"Well, nobody needs a reason to visit. Let me make us some tea." Lady Jones was mixed. Grayeyes and yellow woolly hair, every strand of which she hated — though whether it was the color orthe texture even she didn't know. She had married the blackest man she could find, had fiverainbow-colored children and sent them all to Wilberforce, after teaching them all she knew rightalong with the others who sat in her parlor. Her light skin got her picked for a coloredgirls', normalschool in Pennsylvania and she paid it back by teaching the unpicked. The children who played indirt until they were old enough for chores, these she taught. The colored population of Cincinnatihad two graveyards and six churches, but since no school or hospital was obliged to serve them,they learned and died at home. She believed in her heart that, except for her husband, the wholeworld (including her children) despised her and her hair. She had been listening to "all that yellowgone to waste" and "white nigger" since she was a girl in a houseful of silt-black children, so shedisliked everybody a little bit because she believed they hated her hair as much as she did. Withthat education pat and firmly set, she dispensed with rancor, was indiscriminately polite, saving herreal affection for the unpicked children of Cincinnati, one of whom sat before her in a dress so loud it embarrassed the needlepoint chair seat.

　　"Sugar?""Yes. Thank you." Denver drank it all down.

　　"More?""No, ma'am.""Here. Go ahead.""Yes, ma'am.""How's your family, honey?"Denver stopped in the middle of a swallow. There was no way to tell her how her family was, so she said what was at the top of her mind.

　　"I want work, Miss Lady.""Work?""Yes, ma'am. Anything."Lady Jones smiled. "What can you do?""I can't do anything, but I would learn it for you if you have a little extra.""Extra?""Food. My ma'am, she doesn't feel good.""Oh, baby," said Mrs. Jones. "Oh, baby."Denver looked up at her. She did not know it then, but it was the word "baby," said softly and withsuch kindness, that inaugurated her life in the world as a woman. The trail she followed to get tothat sweet thorny place was made up of paper scraps containing the handwritten names of others.

　　Lady Jones gave her some rice, four eggs and some tea. Denver said she couldn't be away fromhome long because of her mother's condition. Could she do chores in the morning? Lady Jonestold her that no one, not herself, not anyone she knew, could pay anybody anything for work theydid themselves. "But if you all need to eat until your mother is well, all you have to do is say so."She mentioned her church's committee invent............