“Even at Hoffman Junior High School, Ivory Mae resisted working in the garden because only the girls were required to do so. Look like I was always in a beating way. Ivory Mae was sassy mouthed. “She’ll answer back if it kills her,” Grandmother was always saying. Elaine was the tomboy, playing marbles, climbing trees, breaking her collarbone and leg. “I was a whip.” She could fight the boys, too, defending her baby sister who she thought “let people walk all over her.”
