The Bernice L. McFadden Collection. Bernice L. McFadden

don’t you take your blouse off?”

      The idea was mind-numbing, and everything she had been taught told her that she should not do what Cole Payne was asking her to do. But it was too late; she was lost the moment she laid eyes on him.

      Melinda sat up, quickly unbuttoned her blouse, pulled it off, and tossed it aside. She lay back down next to him and used her hands to cover her brassiere-clad breasts.

      “No, don’t do that,” Cole whispered as he gently removed her hands. He reached over and freed first the right breast and then the left. Melinda closed her eyes and began to pant.

      Cole rolled her hard nipples between his fingers until Melinda went limp.

      The entry was slow, painful, and sweet. As he rode her, he conjured a picture of Sissy in his mind. When his seed burst from his shaft, scalding and thick, it was Sissy’s name that Cole screamed, not Melinda’s.

       Chapter Twelve

      Just a month after he had taken Melinda out into the field, she came to him weeping.

      “I think I’m pregnant.”

      Even though her tears were real and flowing, and the distress in her voice was clear, Cole still asked, “You joking?”

      “No, Cole.”

      He kicked a stone, fumbled with the lobe of his left ear, and mumbled, “You know anyone who can get rid of it?”

      Melinda gasped, “Cole!”

      “You’re not thinking about keeping it, are you?”

      Melinda shrugged.

      “You can’t be thinking that, Melinda. You can’t. Your father will kill me!”

      And then she said the words that changed Cole Payne’s life forever: “Well, not if we get married.”

      The statement was filled with so much hope and longing that it made Cole feel sick.

      “Married?”

      Cole always assumed that he would marry for love and not circumstance. But he supposed he could do a lot worse than Melinda, who was monied, educated, and weak in the knees for him.

      His female prospects were many—but all cut from the same poor cloth as he was. Cole could have stomached a life of poverty with Sissy by his side, but without her, it seemed a senseless and ridiculous choice.

      “I guess,” he uttered, “marriage would be the right thing to do.”

      They told his parents first, and then hers.

      Arthur, who had never laid a hand on any of his children, grabbed Melinda roughly by the shoulders and shook her until his wife cried out for him to stop.

      The wedding was a small affair, held in the Thompson’s home. Cole’s mother could have slashed her wrists with the envy she felt upon stepping into that house.

      For a wedding gift, Barbara gave them a piece of framed needlepoint which read, Happy Family, in bright pink, green, and blue thread.

      Arthur and Connie’s gift was obviously much more extravagant: a deed to land, a store, and a house located miles away from Sidon, here with me, Money Mississippi.

      Years later, as Cole Payne sat reading the evening paper on the veranda of his home on Candle Street, he heard the melody he’d mourned for decades.

      “Morning, Mr. Payne.” A Negro woman smiled up at him as she walked toward the rear of the house. Cole peered over the top of the newspaper. The woman looked familiar, but he couldn’t place her.

      As if reading his thoughts she said, “I’m Reverend Hilson’s wife.”

      Cole folded the paper. “Oh,” he grunted, and then tilted his chin toward the wicker basket she carried. “What you got there?”

      “I made Ms. Melinda some johnnycakes,” Doll sang.

      “Is that right?” Cole offered.

      “You know, my johnnycakes taste like a little piece of heaven,” Doll offered with a laugh as she rounded the corner of the house.

       Chapter Thirteen

      The Paynes’ housekeeper was a dark, robust, mute woman named Caress. She clapped her hands with joy when she saw Doll’s face on the opposite side of the glass window and quickly flung open the door.

      Doll said, “Hello, how you today?”

      Caress bobbed her head and grinned. She grabbed Doll by the wrist and dragged her over to the stove and pointed frantically at the shiny silver soup pot. Doll raised the lid and sniffed.

      “Oh, that smells real good, Caress, real good.” Doll rubbed her belly for emphasis.

      Caress’s grin stretched. She cast a quick look over her shoulder and then pressed her index finger against her black lips.

      Doll nodded and winked.

      Caress picked up a spoon, dipped it into the pot, and scooped up a luscious peach wedge, turned bronze by the mixture of sugar, cinnamon, and orange juice.

      Doll pursed her lips, blew cool air over the cooked fruit, and then flicked her tongue against the sweet flesh. “Mmmmm,” she sounded before closing her entire mouth over the spoon. “Is this for preserves?”

      Caress nodded.

      “That’s real good, Caress, best I’ve ever tasted.”

      Caress dropped the spoon into the sink, grabbed Doll’s hand, and pumped it until Doll thought her arm would fall from its socket.

      “Okay now, okay,” Doll laughed. “Is Miss Melinda in the drawing room?”

      Caress shook her head no, made a sad face, and then pointed to the ceiling.

      “She in the bed?”

      Caress nodded yes, and swept her hand upward.

      “She want me to come up?”

      Caress nodded again.

      Doll walked into the dining room, through the parlor, down a long hall, and up the broad and winding staircase. On the top floor she made her way down a carpeted corridor, at the end of which was the Paynes’ bedroom. She knocked on the closed door.

      A thin voice replied, “Come in.”

      Doll had been to that room twice before, but the size of it and the lovely furniture always took her breath away. The bedroom was decidedly female. Cole had moved out a year earlier and taken up residence down the hall in the spare bedroom. “I just think you’d be more comfortable,” he’d said as Caress carted clothing from the main bedroom into the spare.

      The drapes were open and the sun spilled in, in great waves of yellow light. Doll took a moment to survey the space. With each visit, Doll had made it her business to commit every detail of the room to memory, and so it was very easy for her to spot any new additions. On that day, Doll’s eyes fell on a small crimson vase adorned with white egrets.

      “That vase is new,” Doll said as she floated into the room.

      “Well hello to you too,” Melinda scoffed weakly.

      “Oh, hello, Miss Melinda. I hear you’re ailing.”

      Doll waltzed over to the nightstand and set the basket of johnnycakes down, alongside the vase. The day was warm, but the fireplace was lit and Melinda was wrapped in a pewter-colored goose-down comforter.

      “Miss Melinda, you’re shaking like a leaf.” Doll retrieved the woolen throw from