Summary

Tish decides to tell her mother (Sharon) about the baby before she tells her father (Joseph) or her sister (Ernestine), thinking that her mother will be the more understanding. As she describes her return home, Tish recalls what she has been told about how her parents met – how her mother managed to get out of her Southern home by traveling with a band; how she realized she was not a singer, and started to feel lost in herself and in her life; and how Joseph met her by chance in a bus depot, went with her to New York, and within a week had married her and started to build a life with her, even while he was away at sea. Meanwhile. Sharon arrives, and almost immediately sees that Tish is worried. She also intuits that...