Then there was Nadine Yates, a widow who like Emmaline had done what she had to do to keep herself and her children alive through the cold and not-so-cold days. Nadine was afraid she might be pregnant again. “I know it’s a sin,” she said in her quiet, dignified voice while Emmaline fixed her some tea. For this one, she’d sent Pauline off to the market with her brothers; Pauline was still just a girl, and some things were for grown women’s ears only. “Still, if you could help me out, I’d be grateful.”
“Sin’s makin’ a world where women got to choose between two children’ eatin’ and three children starvin’,” Emmaline said, “and you sure as hell didn’t do that. You made sure he wasn’t some fool who’ll spread it all over, didn’t you?”
“He got a wife and a good job, and he ain’t stupid. Gave my boys new coats just last week.”
A man who knew how to keep a woman-on-the-side properly. But then wouldn’t it be simple enough for him to just take care of the new child too? Emmaline frowned as a suspicion entered her mind. “He white?”
Nadine’s nearer jaw flexed a little, and then she lifted her chin in fragile defensiveness. “He is.”
Emmaline sighed, but then nodded toward the tea cooling in Nadine’s hand. “Drink up, now. And it sound like he can afford a guinea-hen, to me.”
So a few days later, after the tea had done its work, Nadine dropped by and handed Emmaline a nice fat Guinea fowl. It was a rooster, but Em didn’t mind. She pot-roasted it with dried celery and a lot of rosemary from her garden, and the rind of an orange that Pauline had found on the road behind a market truck. Emmaline had smacked the girl for that, because even though ‘finding’ wasn’t ‘stealing’, white folks didn’t care much for making distinctions when it came to little colored girls. But Pauline—who was smart as a whip and Em’s pride—had glared at her mother after the blow. “Momma, I followed the truck to a stop sign and offered to give it back. I knew that white man wouldn’t want it ’cause I touched it, and he didn’t! So there!”
Smart as a whip, but still just a child, and innocent yet of the world’s worst ugliness. Emmaline could only sigh and thank God the truck driver hadn’t been the kind who’d have noticed how pretty Pauline was becoming. As an apology for the smack, she’d let Pauline have half the orange while the boys got only a quarter each. Then she’d sat the girl down for a long talk about how the world worked.
And so it was, as the brief winter warmed toward briefer spring and began the long slow march into Southern summer. By the time the tomato plants flowered, Em was as ready as she could be.
“OH, MISS EMMALINE!” called a voice from outside. An instant later Jim and Sample, Emmaline’s boys, ran into the kitchen.
“It’s a red lady outside,” Sample gushed.
“Well, go figure,” Emmaline said. “Ain’t like you ain’t a quarter red yourself.” Her papa had been Black Creek, his hair uncut ’til death. “Not that kinda red,” said Sample, rolling his eyes enough to get a hard look from Emmaline. “She askin’ for you.”
“Is she, now?” Emmaline turned from the pantry and handed Sample a jar of peach preserves. “Open that for me and you can have some.” Delighted to be treated like a man, Sample promptly sat down and began wrestling with the tight lid.
“I don’t like this one,” said Jim, and since Jim was her artist—none of the dreaming in him, but he saw things others didn’t—Emmaline knew the time had come. She wiped her hands on a cloth and went out onto the porch to meet the White Lady.
She smelled the lady before she saw her: a thick waft of magnolia perfume, too cloying to be quite natural. Outside, the perfume wasn’t as bad, diminished and blended in among the scents of Em’s garden and the faint sulfurous miasma that was omnipresent in Pratt City on still days like this—that from the Village Creek, polluted as it was with nearly a century’s worth of iron and steel manufacturing waste. The woman to whom the perfume belonged stood on the grassy patch in front of Em’s house, fastidiously away from the red dirt path that most people walked to reach her front porch. Why, this lady was just as pretty as a flower in a full-skirted dress of cotton print, yellow covered in white-and-green lilies. No crinoline, but nearly as old-fashioned, with layers separated by bunched taffeta and edged in lace. Around the heartshaped bodice, her skin was white as pearl—so white that Em figured she’d have burned up in a minute if not for the enormous parasol positioned over her head. And here was why Sample had called her red: the confection of her hair, spun into an elegant chignon behind her head and topped with a crown of white flowers, was nearly as burgundy as good wine.
It was all Em could do not to feel inadequate, given that she wore only an old faded housedress, with her own hair done up in plaits and hidden away beneath a wrap. But she drew herself up anyway, and reminded herself that she needed no parasol to keep her skin fine; the sun did that itself, and black didn’t crack beneath its blessing. Those were just surface things, anyway.
The White Lady was nearly all surface; that was the nature of her kind. That was how this meeting would go, then: an appearance of grace and gentility, covering the substance of battle.
“Why, I’ve come to see ’bout you, Miss Emmaline,” the White Lady said, as if they were in the middle of a conversation and not the beginning. Her voice was light and sweet, as honeyed as her yellow eyes. “You know me?” “Yes, ma’am,” Em said, because she knew the children were watching and it wouldn’t do for them, ’specially the boys, to think they could smart off to white ladies. Even if this one wasn’t really a white lady. “Heard here and there you was coming.”
“Did you, now!” She simpered, dimples flashing, and flicked at her skirts.
As she did this, Em caught a glimpse of a figure behind her: a little black girl, couldn’t have been more than seven, crouched and holding the pole of the great big parasol over the woman’s head. The little girl’s feet were bare beneath the simple white shift she wore, and her eyes were still and empty. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you heard,” the White Lady said, unfolding a little lace fan and fluttering it at herself. “Figured you’d have your ways. Could I trouble you for some tea or lemonade, though, Miss Emmaline?
It’s always almighty hot in this land. Not that that bothers your kind like it does mine.”
“Mighty hot indeed,” Emmaline agreed evenly. She nodded to Pauline, who stood beside her trembling a little. Even a half-trained girlchild knew power when she saw it. Pauline jumped, but went inside. “This land made its natural people brown for a reason, though, ma’am, long before either your’n or most of mine came along. Seems to me you could make yourself fit the land better— if you wanted, of course.”
The woman extended one long, thin arm and ran her fingers up the pearly skin, looking almost bemused to find such flesh upon herself. “I should, I suppose, but you know there’s more reward than price comes with this skin.” Em did indeed know. “Pauline’s gone to fetch some tea for you, ma’am. No lemonade, I’m afraid; lemons cost too dear when you got three children and no husband, see.”
“Ah, yes! About those children of yours.”
As much as Emmaline thought she had braced herself, she still couldn’t help tensing up when the White Lady’s yellow eyes shifted to dance over the faces of Jim and Sample. Lord, but she should’ve guessed! America wasn’t the Old Country; these days the White Folk didn’t bother with silly tricks or living in mounds, and they didn’t stay hidden, for why should they? But the one thing they still did, in spades here in this land of cheap flesh, was steal children. And if they kept to children of a certain hue, why, the police didn’t even ask after them. Emmaline set her jaw.