I should be pleased. It’s all working out and all as easy as pie or peas or pumpkins. Too easy, my lost and gone momma says in my head, and I should not count my chickens, she says, and there’s many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip, and my momma might have said that also. Only, here we is, me and Arty, and I reckon maybe he loves me more than he knows how to say in words, and he’s always bringing me flowers and touching my hair and saying as how I am as pretty as peaches and cream. And I should be pleased, and I am – leastways, a part of me is.
It’s hard for a woman in my situation, see, a woman with a kid in tow. And though he says I’m pretty, I know that the best of what I was is behind me and everything is sagging a little more these days. Ain’t many men as would take all that on, the kid and me losing my shape like bread dough on a second rise, and Arty just shrugs and he says it ain’t nothing to him and he says he likes me just the way I is.
And Milly, she’s done took to him – like he’s her real and actual daddy. She calls him such and she kisses him ‘fore she goes to her bed and she says to him ‘sweet dreams’, whispers it in his ear, like I ain’t s’pposed to hear.
But there’s something there in Milly’s breathless ‘sweet dreams’, something that is a worry to me, like a nuisance fly coming round a sweet baked custard ‘fore it’s served, and I brush the fly away, but it keeps returning. You gotta squash ‘em flies flat with your hand, my momma says, and then there ain’t no bother after.
‘Hurry to your bed now, Milly.’
Arty kisses her goodnight, pantomime kisses, so his lips is all pouting and pushed and just touching hers. And he says he loves her to the moon and back, and even to the stars, which is just playful. Then Milly skips and dances away and Arty watches her go, watching her even when she’s gone, like he can still see her or like he’s wishing her back again.
He stays over some nights and he’s soft with his few words and he rubs up against me and he says ‘bout me being pretty as peaches and all. And he kisses me, breathy and hot and wet, and his hands quick as mice under my dress, till we’ve gone far enough I say we should take what we’re doing to bed. Then Arty does what a man does with a woman and he’s in a panting hurry to be finished, so it seems to me. ‘Like a boy taking bad tasting medicine,’ my momma says in my ear. And in my head I tell momma hush, cos I’m listening sharp as wasp stings, sharp as pins, for Arty saying he loves me, and I don’t hear him say it once, not like he does with Milly, not to the moon and back again and not to the stars. And there’s that nuisance fly again.
Patricia Ann McNair 
I should be pleased. It’s all working out and all as easy as pie or peas or pumpkins. Too easy, my lost and gone momma says in my head, and I should not count my chickens, she says, and there’s many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip, and my momma might have said that also. Only, here we is, me and Arty, and I reckon maybe he loves me more than he knows how to say in words, and he’s always bringing me flowers and touching my hair and saying as how I am as pretty as peaches and cream. And I should be pleased, and I am – leastways, a part of me is.
It’s hard for a woman in my situation, see, a woman with a kid in tow. And though he says I’m pretty, I know that the best of what I was is behind me and everything is sagging a little more these days. Ain’t many men as would take all that on, the kid and me losing my shape like bread dough on a second rise, and Arty just shrugs and he says it ain’t nothing to him and he says he likes me just the way I is.
And Milly, she’s done took to him – like he’s her real and actual daddy. She calls him such and she kisses him ‘fore she goes to her bed and she says to him ‘sweet dreams’, whispers it in his ear, like I ain’t s’pposed to hear.
But there’s something there in Milly’s breathless ‘sweet dreams’, something that is a worry to me, like a nuisance fly coming round a sweet baked custard ‘fore it’s served, and I brush the fly away, but it keeps returning. You gotta squash ‘em flies flat with your hand, my momma says, and then there ain’t no bother after.
‘Hurry to your bed now, Milly.’
Arty kisses her goodnight, pantomime kisses, so his lips is all pouting and pushed and just touching hers. And he says he loves her to the moon and back, and even to the stars, which is just playful. Then Milly skips and dances away and Arty watches her go, watching her even when she’s gone, like he can still see her or like he’s wishing her back again.
He stays over some nights and he’s soft with his few words and he rubs up against me and he says ‘bout me being pretty as peaches and all. And he kisses me, breathy and hot and wet, and his hands quick as mice under my dress, till we’ve gone far enough I say we should take what we’re doing to bed. Then Arty does what a man does with a woman and he’s in a panting hurry to be finished, so it seems to me. ‘Like a boy taking bad tasting medicine,’ my momma says in my ear. And in my head I tell momma hush, cos I’m listening sharp as wasp stings, sharp as pins, for Arty saying he loves me, and I don’t hear him say it once, not like he does with Milly, not to the moon and back again and not to the stars. And there’s that nuisance fly again.