Flinging the letter down onto her bed, she went to her desk. Shoving her manuscript aside, she pulled a notebook out from one of the drawers and began to write frantically.

Even over the corpse of his own brother, his eyes slipped to my breasts. Mrs. Travers, have you no self-respect? I imagine you and your daughter flaring flaccidly against his monstrousness, his lies, but you’re the kind of woman I bet who so needs a man she ignores the adulterous stench of this one. You have a pretty daughter no doubt who dangles about her papa’s neck. He pets her, teases her, as he once teased you while you performed your bitch’s shimmy to win your man. What has he made of you now? Disembodied head, shriveled with reproach, jealously watching your rival, your sweet daughter. Papa, here are the clean whites of my eyes my white neck and my white shining ass! He has a P.O. box for his mistresses and for dealing with his brother’s bastards—little parasites eating out women’s hearts. This one he left here, little nigger child creeping about my house with his white goggle eyes. Your husband came here to wipe the shit from his hooves and is now concerned for his masculine integrity. Unable to have me he humiliates me with a half-caste, a little black greasy boy to keep me company. I see Haig’s face worming up in him; the puerile and single-minded dream of his blood waits and watches, this creature, this nigger-not-nigger-child from worlds away, this monkey boy you’d carry in a cage, this abandoned beast who at the cost of a kiss is here with me in all his grotesque need. I should keep him in the basement, throw scraps. I should file his teeth into points and make him a monster, charge a dime a head to watch him eat rats. Vile little parasite. Why wasn’t he killed at birth? So many who should have been strangled. So many who shouldn’t be given the chance to breed. So ma

“I knocked, Miss Winters.”

Ruth almost fell off her chair. “Judy, you gave me a shock.”

She got up and walked quickly toward the door to make sure Judy didn’t come in. She had a jay’s eyes, always ready to snatch something up.

“I thought you were going to call me to arrange a trip to St. Louis,” Judy said.

“I’m sorry, I’ve been so busy.”

Judy was peering over at her notebook.

“Would you like some iced tea?”

She checked her watch. “I suppose I have some time, yes.”

Showing Judy to the couch, she went into the kitchen to put the kettle on. Damn, this was the last person she wanted to see. The minister’s wife, for some reason, seemed to be trying to make friends with her. She had turned up out of the blue last month. Such a strange visit. Judy seemed incapable of making conversation and had sat in silence, answering Ruth’s questions monosyllabically and as if they were slightly irritating. Agony for Ruth—and Judy too, she thought—but the woman returned the next day, and after another prickly session suggested the two of them go to see the ballet in St. Louis one Saturday. Ruth said yes just to get her out of the house. Then Judy phoned a week later to “pin her down” and got irritated with Ruth’s equivocations, saying she couldn’t be that busy since she had no husband and no social commitments.