“How dare you! How dare you talk to me like this! How dare you touch a white woman—” It was out before she knew it. Now, she was all mixed up, angry at herself, furious at him, feeling dirty and low and victimized all at once. She felt had. He had pushed her into this.

Ivanhoe Grant smiled fiercely. “So it comes down to that. Then the lesson wasn’t wasted, after all.”

“Goddamn your lesson. Goddamn you.”

“You’re awfully dark, for a white woman. Maybe we’ve got more in common than you’d care to admit.” He laughed.

“Don’t you dare laugh about this!”

“ ‘Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful.’ ”

“Don’t go spitting proverbs at me!”

His coolness infuriated her. His cool, plain arrogance, the arrogance only a man could have. She was angry that he had tried to seduce her, but just as angry that the seduction hadn’t been genuine—which was crazy, and she knew it. She hated herself for being tricked so easily. For being so predictably what she was. She hated this man. She hated all men. She hated all black men, hated all the coloreds, everywhere.

“Go ahead and say it. It’s on the tip of your tongue.”

She glared at him.

“Nigger,” he pronounced quietly. “Say it. Say it after me. You want to say it: nigger.” He was talking louder.

She cast her eyes uncertainly from side to side, looking for a way out.

“It’s easy, just repeat after me: N-I-G-G-E-R, nigger! See?”

“All right! Nigger! Nigger, nigger, nigger! Satisfied?”

“In the beginning was the Word, teacher.”

Some of the men were coming across the street. Grant didn’t seem to notice. Suddenly, they were all around her. Dear God, she prayed, don’t let them damage me, let me be able to have another baby someday.

“You all right, miss?” one of them said timidly, straw hat in hand.

The man next to him let his half-smoked cigarette drop from his lip. “Laws, she a white woman!” he said in amazement.

“Look like she sick.”

“Go on out of here, Charley Potatoes,” one of them said to Grant. “You scaring the lady.”

“We walk with you to the streetcar, ma’am.”

Ivanhoe Grant lifted his hands toward heaven, fluttering his fingers. “In the beginning was the Word, teacher,” he said coolly. “The Word.” He dropped his arms, bowed his head, then disappeared into the house.

His rank smell lingered in the air. She could hardly stand the smell—the air stank of men.

On the streetcar home, she leaned out the window to blow it off her tangled dark hair, out of her dusty nose and throat.

Sam walked to the gate to meet her, cross from having waited for more than an hour. Something was wrong, he could tell. “Children acting up at school?” he said, taking her heavy cloth bag.