Chapter 7

Meg describes walking to school alone at seven while her mother worked for the Coopers, savoring private reassurances that Meg was the smartest. When Meg asks about learning “the lying lesson,” Mama says each mother must teach her own daughter, signaling a guarded philosophy about survival.

Money is tight: the Model A eats gas, and groceries come from Rudy’s Rolling Store. When Mama works late, Meg stays with Ophelia Lee, who feeds her from her garden, teaches piano, and lets her play with hunting-dog puppies she breeds and sells through a white middleman, Bert. Time with Ophelia makes Meg feel the world is right.

Ophelia attributes her Wurlitzer piano to the 1927 flood, when it floated to her on a raft. During evenings, Mama and Ophelia talk quietly about hard choices in Memphis and a man who wronged Mama, with Ophelia consoling, “You doing the best you can, Charlie.” Meg falls asleep safe in Mama’s lap.

When Rudy’s store closes, Mama and Meg make trips to Oxford for groceries and the lending library. One day Mama arrives at Ophelia’s distraught; Meg overhears fragments about a letter. Soon Meg learns Mrs. Cooper fired Mama after receiving a vicious note, but Mama refuses to name the “witch” who wrote it.

Mama scours newspapers and doorsteps for work, then gives car rides for coins while male drivers harass her. Food portions shrink, rent comes due, and eviction and car repossession loom. After leaving Meg with Ophelia one evening, Mama returns saying she sold one ride that paid well, yet she looks unhappy—hinting at the painful compromises poverty forces.