Chapter 5

Always Neil felt that the malign small presence of Belfreda was in the room, making his large, ruddy, Caucasian strength seem bloated. When he was shaving, he fancied that she was standing behind him, snickering. When he learnedly answered Biddy’s questions and explained to her that God wants us to go to Sunday School (up to and including age eighteen), he could hear Belfreda’s tiny jeer.

And it was this time, when her flea-like insignificance had reduced his St. Bernard bulk to quivering ridiculousness, that Belfreda picked out for being a race-conscious crusader.

For years they had had a black cocker spaniel which they had named “Nigger” without any thought except that black dogs do get called Nigger. He was an imploring, mournful-eyed hound, and Biddy’s best friend—next to Belfreda.

On a snowy evening, with Christmas close, Neil came home from the bank with cheerfulness. When Vestal let him in, she stood on the stoop calling, “Nigger, Nigger, here Nigger, here Nig!” The dog dashed up in a complicated and happy waltz and almost upset Biddy in an excess of affection, while the young parents looked on fondly. It was altogether a model family scene, until Belfreda, a black rose, much too pretty in a much too short black skirt, remarked from behind them, “I guess you folks just despise all the colored people, don’t you!”

It was the first time that either of them had ever heard a Negro mention the race; and there was feebleness and embarrassment in Vestal’s plaint, “Why, what do you mean?”

“Calling Nigger, Nigger, Nigger at the front door that way.”

“But my dear, it’s the dog’s name. Always has been.”

“Makes it worse, calling a dog that. We colored people don’t like the word ‘nigger,’ and when you act like dogs and us are just the same–-”

Neil was angry. “All right, all right, we’ll change it! Anything to please you! We’ll call the mutt ‘Prince’!”

Untouched by the effort at sarcasm, blissful in her missionary zeal, Belfreda granted, “That’ll be nice,” and sailed off, while the prancing Biddy, a flitting white moth of a child, yelped, “I don’t want his name to be changed! Nigger, Nigger, Nigger!” Her chirp made the word so enchanting that her correct parents were betrayed into smiling, and that was enough; the little prima donna had a hit, and she knew it.

Though they called after her, she went through the house screaming “Nigger, Nigger!” while the spaniel followed her fondly, a little surprised by all this attention to his name but considering it an excellent idea.

An expressman came with a Christmas package, and Biddy greeted (and offended) that high Caucasian with a hearty, “Hello, Mr. Nigger!”

“Oh, now, darling, you mustn’t use that word!” said Vestal.

Biddy was always willing to co-operate, but this seemed to her a lot of nonsense. “Then why do you and Daddy use it? Why did you call Nigger ‘Nigger’?” she said reasonably, looking friendly but firm.

“We don’t, any more. We just decided that maybe, after all, it isn’t a pretty word.” Vestal was rather too sweet about it.