“How could she be dead. I came to help her. I talked to her just yesterday. It isn’t true. I don’t believe it.”

“She hung herself. Hung herself right here in this house with the children playing in the yard. Yes, ma’am, she is dead.” The man’s expression had not changed. No one asked me in. No one wanted me there. There was not enough air to breathe. It was so hot and still. “I’m sorry,” I said. “So sorry. I didn’t know enough. I don’t know what to do. I came to help her. That’s why I’m here.”

“No one can help Klane now. She’s gone.” This from a tall black woman I had seen before. She stepped in front of the man and took over. “You might as well go on and leave now. There’s nothing here for you to do.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry.” I backed down the path, almost tripping over a bicycle wheel. I backed away for ten or twenty yards and then I turned and ran to my car and got into it and started driving. I started in the direction of Speed and Karla’s house, then changed my mind and went into a drugstore and bought a Coke and a candy bar and began to eat it very slowly. It was the first food I had had in hours. I stood between the rows of patent medicines and magazines and ate my Hershey bar and began to weep.

Much much later I was in a hotel room with Jim Phillips. We were lying on a bed with our clothes on talking. “Don’t you want to make love to me?” I asked. “I want you to. Don’t you want me to undress?”

“No. I just want to talk to you. Are you all right, Rhoda? Are things all right for you?”

“No. I don’t know what I’m doing half the time. Like all this mess. I wish I hadn’t come down here. Why did I do this? What did I think I could do?”

“We can see about her children tomorrow and try to arrange things for them. There are things we can do.”

“None of it makes any difference. It doesn’t change anything.”

“We can try. I have friends here who may be able to help.” He patted me on the arm. He touched my hair. He kept on touching me but he wasn’t trying to make love to me. What was wrong with the man? I was getting mad.

“Her sister will take care of them,” I said. “But she didn’t trust her sister’s husband. She didn’t trust him around her kids. I don’t know. Sometimes I think black people are nicer to children than we are. Other times I don’t.”