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Flowers Out of Bone by Ethel Morgan Smith Chapter 1             “Mom, I can only imagine how hard this has been on you.” Emma touches my left shoulder. Flutters of butterflies float toward the magnolia trees.             “One thing for sure, I am not going to cry. No more tears for Bone.” I wipe my … Read more

Flowers Out of Bone by Ethel Morgan Smith Chapter 1             Crying had helped to free me. Big Mama didn’t allow crying. “Only de weak do dat.” She had even made fun of folks who cried. “Ain’t dey ugly ‘nuff ‘out tyin up dey ugly faces.” I hadn’t cried when Emma was sick; I just … Read more

Flowers Out of Bone by Ethel Morgan Smith Chapter 1             Surely there must’ve been some joy in my childhood. It’s hard to imagine that anybody could grow up without something other than mutilated memories. But in spite of, maybe because of, growing up in the segregated South, I had succeeded by earning a scholarship … Read more

Flowers Out of Bone by Ethel Morgan Smith Chapter 1 Emma sighs and stretches her arms forward and sits up. She doesn’t look as much like me as I do Beauty. But she doesn’t look anything like her daddy either, other than a feature here and there. I am pleased that I don’t see my … Read more

Flowers Out of Bone by Ethel Morgan Smith Chapter 1 Old Man Forest from our church worked in the yard. He told us how the white woman ordered expensive flowers from all kinds of foreign places he’d never heard of. I’d never seen anything like the beauty of the blooming yard. Even the hibiscus was … Read more

Flowers Out of Bone by Ethel Morgan Smith Chapter 1 I wish Big Mama could be there; it’d help me to feel part of the family again. Beauty is needy and whiny; she wants to be parented, rather than be a parent. She can’t handle anything emotional after losing Ivy, her seven year old and … Read more

Flowers Out of Bone by Ethel Morgan Smith Chapter 1             I love wearing Big Mama’s pearls. I run my finger around the rough edge of the faded beads hanging around my mint-colored silk blouse. I should’ve dressed more causal. Don’t they want to see the life I’ve built for Emma and me? How we … Read more

Flowers Out of Bone by Ethel Morgan Smith Chapter 1 Writing checks to my family felt cold and heartless at first, but I soon got used to it. Even the coldness of hard cash doesn’t weigh me down anymore. Plus they never send Emma or me anything, other than Christmas and birthday cards with a … Read more

Flowers Out of Bone by Ethel Morgan Smith Chapter 1               “All I want for graduation is you to go home and see Gram. She’s an old woman, you know,” Emma said after she received her acceptance letter from Princeton.             “Of course, but we have to celebrate now. You’ve worked so hard for … Read more

Flowers Out of Bone by Ethel Morgan Smith Chapter 1             But that doesn’t mean I’ll be getting involved in my Alabama family’s life out of some kind of ‘empty nest syndrome.’ I can’t rely on them for nothing, other than their mostly self-inflicted drama, always a mess; I need peace. Yes, they love me, … Read more

Flowers Out of Bone by Ethel Morgan Smith Chapter 1               The highway stretches before me like an open grave. My approach is as quiet as my exit had been nearly twenty years ago, when I was eighteen. I always knew I’d leave, but I couldn’t imagine how hard it would be to come … Read more