“Thanks for coming. We haven’t had many visitors, believe it or not,” I reply wryly.

Janetta pauses, her fingers resting on Kimba’s bare belly. The look she offers holds sympathy and sees more than I probably want to show her. “You do know y’all have been the talk of the neighborhood, right?”

Her frankness draws a startled laugh from me.

“Can’t say I’m surprised.” I flick water into Ezra’s eyes and he giggles, his face lighting up. “I take it there aren’t many mixed marriages around here just yet, but it is the eighties.”

Janetta shrugs, leaning a hip against the bathroom counter. “Loving was what? Just fifteen years ago? We’re not that far removed from your marriage being considered criminal, and in the South, ignorance about race likes to linger as long as it possibly can.”

The arguments I had with my parents and the snubs I suffered at synagogue in New York tell me the South hasn’t cornered the market on intolerance.

“You seem familiar with law,” I say instead. “You’re a lawyer, too?”

“Oh, no, I leave that to my husband. I’m a teacher.”

Kimba’s small hand flies into Janetta’s face, making us both laugh.

“She’s beautiful.” I nod toward the squirming baby girl. “How old?”

“Just turned nine months last week.”

I pause, my hands going still in Ezra’s curly hair. “When last week?”

“Last Thursday.”

“The twentieth?”

“Yeah.”

“They have the same birthday!”

“No way.” Janetta looks at me with wide eyes and shakes her head. “What are the odds? We can have one big party if you want.”

“That’d be really nice,” I say, smiling because something would actually be really nice for the first time since we moved here.

Janetta rifles through her diaper bag. “I’m out of wipes and this child is so sticky.”

“Why don’t you just plop her in here?” I gesture toward the bathtub. “Plenty of room.”

“You sure?” Janetta asks, hesitation in her expression as much as her words.

“Of course. Why not?”

Janetta smiles ruefully, walking Kimba over and settling her into the steamy water. “I guess I’m as bad as some of these busybodies around here. I assumed you’d be…I don’t know. Stuck-up. Act funny.”

“Me act funny?” I chuckle and frown. “Every time I leave my house people stare at me like I have two heads. At least once a week I’m asked if my son belongs to me. My husband is never home, and it feels like I’m in this whole state by myself. Of all things, I miss my mother, who rejected me for marrying a man who is not only not Jewish, but black. At this point, I’d kiss strangers to make friends.”