CHAPTER TWENTY
As the days turned into weeks, I settled into a routine at the Jolie Fleur. One of my favorite tasks was helping Jessie in the kitchen. Jessie was a tall, thin black woman with sparse gray hair who was energetic for her years. "I'm eighty years old," she announced one day. "But I've got me a long ways to go before anybody's gonna throw dirt on my grave. I might even get me another husband … but my baby makin' days might be over." She never cracked a smile, so it took me a while to catch on to her dry humor.
For me, washing dishes was very relaxing. When one of my blue moods set in, the warm water soothed me. The nightmares were still frequent, and often I was very tired during the day, but Leni would sometimes pop in to perk me up. She cooked on weekends, but her current d
