“Begged me to forgive her for harming our family, first. She said the affair had been a terrible mistake. But all she could really think about was her brother, Jimmy. She knew the Ku Klux Klan was trying to find her and kill her, but she still had to be restrained from leaving that house to hunt for her brother. I don’t think she cared what Tom thought or felt by that point. Nellie Jackson was trying to convince her to leave town. Nellie had connections in Chicago, and she wanted Viola to go there.”

“Did Nellie get her out of town?”

“Not right away. The problem was money. Viola didn’t have any. While I was there, Nellie drove up in her big Cadillac. Her man had called her. Nellie and I spoke in another room while the man watched Viola. Nellie told me Viola would need money to take care of herself until she could get a job in Chicago. Nellie’s contacts were . . . in her business. Or the gambling business. She realized that Viola needed a legitimate job. Tom would have given Viola any amount of money, of course, but not to leave town.” Mom closes her eyes, and tears fall from their outer corners. “He didn’t want her to go.”

“Mom . . . you don’t have to—”

“Yes, I do. I’ve kept it in all this time, and now . . . I need to be free of it. Nellie Jackson told me something else, Penn. She told me Viola was pregnant.”

“Had Viola told her that?”

“No. But I suppose in Nellie’s business, she’d developed a sixth sense about pregnancy. Like the old midwives, I guess.” My mother shudders under the sheet. “I was sure the baby was Tom’s. I was terrified. I told Nellie that if she could arrange to get Viola to Chicago, I would supply the money.

“That afternoon, I went down to the Building and Loan and withdrew four thousand dollars from my personal savings account—all the money I had saved from teaching. That was frightening enough, since I was worried your father might leave us. But I had to take the risk. I drove back to the house with the money and gave it to Nellie’s man. I spoke to Viola before I left, as well.”

“What did you say?’

“I asked for her promise that she would never come back to Natchez. At least not for Tom. Also that she would never try to get him to come to wherever she settled. And she promised me.” Mom shakes her head, and more tears come. “She loved him, I could tell. But she’d been shattered by something. I assumed it was because no one could find her brother, but now I know it was the rapes, and . . . everything else.”

“The trial was the first time you heard about the rapes?”