She stepped away from the stove and went and stood before the door where it was cooler. Now just down the side of the table from him. She felt her breathing, a tremble along her ribcage. His eyes wide, focused on her, each an even distribution of mockery and anger. Back in the house a clock struck six, the tones each separate and round with brass clarity. She could picture the clock, the cherubs twining to reach from the pedestal to hold up the sphere of time. She said, “Ain’t no business of mine what those folks up to.”

“I wasn’t asking what you thought they was up to.”

“What you asking then?”

“What do you think?”

She pushed off the door and took a step toward the table, toward him, and stopped. She folded her arms over her chest and said, “Why you messing with me? Why you can’t just leave me be?”

He ran his fingertips over the boards of the tabletop like stroking the strings of an instrument. Then he put his elbow on the table and held his chin with his hand. “Free,” he said. “That old freedom song. That old road north. That what you want, Leah?”

She shrugged her shoulders, still holding herself. The sweat chill against her now, the smell rising now fear sharp as chopped onion.

He went on. “How do you think that would be? I bet you ain’t even thought that far. I bet you think you get up north and those folks sweep you up like long-lost cousins and set you up pretty in a little house and bring you food and clothes and pretty little things to set around the house, little knickknacks. And take you on into their church and let their god sweep down onto you and raise you up to providence? And let their sons walk out afternoons with you and bring you home and feed you dinner and then let them marry you. You think it’s going to be like that? Or maybe you think you’ll just set right here and we can swap places. You all would move on in here and wear my mother’s clothes and maybe even set up on the back gallery and look down at her on her hands and knees weeding out the vegetable patch, and Daddy would drive you all whenever you took a whim to go downtown and pass some new law what white folks could or could not do. Maybe you think it’s going to be like that. Maybe you think that old stick rail reading off a piece of paper in another country going to change things here and maybe you think this sweet country that’s home to you and me both is falling apart and you’re going to get whatever you want. I bet that’s it. I bet that’s what you think it will be. I’m right, ain’t I? Stand there like a free woman and speak the truth to me for once in your life, like a proud free woman would do. Come on now.”