When the doorbell rang, Hilda Effania didn’t know what to do with herself. Should she run upstairs? Sit calmly? Run get her house robe? She had no time to do any of that. Indigo opened the door.

“Merry Christmas, Miz Fitzhugh. Won’t you come in?” Hilda sank back in the easy chair. Cypress casually threw her mother an afghan to cover herself. Miz Fitzhugh in red wool suit, tailored green satin shirt, red tam, all Hilda’s design, and those plain brown pumps white women like, wished everyone a “Merry Christmas.” She said Mathew, her butler, would bring some sweetbreads & venison over later, more toward the dinner hour. Miz Fitzhugh liked Sassafrass the best of the girls. That’s why she’d sponsored her at the Callahan School. The other two, the one with the gall to want to be a ballerina & the headstrong one with the fiddle, were much too much for Miz Fitzhugh. They didn’t even wanta be weavers. What was becoming of the Negro, refusing to ply an honorable trade.

Nevertheless, Miz Fitzhugh hugged each one with her frail blue-veined arms, gave them their yearly checks for their savings accounts she’d established when each was born. There be no talk that her Negroes were destitute. What she didn’t know was that Hilda Effania let the girls use that money as they pleased. Hilda believed every family needed only one mother. She was the mother to her girls. That white lady was mighty generous, but she wasn’t her daughters’ mama or manna from Heaven. If somebody needed taking care of, Hilda Effania determined that was her responsibility; knowing in her heart that white folks were just peculiar.

“Why Miz Fitzhugh, that’s right kindly of you,” Hilda honeyed.

“Why Hilda, you know I feel like the girls were my very own,” Miz Fitzhugh confided. Cypress began a series of violent ronds de jambe. Sassafrass picked up all the wrapping papers as if it were the most important thing in the world. Indigo felt some huge anger coming over her. Next thing she knew, Miz Fitzhugh couldn’t keep her hat on. There was a wind justa pushing, blowing Miz Fitzhugh out the door. Because she had blue blood or blue veins, whichever, Indigo knew Miz Fitzhugh would never act like anything strange was going on. She’d let herself be blown right out the door with her white kid gloves, red tailored suit, & all. Waving good-bye, shouting, “Merry Christmas,” Miz Fitzhugh vanished as demurely as her station demanded.

Sucha raucous laughing & carrying on rarely came out of Hilda Effania’s house like it did after Miz Fitzhugh’d been blown away. Hilda Effania did an imitation of her, hugging the girls.

“But Miz Fitzhugh, do the other white folks know you touch your Negroes?” Hilda responded, “Oh, I don’t tell anyone!”