It was Aunt Sweetie who made up my mind. As Pat blew his pipe smoke into the kitchen doorway to let me know that he was again there, I heard her voice. Aunt Sweetie had told me, back when I was preparing to leave her kitchen for another, that I needed to listen to a white man’s footfall in order to judge his character. If his steps were taken with care, that’s a good sign. If he walks with heavy steps, announcing himself even before he enters a room, you best find yourself a new kitchen, Alethea.

Pat’s footfalls were almost silent. It was rare that I would hear him. It was the smell of his pipe tobacco that told me that he was near.

Aunt Sweetie said that she was wiser than most, so I decided, then and there, that I would trade stories with Pat again.

I’m glad that I did because he also knew the Cincinnati that I didn’t, and he shared that city with me. The West End, Over-the-Rhine, Downtown, the neighborhoods on the Seven Hills.

I had few days to myself when I worked at Mrs. Haslam’s, so our “Cincinnati journeys,” as Pat called them, had to wait until we married. For our first, Pat and I took the streetcar to Walnut Hills, where he showed me the white-columned house where Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe had lived when she was young.

Yes, I knew who Mrs. Stowe was, Miss.

If you don’t mind me saying, you must think I’m the one who’s not from here. You’re right. I couldn’t have read Mrs. Stowe’s book, but I knew of it. I’ve never seen the sea either, but I knew of it, Miss.

For our next journey, Pat and I took the incline from Main Street up to Mount Auburn—when white people live on a hill, they’ll call it a mountain, was what I learned that day—where the grand houses belonged to the leading families of Cincinnati, Pat told me. Their houses were like roosters with their chest feathers puffed, I told him. In Mount Auburn, I enjoyed the animals in the zoo more. There were elks, buffaloes, elephants, monkeys, hungry-looking dogs that Pat called hyenas—

You’re not writing this down either, Miss?

Truth be told, Pat never fancied the zoo either. He said that if he wanted to see caged animals, he could take the incline right back down to Main Street.

“These animals don’t have to work for their keep and cage, Pat,” I said, stopping in midstride. I could have added that the zoo’s brick buildings were sturdier than any in Bucktown or the Levee, but I didn’t.

Pat blinked and blinked, and he ceased his complaining about the zoo and its ticket price.

No, he wasn’t a stingy man, Miss.

Pat didn’t like feeling duped, and the zoo, he said, was not about the animals but about the humans who flocked there to be on display. He thought it foolish to have to pay money for such a common sight.