She did not ask me to follow her, and I was at a loss as to what to do, so I sat down on my trunk and waited, while the two boys who were supposed to help me drag it in stood in front of me and stared. “Hello,” I said, and they both ran off with a start to hold on to their mother.

Mrs. Grady came back in to the room and began to pull down some of the skirts and shirts and throw them over her arm. I moved to help, but she held up her hand. “There’ll be time enough for that once you’re properly settled in. Sit still. Play at being a lady,” she said, and then laughed again.

I stayed on the trunk, awkwardly. When she came back in again, she pushed one of the boys forward, who held out a branch he’d broken off from the oak tree out front.

“Well, take it, then. Beat the dust out you, at least,” Mrs. Grady said.

When Grady came home, that’s what I was doing—hitting my knees and ankles until the dust from the road danced in the air. I was the only one to greet him, because Mrs. Grady and the boys were back outside, wringing the last of the gray water out of strangers’ shirts.

Grady blinked at me once, twice. His cheeks flushed pink in the heat of the room—he was, perhaps, a little bit darker than Mama, and much, much lighter than his wife. But he was also clearly a Negro—he would not have been able to get by. He was short, too, with a round, pleasant face decorated with freckles and a broad, friendly nose, across the bridge of which perched the same small spectacles that Mama always wore.

When he saw me, though, he frowned as if I was a misplaced book.

“That’s the girl, Libertie,” Mrs. Grady called from the yard, and Grady grunted in response.

Later, at dinner, I told him, “Mama says thank you for your hospitality, and I do, as well,” but he only managed to mumble a reply into his soup.

“She’s asked me to give you this,” I said, and I handed him the small pamphlet on prayer by Reverend Harland that our church had commissioned to be printed to celebrate the end of the war.

“Well, go on. Thank her,” Mrs. Grady said. Let your own pickaninnies learn good grace.” That made him smile, slightly.

He glanced at the title, then read it aloud. the glory of tomorrow it said in proud, correct letters.

“Mama doesn’t like that,” I said. “She says it assumes too much.”

“Huh,” Grady said. “Well, Cathy never did put too much stock in forecasting.”

“I, for one, agree with her on that,” Mrs. Grady said to her bowl of soup.