Four elderly southern women share a house, a history, and heartbreaking secrets. "Baby girl, I hope you're listening real good to what I'm gonna tell you about that sure-enough miracle we got us. Had to be a miracle, because in all my born days, I didn't never think it could turn out like this. Didn't never think you'd be sitting right here on this very porch with me, hearing me talk about all us folks you don't know nothing much about yet.... Back then, I didn't really know that all the folks who came ahead of us are like the brown roots of a big old vine growing close to the porch, and even though those roots are way down deep in the ground where we can't see them, they're still there. Always. And we grow from them, our whole lives, and then, if we're lucky, others grow from us. Well, I expect that the ones who came before us-black and white-had things they had to keep still about, too, just like me and Miss Cora. Things we had to do, whether we liked it or not. And then never speak of them again.