‘Yes, sir! She liked black meat did Gloria Day! And Tobias, well, he was good to her. Anyway, Tobias took a liking to me. He knew I loved to hear the piano. Miss Day would play and I’d listen, getting a whipping for not sweeping the porch or cleaning the floor, whatever I was supposed to be doing. Well, Miss Day called me in and said to me - she had a high voice, kind of sweet but bitter, you know? - she says, “Evander, you like my piana playing, boy?” And I says real cute, “Yes, mam.”

‘So she shows me the scales. Anyway, for some reason she decided to teach me to play. I’d spend hours with her, listening to her. I could listen to her all night and day. She was an interesting person, you see. My mammy said, “Evander, she gonna get fed up soon so don’t you be breaking your heart over it if she does.”

‘But God was good, and she began to teach me Chopin. Well, I picked it up real quick, and it pleased her. When I’d play, she’d laugh her head off. That went on for five years. The best five years of my life. By the time I was ten, I could play any damned thing she asked. Somehow, I think now, looking back, I was like the child she never had. She even tried to get me into a school, but the authorities wouldn’t even listen. But I’d already accepted that so when she told me, I wasn’t too disappointed.’

‘It sounds wonderful. You had a great childhood ...’

Evander laughed out loud.

‘No, Kerry. That part of it was good, sure, but I was a nigger, and niggers don’t have no childhood! You’re a man from the first time you hold you own pecker and pee! Anyway, one morning we goes there and Miss Day is sitting on her porch, looking real bad. Her face was whiter than I ever seen it, and she was white you know. White skin, white hair, white clothes ...’

He swallowed hard and took a sip of his cold coffee.

“‘Look round the back, Lissy,” she tells my mammy. “Look what they done.”’

He looked down at the table for a few seconds.

‘Who are “they”, and what had they done?’ Kerry’s voice was serious now. She was frightened of what he was going to say, but had to know.