“After that . . . it’s all a blur. Tom tried to hide me, and Miss Nellie Jackson helped him do it. She was a good woman, though she’d been a prostitute and ran girls down on Rankin Street. They saved my life by doing that, but the fact is, I didn’t care anymore whether I lived or died. I knew I was carrying a child, but not even that mattered to me. I don’t think I expected to live the nine months till it was born. About a week later, I went north to Chicago. And that’s where I stayed, until I got lung cancer.”

At this point, Viola ceases speaking. She pants softly for about forty seconds, her eyes half-closed. Just when I think she’s falling asleep, she starts awake, focuses on the camera, and begins speaking again.

“Things didn’t go too well for me up north. But how could they, when you think about what had brought me there? I did what I could to protect Tom. He sent money every month, and I never asked more of him. There were times I thought of telling him we had a child together, but I knew if he knew that, his life would be torture, the way mine was. I couldn’t do that to him. I had walked willingly into sin, and it was up to me to live with it. I may be flattering myself—and you may not believe it, seeing the way I look now—but I think Tom suffered enough all those years just from giving me up. He loved me, and he’d wanted to be with me. I was the one who ended it. So he lived with his pain, and I lived with mine.

“Henry . . . I’m about out of breath. I don’t have much strength left, and I don’t intend to hang around this earth until my sister has to wipe my backside. I can take the pain, but I can’t give up my pride. I’ve tended too many people to the bitter end. After tonight, or maybe tomorrow, I’ll be gone. So I want to say some last things.