After a minute he said to placate her, “I tell you—I’ll bring something next time.” It was the first he’d thought of meeting her again, and he was instantly both sorry and glad.

“You promise?”

“Yes,” he said, wanting to be rid of her. What if someone came along now with her naked?

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“What you give me?” she teased, smiling for the first time.

“Don’t worry. I’ll bring something.”

The next afternoon they met at the same place at about the same time. He brought a handkerchief with pretty embroidery on it that he had taken from Selma’s room. Aunt Nell had given it to her along with others last Christmas, and he doubted that one would be missed.

“What’s that?” she said rudely, when she had asked what he had to give her, and he had produced it from a pocket.

“It’s Selma’s. Isn’t it pretty? I thought you’d like it.”

She shook her head, laughing. “I wash and iron her clothes; Lovey do her fine things. What I gone do with this? Anybody see it, they say I stole it.” She handed back the present, and he put it into his pocket again, mortified. “You have to give me something better than that.”

“Who says I have to give you?” he said.

“If you don’t, maybe I tell on you.”

“You wouldn’t do that!”

“How come I wouldn’t?”

“Just don’t—please don’t, Clovis.”

She appeared to consider. “Well—I think about it. Tell you what; I won’t tell—yet. Hey—you want to do it?”

Her boldness, far from repelling him, excited him, coming as it did just after she had put them on a commercial footing. He stripped himself quickly. She took off her dress only when he slipped his hands under it and urged her to hurry.

The next day he brought her a gold piece he had been given by his Uncle Felix last Christmas. He hated to part with it, but he thought as he did so how little Uncle Felix would disapprove of the use it was put to, if indeed he disapproved at all. At fourteen going on fifteen Leon already knew about Felix and his black women; and he didn’t know how he knew, because such things were accepted but not very much talked about.