Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered

110/260“You sho loves to tell me whut to do, but Ah can’t tell you nothin’Ah see!”“Dat’s ’cause you need tellin’,” he rejoined hotly. “It would be pitifulif Ah didn’t. Somebody got to think for women and chillun andchickens and cows. I god, they sho don’t think none theirselves.”“Ah knows uh few things, and womenfolks thinks sometimes too!”“Aw naw they don’t. They just think they’s thinkin’. When Ah seeone thing Ah understands ten. You see ten things and don’t understandone.”Times and scenes like that put Janie to thinking about the insidestate of her marriage. Time came when she fought back with hertongue as best she could, but it didn’t do her any good. It just madeJoe do more. He wanted her submission and he’d keep on fighting untilhe felt he had it.So gradually, she pressed her teeth together and learned to hush.The spirit of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in theparlor. It was there to shake hands whenever company came to visit,but it never went back inside the bedroom again. So she put somethingin there to represent the spirit like a Virgin Mary image in a church.The bed was no longer a daisy-field for her and Joe to play in. It was aplace where she went and laid down when she was sleepy and tired.She wasn’t petal-open anymore with him. She was twenty-four andseven years married when she knew. She found that out one day whenhe slapped her face in the kitchen. It happened over one of those dinnersthat chasten all women sometimes. They plan and they fix andthey do, and then some kitchen-dwelling fiend slips a scorchy, soggy,tasteless mess into their pots and pans. Janie was a good cook, andJoe had looked forward to his dinner as a refuge from other things. So