The driver stopped in front of a small, pale green duplex. I knew the house and hated the failure it represented. The porch light burned expectantly. Weeping into my chest, my mother greeted me, her daughter and rescuer. Her embrace was one of relief that she would now be less alone with her memories.

Back in those days before you were born things were much nicer and better for me. Your daddy was a humble man in the beginning, we got along so good together. He was very devoted! He was very good! He was very kind! He wouldn't even go down one block to the grocery store and back unless I'd get in the car and go with him. It just seemed like to me we were twins, we loved each other so much. That's the truth. We didn't have much, but it doesn't matter what you've got as long as each of you are happy, and we were happy. Everything was just rosy.

When we got home, your father got down on his hands and knees and promised me he would never, never do this again. He said, "I don't know why I did this stupid thing, but I love you, please believe me, Louise, I don't care anything about Dixie -- I'll never see her again -- I care about you, and I want us to have this baby."

I wasn't ever allowed to wear a red dress or anything trimmed in red. Your father just always said, "Nothing but whores wear red." I never did think nothing about red till he kept talking about it, then I kind of wanted it. One time I seen a nice red wool dress I wanted. But he says, "Married women don't wear red." I said, "Well, I didn't know that!" I was shocked!

One time your father bought himself a brand new bright red wool sweater. I thought, "He don't allow me to wear red and he's bought himself a new red sweater." So I asked him, "How can you, a married man, wear red?" He said people didn't talk about men like they did about women that wore red.

Your father used to have a habit of locking you children out of the house. I would always say, "Please ... J.W., don't! I don't want to lock the kids out of the house!"

When I got home [from church] this one day I started fixing dinner to put on the table and for some reason J.S. insisted for you kids to go outside and play. When you all left, I saw him lock the door. He said, "This is a good time for me and you to go in the back and make love." In a few minutes you were all knocking on the door. You poor little children! I heard you all say, "Mama why can't we come in!" He said, "Go tell them you have a headache."

The day the divorce came through I'll never forget. The minute I walked back in the house and J.W. found out that we was really divorced he acted scared. He said, "Louise, don't you leave this house!"

I said, "No, I want you to leave!"

"No, I'm not gonna leave. I never did want the divorce anyways. I only wanted to get a divorce to show Norma that I could do it so she would get off my back." He said, "I want you to drive with me across Mississippi and we're gonna get married again. Let's leave right now and try to get back before Patricia gets home from school."

I lived in fear for what was coming next. Our furniture was still in storage and we didn't have much and your daddy kept saying we couldn't afford the kind of house we needed for our furniture. We wasn't back from Memphis three weeks and early one morning a telegram came for J.W. I read it. It said, "I will see you in three days. Norma." I was so stunned, I couldn't move. J.W. brought me to Louisiana and then he brought Norma. He said she was following him. He said he didn't know what to do.

I must have lost my pride. I must have lost my self-esteem. I got so I just let your father walk all over on me and let him walk on top of my face and I took it. I know this makes me look like a fool. You don't understand me. I don't understand me. I was just living on a dream all the time, with him promising me and begging me and telling me he loved me, that he would never leave me.

When the doctor told me, I was very, very upset. I started crying, and I said, "I'm too old to have a child!" I was thinking, "All these things I had to go through, I have to go through again." When I told J.W., he actually laughed! He said, "Well, did you think you were just gonna have two kids -- you're gonna have a lot of kids before it's over with."

There is something I didn't tell you, Patricia, because I am so embarrassed about it ... one of the reasons I was so upset about being pregnant was that before your daddy and I left Greenfield, I signed the papers for your father to get another divorce.

You kids were my strength. If I hadn't had my kids, I don't know what I'd done. You all was my life, there wasn't nothing else. He moved us back over to Kemper, me and Davy and Wiley. The house was small and so dark and dingy that we had to burn lights in the daytime.

Just like I thought, your father never did come and move in with us. He would come and spend the weekends but that didn't do no good.

Sometimes I would see J.W. passing in front of our house. He'd pass but he would never stop. He had become a ghost in my life. The feeling had already gone. Early on in our marriage I think if he'd absolutely gone off and left me completely and said goodbye forever I would have died. That's the truth, but now my love for him had died -- I didn't have no feeling towards him at all. I don't know how he felt towards me. I didn't feel he was my husband -- he was a stranger.

It was Davy who pushed Mother to get a divorce from her husband, who had esssentially become a bigamist. We never saw him again, although we know he lives with Norma just a five-minute expressway ride from the home of Davy and his family. After J.W. disappeared, Louise at age 53 applied for her very first social security number. When she began working at a day care center, she said, she felt like a "bird out of a cage." She opened a bank account and talked and giggled on the phone for as long as she wanted. With the help of newly acquired friends, she moved to a nicer house, and even bought a red dress.