“Celeste,” Momma called. “Come here and show me which bags are yours. Violet, Charlotte, Aimee, come over here and help your mother.” Then my teenage cousins came flying across the street in their polished shoes and began to lift the grocery bags from the trunk of the car. Overhead the huge branches of the live oak trees shaded us with their leaves, poured down oxygen and golden pollen upon our hair. The sun shone down between the leaves and spotted the arms of my cousins and made a mosaic of Wheeler Street. I looked toward the house and saw Malcolm coming out the door to look for me. His wide shoulders, his worried smile, his long skinny legs, his great big lips and crew cut and green eyes. He wasn’t perfect, he wasn’t what I had intended to marry, but he would do. At least I was finally getting to do it and at least I wasn’t going to be an old maid.

He left a few days later to get ready for the fall semester. The first of September I moved to Atlanta to join him. I hadn’t seen Charles William or Irise all summer. They had been gone to Taliesin West where Charles William had an apprenticeship with the Wright foundation. I had postcards from them and a letter saying they were glad we would all be together in Atlanta in the fall. Malcolm was still in Dunleith when the letter came. “I hope we won’t have to see much of them,” he said. “I hope we won’t be hanging around with them all the time.”

“Why not? Why don’t you like them?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” We were in the yard. My little brothers were shooting basketballs at the hoop over the garage. My brother Dudley’s little girl, Ariane, was playing in the sandpile beneath a tree. I reached for Malcolm but he shook me off.

“I don’t want to talk about it, Rhoda. Just forget it. But don’t think we’re going to go around with Charles William all the time when we get to Atlanta, because we aren’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s queer. He tried to do something to me one night. We’re married now, Rhoda. We have to settle down.” He was turned away from me. When he got mad the veins stood out in bas relief on his forehead. I couldn’t bear it when I made him mad. I couldn’t bear for him to frown at me. “Okay,” I said. “We won’t see them. I promise we won’t. If you’ll stop being mad. If you just stop being mad at me.”

“I can’t help it, Rhoda. Charles William is too much. He goes too far.”