It was a statement and a question, too. The real question, the one she had been pushing away since the first hint of what was coming her way, that phone call from Georgia. What she wanted to know but could not ask was, Who was it who had given Zula Bragg their work to look at? All the way back to the office, Angie tried to get that question out of her head, and failed.

THREE

Zula McGuffin Bragg was born in Ogilvie, Georgia, on April 2, 1930, the first daughter and second child of Martin Bragg, a music teacher, and Luisa McGuffin McCleod Bragg, a graduate of Bethune-Cookman College. In 1948 Ms. Bragg was the first African-American to be admitted to Ogilvie College. After graduating magna cum laude in 1952 she taught English at Ogilvie’s Colored High School. Her first novel, Magpie, was published by Knopf in 1955 when she was twenty-five. In 1958 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for a series of essays on voting rights in the South. In 1961 she received a master of arts degree from Columbia University and accepted a position on the faculty of the English department at Ogilvie College, where she is still active. Ms. Bragg has published more than fifty short stories, three books of collected essays, and six novels. Her work has been translated into twenty-three languages. Her novel Catch Can won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. She has twice been shortlisted for the Nobel Prize. Ms. Bragg lives in Ogilvie, Georgia, in the house where she was born.

The Dictionary of Southern Women Writers of Color

Just when John was beginning to hope that dinner at Miss Zula’s might turn out all right after all, she pointed her sharpest gaze at him and asked the one question he was hoping to avoid.

“Did you watch that documentary, John?”

All faces turned to him. “Yes, ma’am, I did. Miss Maddie, might I have a little more of your fried chicken?”

“Of course you may. Caroline, will you please eat, child? I swear, you’ve got to stand up twice to throw a shadow.”

Kai said, “Documentary?” and that was the beginning of the end.

John’s sister-in-law was Japanese. She had been in the States for ten years but her curiosity about things American was unquenchable. Kai Watanabe also had a doctorate in math, which meant that her curiosity was bolstered by an unflinching logic that she applied indiscriminately, whether or not the subject matter could bear that burden. On top of that, Kai was married to Rob Grant, who delighted in her apparent compulsion to say exactly what she thought and ask the questions that everybody was thinking but nobody else dared to put into words. Together at any traditionally southern table, Kai Watanabe and Rob Grant constituted a cultural revolution.