“You gotta fight. Don’t take nothing but swinging yo’ fist.You understand that?” “Yes, ma’am.” “I’m gon’ make sho’ you understand it,” she says, loosening her grip on my thighs.“Hand me that poker and hold her feet, Tarabelle.” Tarabelle clamps down on my feet, immobilizing me.There is no time to cry out as my mother brings the searing fire iron down onto my leg. I swoon from the pain, and my mother’s voice trails me as I enter into a darkness that is death and float deeper still into Hell. “I done branded you a Quinn, girl. Don’t you ever run from nobody else long as you live.”
