Nether Regions Read Online Free Page B

addiction did to people and she’d healed a lot of black eyes dealt to women by their men. Not to mention the fact that she just wasn’t wired that way.
    She realized, while still young, that she was different from other people and not only because she belonged to the Manu Lisse. An excursion with Cousin Rudee’s erection in a canoe on Lamplighter Tributary had proven to her that she did not even possess that longing for the pant and quick heave of the heterosexual tussle. It never confused her, she was too well-balanced in nature for any real trouble to grow, but when her eyes met the warm brown gaze of Kinsey Phelps in the cafeteria area of Stafford High School, it had all made sense. She was pulled toward women. Sophie had accepted this fact as easily as the knowledge that the sun rises each morning, and she set about making the lesbian world her own.
    She piled the plantain leaves neatly into the basket, her thoughts drifting to Stephen and Righteous and their troubles. Herbs and care just wouldn’t heal some things. All she could offer was a sympathetic ear and whatever limited advice she could about maintaining a relationship. She sighed. What did she know about gay men? Or relationships, for that matter? She knew love when she saw it, however, and those two loved one another. Could love win out over unfaithfulness? She nodded to the bayou as if understanding some great secret. Sure it could. She saw evidence of that almost every day. Why else would Panda Cross’s husband, Mikie, allow her to come back home after a weeklong man and drinking binge. Mysteries. Life was full of them.
    More plantain beckoned a few feet away, so she stood, grimacing when the wet seams of her jeans scraped against the tender flesh of her thighs. Back to work.
    “There you are,” Clary said some time later as Sophie stepped out of the thicket into the yard behind Salamander House. The yard, sloped and surprisingly green, lay behind the cabin that had been in Sophie’s family since Great-Granda Wassel Fox Cofe had built it in the late 1940s. It was ramshackle, true, with tin and tar paper along the bottom and screen that was frayed around the outer edges, but it was home and hers and she loved it dearly.
    The woman she loved just as dearly sat outside, on the border of the slope of well-tended lawn. It was a wheelchair day, so Sophie knew Grandam had not slept well after leaving her on the porch last night.
    “Ida just called, said Karen’s water broke. She early?” Beulah’s voice, coming from the frail wheelchair-bound form, was surprisingly forceful. Her slim hands never slowed as she twisted cattail talismans with expertise born from years of practice and she felt no need to look up at her granddaughter.
    Sophie nodded and ran to press her lips to Beulah’s soft, rosemary-scented cheek. “Just let me change pants. Damned moccasin dumped me.”
    She handed the laden basket to Clary and walked into the house. Clary laughed as she followed. “You know they’re not partial to being milked. How many times you been bit?”
    “Yeah, well.” Sophie stepped out of her jeans and handed them to Clary.
    A stack of clean, folded laundry rested just inside the bedroom door atop the bureau. Sophie riffled through it until she found denim shorts and slipped into them, zipping them closed. Checking her T-shirt, she determined it was clean enough and grabbed up her canvas pack from the coat hook next to the door.
    “You comin’?” She looked at Clary expectantly.
    “Can’t. Promised Ella Jane I’d keep the girls. Beulah’s going to nap,” she said. She shook out Sophie’s jeans with a moue of disgust. “You and the damn swamp, I swear.”
    Sophie was allowing her forward momentum to lead her out the door as she snatched her keys from a small table. “You’d best tell your sister to stay home with those kids before she ends up with another ulcer. She works way too much.”
    Sophie did not wait to hear Clary’s possible response;