles and cowboys.” Jo felt her eyes start to sting. “Frieda gave me my best present.”
Sarah gave an angry sigh and muttered, “I knew that was a mistake.”
“Why?” Jo wailed. She couldn’t stand the thought of never playing with Frieda again, or never hearing Mae’s music coming from the kitchen, or eating Mae’s corn bread. “Why?” Jo asked again. When her mother didn’t answer, Jo got to her feet. “I’m going to see them,” she announced.
“You’re staying right here, and you’re doing your homework,” said Sarah.
“No I’m not. I’m going to see them, and you can’t stop me.”
“I most certainly can.” Sarah’s neck was turning red, the flush creeping up toward her chin. “Young lady, you are going to sit right here, and you are going to be in the worst trouble of your life if you . . .”
“You’re not the boss of me!” Jo shouted, turning to go. Her mother grabbed her shoulder and slapped her.
For a minute, the two of them stood, breathing hard, staring at each other. Sarah’s lips were trembling. Jo’s cheek throbbed and stung. She felt her eyes fill with tears, and instead of giving Sarah the satisfaction of seeing her cry, she raced down the hall and locked her bedroom door, and while Sarah pounded and Bethie stared, she’d filled her suitcase and slid out the window.
No matter what Jo did, her mother was angry at her. Jo was always doing something wrong, like leaving her clothes on the floor or pinching her sister, or talking too loudly, or making too much noise when she chewed or even when she walked. Jo lost her library books and broke her toys. She ripped her clothes, she got gum stuck in her hair, and once, she’d kept the money her mother had given her for tzedakah at Hebrew school and had bought candy with it instead, and tattletale Bethie had told on her.
Some rules she understood, but others were mysteries. “Do you have to sit like that?” Sarah would ask when Jo was sitting in a chair with her legs spread apart. “Why does it matter how I sit?” Jo would ask, and Sarah would press her hands to her head, groaning, and say, “Wait ’til your father gets home.” When Ken arrived, Sarah would take him into the living room, where she would communicate Jo’s latest misdeeds in a low whisper. Ken would sigh, and he’d take Jo to the kitchen. There, he would sit in a straight-backed wooden chair, with his tie pulled loose. Jo would stretch herself out across his lap and pull down her pants or her skirt, and her father would deal out ten measured strokes with the flat of his hand that would leave her bottom pink and stinging. Sarah would watch from the doorway with her arms folded across her chest. When the spanking was done, Ken would say, in his sternest voice, “Come with me, young lady,” and Jo, hanging her head, would follow her father out of the house and into the car.
“You okay, Sport?” her dad would ask as soon as the door had shut behind