I sit here all snug and smug in my bungalow. Look down my nose at whatever doesn’t please me. Bigotry is a comfortable state well-suited for recluses, hermits, and trolls. I was in the attic putting my flannels in mothballs the other day and got to reading the old newspaper lining the bottom of the trunk. Found I have hard opinions on all sorts of things I’ve never thought about. What the town council should have done in June four years ago. Who of that year’s court should have been elected Miss Crawdad of 19—. That’s the ingrained skill of the experienced bigot, to have a prejudice ready-made for any and all occasions. “I don’t like her face, I tell you. Mouths like that give me the flux.”

I’ve been sitting here being prejudiced about the house. It isn’t mine. I rent it. Mail the check to a box number every month and nobody comes to throw me out. Nobody changes the locks on me. But these things inside are mine. I chose them. This place reminds me of my grandmother’s widowhood house. I saw it once when I was ten or so. It had the same summer camp look, clapboards and a low porch. Living room, kitchen, one bedroom, and an afterthought bathroom. Even the furniture is the same. Overstuffed vintage with a Salvation Army or Goodwill veneer. My walls are deep colors, but hers were all pastel. She had a lot of starched doilies and antimacassars. She had a lot of little glass junk. Nothing was worth much, no crystal or china. Just the little variety store cats and mushrooms and pink, sequined ballet dancers that old ladies of a certain sort seem to exhale. There were also fancy cologne decanters sitting empty on the windowsills, a green glass locomotive with three plastic carnations coming out of the smokestack. I never knew her very well, but I remember her house.