“Cletus told me to try to run through them where there was a little space, then I saw two older men in a doorway, watching, and I ran past two of those boys to the men and one of them said, Your friend’s in trouble, you’d better come with us, and I begged them to help him, and one of them said, No, those boys got knives, that’s what he said, the fat man said it. I said, But we’ll get the police and the other man said, Yes, there’s a drugstore where we can phone just down the street and I was so scared, I didn’t think how late it was, that there wouldn’t be a drugstore open. And I heard grunts and I saw they were beating up Cletus with that stick and a belt, something shiny I could see in the street light and I started to go back, but the fat man said—he talked very soft and kind—he said they would kill me and Cletus if I went back because that’s why they were beating him, because he was a colored man and I was white. And then Cletus fell down, and the boys ran away, up the hill, and I started to go back again but this time both men were holding me by the arms and I said 1 was going to scream and I did, and they pulled one of my arms behind my back and said they’d kill me right there on the street, they said they’d break my little neck if I let out a peep and I turned just once and saw Cletus getting to his feet and shaking his head. There was a dark streak on his face and I knew it was blood. Then these two men took me for blocks until we came to an old house and they forced me up the stoop and then up the stairs to a room.”

She gasped. Her teeth chattered noisily. Annie pulled a blanket from the floor where it had fallen, and carefully covered the girl up to her chin and said, “Let me make you something hot,” but the girl shook her head, no, no. She was silent for a long time, her eyes glassy, staring out into the larger room where the lamp burned.

“I’ll get you a doctor,” Annie said, not knowing how she’d get a doctor, not knowing any doctors except the one who’d taken out her appendix and she’d forgotten his name except it was a bird of some kind, but she could call, she’d seen a phone on the floor on the other side of the studio couch, she’d phone the hospital—

“No!” The girl cried out. “No doctor. I’m going home. I’m going to my own doctor back home.”

“Tell me the rest of it.”