“Hurt, my back end,” the old man said. He sank onto the couch and put a hand to his chest. “That’s the way it is, though,” he said. “Your mother will probably simper around him all day, where they got doctors, and leave me here alone. She knows I could get an attact any minute! But does she care? Hurt!” He snorted again. “Listen, I had every bone in my body broke and you never heard any complaints. Nobody did. I bore it like a man. But Tom McDaniel ain’t a man, and he never was, and he proved it today.”

“You shut your filthy stinking mouth!” Ella screamed.

Gramp recoiled. Trembling, he said, “Why, you little no-good bitch! Don’t you ever raise your voice to me or I’ll turn your ass red, and don’t think I can’t do it! What I’m telling you is the truth. It’s facts. That father of yours is a nigger-loving coward and when he gets out of that hospital he’s gonna be ran out of Caxton on a rail, you mark my words!”

“You’re a liar! You’re a rotten liar!”

“You mean it was somebody else went up the Hill and brought them niggers down to school, it wasn’t Mr. Thomas McDaniel? Who was it, then? His twin brother? I didn’t know he had a twin brother.”

Ella stood there, unable to move, unable to think above her fury.

“Oh, it was him, all right. But I wasn’t surprised. If you hadn’t of been sitting around all the time with your finger up your hole, and nothing on your brain but boys—and listen, I seen you plenty of times at night, when you was supposed to be asleep, reading them movie star magazines! And I know what you was thinking about! I know!—if you had even the sense you was born with, you could of seen this coming. Anybody could.” David Parkinson removed a handkerchief and spat into it. “Well, you just wait,” he said. “It’ll only be a matter of time before he brings home a big buck nigger to spend the night. Of course, now, we’re kinda shy on room, so like as not you’ll have to share your bed with him. But you won’t mind that, will you, because this here’s a guest. And we got to be polite to guests!”

Ella tried to answer, but her mind was so full of thoughts, and her throat was so tight and painful, that instead she turned and ran to her room. She slammed the door and threw herself onto the bed.

No, she thought, no, that couldn’t happen.

Then another thought came. It was very unclear, and she was not fully aware of it; but it came.

What is a Negro, anyway?