Pat spent the bulk of what he earned freely, on books mostly. After rent and food that is.

Yes, Miss, also on his underthings.

A few months after we married, Pat asked if I ever dusted his books. I hadn’t. I’d never lived surrounded by so many books. Some were new but most were secondhand, he said. I didn’t think of them as things—a vase or a table—that I would sweep a feather duster or a soft rag over. I didn’t think that they were alive—a house cat or a pet bird—but maybe they were something in between. I’d never seen anyone carry a vase from room to room, onto the streetcars, or take it to bed with them the way that Pat did with a book. He even talked to some of them. He cursed at them too, slamming their covers shut.

Pat also spent his money on pipes, fountain pens, and whiskey. He spent on clothes for me and for Bill, whenever I would ask. He never begrudged me a single item, but my shoes and boots had to be griddle-cake flat. He gladly spent on school fees for Bill and foolishly on his playthings.

Pat couldn’t understand why we could never take Bill with us on our Cincinnati journeys. Pat asked if we could make an exception for the zoo. I told him no.

The white people of this city, I told Pat, were far too busy to see a colored person, particularly if we were light-complected enough—Bill is lighter than I am. His father is a Scotsman; I don’t know much about his mother’s people, Miss—but if there were two or more of us, they would spot us without fail. Then, without fail, there would be trouble, if we weren’t working for them or on our way to work for someone like them.

Pat didn’t believe me.

I don’t need you to believe me was what I thought. I might have also said it aloud because Pat stayed at the Enquirer that night and the nights that followed, coming back home only for a change of clothing and not saying a word to me.

I’d never been good with drawing pictures, so I asked Charlotte to do it for me. I left the note unfolded on the entryway table so that Pat would see the raven and the dove sitting on a tree branch, side by side. He must have seen it because he came home for supper that evening and brought with him a new hoop and stick for Bill.

No, the note wasn’t an apology, Miss.

I wasn’t wrong about needing to leave Bill at home. I wasn’t wrong not to trot that boy through the streets of Mount Auburn or Mount Adams. If the three of us were questioned, I could claim to be his mother, but what good would that do him? No one in those neighborhoods would take Pat to be his father. The three of us were far from a family in those people’s eyes. Here stands Patrick Hearn, a white man. Here stands a Negress and her fatherless child. Between us, there was no marriage, no house, no bond except for labor or something sordid. There was no need to have white strangers saying things to Bill’s face that he would hear soon enough. I knew what could come out of their mouths. Pat didn’t.