“Can ya smell that? Mrs. Yancey’s house smells good, doesn’t it?” Her house felt good, too. There were so many soft places to sit and smell other things. Mrs. Yancey liked to make pillows. Oval pillows, square pillows, rectangles, triangles, shapes that had no names but were scented, soft, huggable pillows. These pillows were covered with satins and silks, and embroidered in blinding scarlets and golds, and set off with laces, tassels, and cords. Mrs. Yancey told Miranda that she made the pillows now because all her life she had been living between a rock and a hard place. Even though she didn’t really need any more, something called her to keep sewing herself comforts. Miranda asked Mrs. Yancey the questions that Indigo considered too forward. Why, one time when Miranda and Indigo were having a bit of pineapple-upside-down cake with their tea, and Mrs. Yancey was talking about how the white folks drove down the Colored, drove the Colored to drink and evil ways, drove decent young gals into lives of sin, chasing them up and down the back stairways from Allendale to Hilton Head, Miranda blurted:

“Well, how come the white people give you so many things? If they so hard-hearted and low-down, why you smile up to ’em?”

Indigo was embarrassed, and gave Miranda a good whack ’cross the face.

“She didn’t mean that, M’am.”

“Yes, she did, Indigo. She did, and it ain’t correct to be slapping on no free somebody. You keep your hands to yourself and listen to what I gotta say.”

Indigo settled back in the love seat, almost disappearing in all the pillows. Miranda finally relaxed and lay next to her, listening.

“Folks in these parts got sucha low idea of the women of the race. They can’t imagine how I come by what I come by ’less they weigh my reputation down with they dirty, filthy minds.”

“Oh, no M’am, didn’t nobody say you did that!” Indigo shot up out of the pillows, dragging Miranda with her to Mrs. Yancey’s lap.