Ring for Grandmother

Seven months pregnant and four hours by wagon from the nearest town, schoolteacher Etna Wilkerson learns her new husband's farm comes with rules. No mirrors. A pail of milk carried to the springhouse at dusk, empty by dawn. Nobody opens the north bedroom at the head of the stairs. And when her time comes, she will be shut in that room for forty nights with her baby. Every Wilkerson woman wears the same scar. Every Wilkerson infant in the family Bible died at six weeks.