“The Negros,” she said. “Calling a Negro a black is a trifle rude, don’t you think?”

“You’ll all be calling yourselves that by 1980 or so,” Eddie said. “When I was a kid, calling a black kid a Negro was apt to get you in a fight. It was almost like calling him a nigger.”

She looked at him uncertainly for a moment, then shook her head again.

“Tell me about the brick, then.”

“My mother’s youngest sister was going to be married,” Odetta said. “Her name was Sophia, but my mother always called her Sister Blue because it was the color she always fancied. ‘Or at least she fancied to fancy it,’ was how my mother put it. So I always called her Aunt Blue, even before I met her. It was the most lovely wedding. There was a reception afterward. I remember all the presents.”

She laughed.

“Presents always look so wonderful to a child, don’t they, Eddie?”

He smiled. “Yeah, you got that right. You never forget presents. Not what you got, not what somebody else got, either.”

“My father had begun to make money by then, but all I knew is that we were getting ahead. That’s what my mother always called it and once, when I told her a little girl I played with had asked if my daddy was rich, my mother told me that was what I was supposed to say if any of my other chums ever asked me that question. That we were getting ahead.

“So they were able to give Aunt Blue a lovely china set, and I remember . . .”

Her voice faltered. One hand rose to her temple and rubbed absently, as if a headache were beginning there.

“Remember what, Odetta?”

“I remember my mother gave her a forspecial.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry. I’ve got a headache. It’s got my tongue tangled. I don’t know why I’m bothering to tell you all this, anyway.”

“Do you mind?”

“No. I don’t mind. I meant to say mother gave her a special plate. It was white, with delicate blue trace-work woven all around the rim.” Odetta smiled a little. Eddie didn’t think it was an entirely comfortable smile. Something about this memory disturbed her, and the way its immediacy seemed to have taken precedence over the extremely strange situation she had found herself in, a situation which should be claiming all or most of her attention, disturbed him.

“I can see that plate as clearly as I can see you now, Eddie. My mother gave it to Aunt Blue and she cried and cried over it. I think she’d seen a plate like that once when she and my mother were children, only of course their parents could never have afforded such a thing. There was none of them who got anything forspecial as kids. After the reception Aunt Blue and her husband left for the Great Smokies on their honeymoon. They went on the train.” She looked at Eddie.