Page from a Tennessee Journal (AmazonEncore Edition)

Fedora began pulling out drawers and opening doors.
    The sounds coming from the back porch were now too muffled for Eula to hear.
    “Bottom drawer. In the matchbox.” Eula watched her sister-in-law fill two glasses almost to the top. Did Fedora actually think strong drink was going to help?
    Walking to the settee, Fedora pushed a glass in Eula’s hand as she pulled up a straight-backed chair.
    “Where’s yo’ rose water? You got fresh lavender soap?” Fedora’s words grated on Eula’s ears. “Day after tomorrow, me and Ben Roy will take you over to Clarksville. I know a place where all the wives go. Yo’ momma told me ’bout it.”
    Eula pushed herself up on the settee, looked at the amber liquid in the glass, and brought it to her nose. It smelled like tar paper.
    “You can get black bloomers there.” Fedora kept up her chatter. “They just cover the crotch and got pretty lace ’round the edges.” Fedora stopped and took a deep swig from her glass. She coughed once and leaned in closer. “Eula, you payin’ me any mind?”
    “Alex don’t think a lady should take a drink unless she’s close to dyin’.” Eula looked at the full glass in her hand and sloshed it around, not caring that some of the liquid dripped onto her tapestried settee. She raised the glass, nodded her head toward Fedora, and took in one large gulp of whiskey. Eula held it in her puffed-out cheeks until it burned, and then let it flow down the back of her throat.
    “You listen to me,” Fedora commanded, but her words held about as much force as Tillie’s new baby, Little Ben. “It’s a woman’s job to keep her husband happy, especially if he’s off with a colored woman. Now, this place has got short corsets that are made to push ’em up and out just like when you was twenty.”
    How many of these whore clothes did her sister-in-law own? Eula wondered.
    “Fedora, to keep my husband in my bed, you want me to dress and act like a Clarksville trollop.” She took another deep swallow of the whiskey. “I’d rather kill myself.” She spit the word out at her sister-in-law.
    The slap across her face came sudden and hard. In fact, if she hadn’t seen Fedora standing there with her open palm, Eula would have sworn that the woman struck her with a closed fist loaded with buckshot. The whiskey spilled all over the settee.
    “Who do you think you are, Eula Mae McNaughton?” Fedora was a head shorter, but right now, she towered over Eula. “Who told you that you could kill yo’self?” Fedora tossed her head back and started to laugh.
    “Fedora?” Had her sister-in-law gone as mad as Alex? “Take yo’self another drink.” Eula sat up straight as she tugged at Fedora to sit beside her.
    Fedora could not be moved. “You sit there like you are the queen of all the Thorntons. Always did think you was the best of us. The best cook, the best canner, the best at managin’ the farm. Yo’ husband never had to say a harsh word to you, nor lay a hand to yo’ head ’cause you never did nothin’ wrong. Everthin’ you touched was right.” Fedora screamed every word at her.
    “Fedora…no…I never thought I was better. I…”
    “You’re a damn liar, Eula Mae. And now you think you’re too good to have yo’ man climb into bed with a nigger woman. You think your stuff is so special, so pure, that you should be the only white woman in Lawnover, hell, in all of Montgomery County, whose man ain’t never laid with a black woman.” Fedora finished off the whiskey and threw the glass to the floor.
    Eula watched it roll, unbroken, on her carpet. “Alex wouldn’t…he couldn’t.”
    “Why is that? Because he loves you so much? ’Cause he can’t live without you?” The steam suddenly shot out of Fedora, and she flopped, deflated, on the settee beside Eula. “Don’t you know it ain’t got nothin’ to do with how well you cook, or how many preserves you put up for the winter, or how clean your kitchen, or how many times you write in that damn journal of yours?”
    “What…what was it then?” She welcomed Fedora’s arms around her shoulders.
    “Eula, you ain’t the first in this family whose man took up with a colored woman.” Fedora swallowed hard. “You know as well as me that Ben Roy got three yella bastards by Hettie. And, yo’ own daddy, Old Ben, had that yella Johnny by that old woman all you Thorntons is scared of—Rebecca.”
    “That can’t be right. My pa never…”
    “And, if you’re thinkin’