“Uncle Lex tells me we’re cousins, you and me, in a mighty slender nigger-in-the-woodpile kind of way,” she said, one hand lying flat on top of the wheel as she drove fast, not looking at him. “Don’t worry, he also told me to keep that quiet and you might not think so to listen to me but that is one thing I am real good at doing. And, it doesn’t make any difference to me.” She modulated her tone then, said, “It don’t make me no nevermind,” as if mocking something—herself, some unknown listener—and went on. “The truth is—you want the truth Foster? The truth is there’s most likely plenty ‘cousins’ out there that we don’t look at or think about or pay any attention to at all. Some of us even with brothers and sisters too. But they’re not. They’re colored. They’re Negroes. That’s what we say—what we say if we’re nice people like my Mama is, likes to think she is—but the truth is that we all, each and every one of us, we say those words and all the time what we hear in our heads is Nigger, Nigger. And those are the ones we like. The good ones. The others, we don’t talk about. But the men, the men can talk about them. Those others. Those bad niggers. And the women they hear that talk and their mouths get all tight like they’re biting down hard onto a sour apple and you know what, Foster? Part of it is because each and every one of those women knows or suspects—and you tell me which is worse, to know a thing or just suspect it—each of them knows there’s little Negro children running around that’s half brothers and sisters to their own precious little children. And more than that. Each one of us knows that anywhere within a two—three-mile circle of any one of our homes there is more than that; there’s aunts and uncles and some split-off piece and parcel of every type of relative you can think of. Pettigrews. But they’s colored Pettigrews. So what do you do, Foster? Why, you clamp those sweet little dried-up old lips together and you don’t think about it. So there. Just in case you were feeling unique. Just in case you thought you were some walking one-and-only. But people found out about you, that’s what they’d think you were. And you’d flat disappear. Standing right before them you would change and go away. Unless of course you were pushy about it. Then you’d become one of those bad ones. They’d all look twice at this big car then I can tell you. What happened to me was I was at the University and had a breakdown was what they liked to call it and so they brought me home. Mama took me down to Dorothea Dix hospital? In Raleigh? Where some doctors talked to me for days on end and then finally one of them told my mama I was suffering from neuroses. He had to tell her something. He had to give her some word to cling on to. What could he do? Tell her I was the sane one in a crazy world? That wouldn’t pay the bills, I don’t imagine. So. What happened to you?”