After supper tonight, she said, “You a man now, Luther. A husband. You got responsibilities.”

“And I’m keeping ’em up, ain’t I?” Luther said. “Ain’t I?”

“Well, you are, I’ll grant you.”

“Okay, then.”

“But still, baby, you can spend some nights at home. You can get to fixing those things you said.”

“What things?”

She cleared the table and Luther stood, went to the coat he’d placed on the hook when he’d come in, fished for his cigarettes.

“Things,” Lila said. “You said you’d build a crib for the baby and fix the sag in the steps and—”

“And, and, and,” Luther said. “Shit, woman, I work hard all day.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” It came out a lot harder than he’d intended.

Lila said, “Why you so cross all the time?”

Luther hated these conversations. Seemed like it was the only kind they had anymore. He lit a cigarette. “I ain’t cross,” he said, even though he was.

“You cross all the time.” She rubbed her belly where it had already begun to show.

“Well why the fuck not?” Luther said. He hadn’t meant to cuss in front of her, but he could feel the liquor in him, liquor he barely noticed drinking when he was around Jessie because Jessie and his heroin made a little whiskey seem as dangerous as lemonade. “Two months ago, I wasn’t a father-to-be.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Lila placed the dishes in the sink and came back into the small living room.

“Shit mean what I said,” Luther said. “A month ago—”

“What?” She stared at him, waiting.

“A month ago I wasn’t in Tulsa and I wasn’t shotgun-wed and I wasn’t living in some shit little house on some shit little avenue in some shit little town, Lila. Now was I?”

“This ain’t no shit town.” Lila’s voice went up with her back. “And you weren’t shotgun-wed.”

“May as well.”

She got up into him, staring with stoked-coal eyes and curled fists. “You don’t want me? You don’t want your child?”

“I wanted a fucking choice,” Luther said.

“You have your choice and you take it every night out on the streets. You ain’t ever come home like a man should, and when you do, you drunk or high or both.”

“Got to be,” Luther said.

Her lips were trembling when she said, “And why’s that?”

“’Cause it’s the only way I can put up with—” He stopped himself, but it was too late.

“With what, Luther? With me?”

“I’m going out.”

She grabbed his arm. “With me, Luther? That it?”

“Go on over to your auntie’s now,” Luther said. “Ya’ll can talk about what an un-Christian man I am. Tell yourselves how you gonna God me up.”

“With me?” she said a third time, and her voice was small and soul sick.

Luther left before he could get the mind to bust something.

They spent Sundays at Aunt Marta and Uncle James’s grand house on Detroit Avenue in what Luther’d come to think of as the Second Greenwood.