‘I looked at Janie and she looked at me and she said, „So why can’t we all do this livin’ and eatin’ right here?”
‘Miss Kew put down her fork and looked hard. „I have explained it to you and I have said that there will be no further discussion.”
‘Well, I thought that was real nowhere. So I just rocked back my head and bellowed, „Bonnie! Beanie!” And bing, there they were.
‘So all hell broke loose. Miss Kew ordered them out and they wouldn’t go, and Miriam come steaming in with their clothes, and she couldn’t catch them, and Miss Kew got to honking at them and finally at me. She said this was too much. Well, maybe she’d had a hard week, but so had we. So Miss Kew ordered us to leave.
‘I went and got Baby and started out, and along came Janie and the twins. Miss Kew waited till we were all out the door and next thing you know she ran out after us. She passed us and got in front of me and made me stop. So we all stopped.
‘ “Is this how you follow Lone’s wishes?” she asked.
‘I told her yes. She said she understood Lone wanted us to stay with her. And I said, “Yeah, but he wanted us to stay together more.”
‘She said come back in, we’d have a talk. Janie asked Baby and Baby said okay, so we went back. We had a compromise. We didn’t eat in the dining room no more. There was a side porch, a sort of verandah thing with glass windows, with a door to the dining room and a door to the kitchen, and we all ate out there after that. Miss Kew ate by herself.
‘But something funny happened because of that whole cockeyed hassel.’
‘What was that?’ Stern asked me.