I turned thirteen that week. I assumed that it came with some new liberties, but no one had specifically said so, and I was too uncertain to ask. Still, the night after my birthday, Elmo and me made plans to go out. I washed and conditioned my hair when I got home from school, then dried it and combed it out. Usually I wore my hair in a French Braid, but for that evening I left it loose. When I looked over my shoulder into the mirror, I liked the way my hair reached to my low back.

I came out to the living room and sat on the edge of an armchair. My uncle, J.R., lay on the sofa where he had flopped down as soon as he came home from work, his jacket and boots still on, watching an Andy Griffith rerun. Mamaw—my grandmother—was sitting on her recliner, a cigarette sagging on her lips, the smoke above her head looking like the blurb of a cartoon, her hands busy with her puzzles. She glanced up at me and I knew she had me figured out. I had been about to ask Mamaw for permission to go out, but now I pretended to have come out of my bedroom to watch TV.

Mamaw let off a resonant fart and then settled back into the recliner, as if she were momentarily airborne.

“Sheba, Sheba,” Mamaw grumbled looking round her chair, but Sheba was in the kennel behind the house and could not be blamed for this one. J.R. and I exchanged glances; “power farts” was what J.R. called them and he claimed they were the cause of the trailer being so loose on its foundation and the brick skirting starting to come loose. He wrinkled his nose, and pushed his front teeth halfway out his mouth. A laugh—though it sounded more like a hiccup—escaped me; I couldn’t help myself.