He turned without even thinking he was doing it and swept a blue milk-glass vase with a single clump of late-season asters to the floor. The glass shattered fine and disappeared against the carpet but for the small spread stain of water. Here and there in the stain the late-afternoon light caught reflection, shards invisible, fine slivers to work deep into the hard callus of a bare foot. Her eyes glittered as if struck by the glass.

She said, “Oh. Nigger talk. That what you mean, ain’t it? Nigger talk.”

He stood over the stain, his boots planted wide, his voice a great labor as if under a lost freshwater sea. “Your pain delights you, delights you more knowing I can’t understand, you knowing that before you even try. And you sit there, carrying the burden, to keep us all safe. Now what I see, it’s as if that pain owned you. As if it had made you its own. Everything else is you just fooling you. Nobody else. That’s all.”

She nodded as if understanding. Then her voice pitched to the familiar, the first time he’d heard it in weeks, said, “Well, Norman. You married me. Cheap little rings in a midnight river and nothing better. Cause you too much a coward to do more. But me, I don’t hold that against you. You knew what you was getting. Nigger girl, nigger woman. Right through, all the way. You done yourself proud. Even if you don’t know nothing. But that ain’t your fault. I mean, I coulda told you, but then, why you listen? I don’t know nothing more than you. Never did, never will. But, Norman, tell me this. You think you was marrying a white woman? You think I was gonna be a white woman someday?”

He stood on the carpet. Before the front drape of the sofa, just beside her left foot, lay the thick bottom of the vase, lying on its side, flanges of glass extending each separate and fragile, as an ill-made crown. He stepped forward so he was far up over her and looked down at her, waiting for her to look up, knowing his bulk could not be ignored, not then. After a time she did. Her eyes wide, wet, shining. Without fear at all. Almost calling for pain from him. Or something he could not read, could not understand. And hated her for this. He reached his right boot forward then and slowly brought it down on the glass, grinding the boot. The glass fell apart slowly, the dry sound of it the only one in the room. Then his bootsole scrubbed hard into the carpet. He did not look down, at the floor or the woman. He walked to the door and turned back only when he was already through it, holding it back from closing behind him. He said, “I know who I married. Always have. Self-pity’s a terrible thing. I never thought to see it in you.” And let the door close.