As I sit on the front porch of my family's cabin, I thinks about the corn husk. It is a truly good thing, the corn husk. The corn husk is a great doll, all you have to do is fashion a head from the looser bits that fall off, and use the bottom part to make the skirt. A corn husk doll, I makes one for my baby sister, and one for me, even though mamma says that I'm much too old for such things as corn husk dolls. She has very fancy ideas about things, my mamma does. My sister and I play with the dolls till we have to go to bed, and we always make sure that we have lots by the end of corn season, so we can play with them till they all run out. Mamma says corn husks ain't good toys, that little girls like sissy should be playing with dolls made of Pour-Sell-in, whatever that is, and I should be wanting things like silk stockings. Sissy and I like our dolls just fine. I try to say so, but papa shushes me and says to mamma that she knows we can't afford no Pour-Sell-In or silk stockings and that if she thought different then she shouldn't have married him. That makes mamma mad and she says that if she had known that we was gonna live in a shack in the middle of nowhere that she wouldn't have. Then they yells about things, and send me out of the room because their yelling always wakes sissy.

Corn husks can also be a very pretty holder for a bunch of flowers. All you do is poke a stick in the bottom and then put real flowers on top. Whenever sissy and I do that we play wedding, she's the bride and I'm the groom and sometimes we switch. One time we gave a corn-husk-flower-bunch to mamma, but I don't thing that she liked it. She said it was nice, but then later she yelled at papa about it, she said that we wouldn't have needed to give her a smelly corn husk boqqqett (I don't know what that is either) if he ever gave her flowers like he promised when they got married. He says that we can't afford fresh flowers and that he's to busy to pick any and that mamma is acting like a spoiled city girl, and that she knew that they was gonna be farmers and what did she espect.

Mamma tells me not to save the nasty corn husks, but I do anyways. Papa gives me that job of shucking the corn, and when mamma isn't looking I sneak the husks under my skirt and into the bedroom I share with sissy. I put them under our bed and then later I make the dolls and give them to sissy, but I tells her that these dolls are a secret and that we can't tell mamma or else she'll yell at papa. I wish mamma wouldn't yell so much at papa, there just corn husks. Its not even his fault. Everyone plays with corn husks, I thinks to myself.

I gets back to my shuckin' when mamma comes outside holding one of sissys dolls. It was the one that we used a blueberry to color the skirt with. She shakes it and my face and asks whats this? And so I tells her that its all doll that I made for sissy. Mamma doesn't like that, she asks if I remembers her tellin' me not to make dolls out of nasty corn husks any more. I tells her that I does and she asks me why we have the dolls when she said not to. So I tells her that we wanted something to play with cause we is bored all the time. She slaps me and says that she said no and that sissy and I is little disrespectful wrenches and that I is going to my room young lady and I is gonna give her all the dolls and she is gonna burn them. So I takes mamma to our room and gives her all the dolls cuz I don't wanna get slapped again. Mamma burns the dolls and sissy cries. Mamma tells her to shut up her sniveling and go sit down.

Mamma starts in with her cooking, waiting for papa to get home, she crashes round in the kitchen and mutters. Mamma aint a very good cook, and when papa gets home the pan is smoking. He asks what wrong with the food and she says nothing, and that she's trying her best and that that's papas problem if he don't like it. Then papa says that she couldn't cook worth nothing and that he could hardly last the day with her food. She says that she trys her hardest and that he don't appreciate the hard work that she does. Papa asks her what work and that she aint never known hard work cuz shes just a spoiled city girl and she had servants doing all the work for her. Mamma says that she ain't never been called such dreadful things in her life and that she won't stand for it and that if papa didn't apologize at once then she was gonna leave. Papa just stands there. Mamma screams at papa then goes to their bed room. She got a suitcase and throws all the things in it. Then she walks out, and slams the door.

Papawonders of the corn husk knells down and picks up sissy, he hands me two ears of corn and tells me to shuck them and make two new dolls, one for me, and one one for sissy.