Study Questions
1. Describe Nunkie.

2. How would Nunkie play with Tea Cake?

3. How does Janie react to Nunkie’s games?

4. How does Janie find out where Tea Cake is?

5. Why does Janie go home instead of to work?

6. What does Tea Cake do to keep Janie from running away?

7. How does Tea Cake “bruise” Janie’s ears?

8. Does Janie believe that Tea Cake was ever interested in Nunkie?

9. Why does Janie want to hear Tea Cake’s denial once again?

10. How does Tea Cake describe Nunkie to Janie?

Answers
1. She is a “little, chunky girl.”

2. Nunkie would continue to hit Tea Cake and when he finally retaliated, she would fall down and cause him to help her get up. She would also tease him and provoke him to chase her.

3. Janie starts to be a little “snappish.”

4. Janie asks Sop-de-Bottom, who points her to an adjacent field.

5. Janie leaves work because after seeing Tea Cake and Nunkie together “the sight of the fields and the other happy people was too much for her.”

6. Tea Cake holds on to her wrists to keep her from escaping.

7. Tea Cake “bruises” Janie’s ears by supposedly telling her the lie that he hasn’t been seeing Nunkie.

8. Janie doesn’t believe that Tea Cake was interested in Nunkie.

9. Janie wants Tea Cake to insult Nunkie for her, so that she can “crow” over Nunkie.

10. Tea Cake compares Nunkie to a chopping block.