“I’m not a writer. I just had a column in a little weekly newspaper. That was a long time ago. I’m nothing. All I do is take care of my children. Do you have children?”

“They’re gone. They’re away at school.”

“How old are they?”

“Fifteen and seventeen. We sent them away when the trouble started. I’m lonesome for them. It’s killing me to have them gone.” She opened wine, found glasses, threw open the refrigerator, got out salad things, began to cut up salad for our supper. Servants walked in and out of the living room. She talked to them. She answered the phone. Every time she put the phone down, it rang again. “It’s all fear, Rhoda. Beware of fear. Tell me what books you got in Birmingham. Tell me about yourself.”

“I haven’t always lived here. I just moved to Alabama. I thought it would be so wonderful. All my life they told me my life would begin when I lived back in the South but it bothers me now. I saw that magazine Charles William brought you. I can’t believe people do things like that. How can they do it?”

“Ignorance and dogma. Fear, always fear. They grow up with fear and they live with fear and they impart it to their children. They are so unhappy they have to have an enemy. So the Negroes are the enemy.”

“We saw the Klan. They had their capes on and this flaming cross. The cross was the worst thing of all. It was worse then the cockfight. I don’t believe in God. It wasn’t terrible because it was sacrilegious. One of the things I hate about the church is that goddamn cross. Imagine worshipping an instrument of torture. Every time I see one of those things I think about Jesus being crucified. I don’t think about him rising from the dead or any of that. I just think about him being nailed up there. Do they nail black people to the crosses?”

“They hang them mostly, or drown them. Or beat them to death.”

“How did you get involved in this? Why did you come down here?”

“I was a reporter in Washington. Then Charles wanted to come home and I came with him. We got here in nineteen fifty-four, right before the movement started. A woman who worked for me came to me when the bus boycott started and I got involved in it. One thing led to another. Her sister works with me now. Her name’s Aurora. You’ll meet her.”

“What are all these servants doing? You’re cooking dinner.” I filled my wineglass. I was completely comfortable. I could say anything.