Diane’s was a big Catholic family of eight children, and she was the youngest. Her mother hadn’t wanted Diane to be a workhorse like she’d been, some man’s wife toiling in rural Maine. She’d had higher hopes for her daughter, but when she found out Diane was moving to Massachusetts for college, Mrs. Murphy had wept for a month. It was funny, for she hadn’t shed a tear over Lawrence. He came from a well-off family and belonged to the Church. And he couldn’t help what he was, Mrs. Murphy said, no more than Diane could. Her parents were descended from Irish immigrants. They were supposed to be white but didn’t live any better than many Negroes. Her mother told Diane that she should see the lesson in that.
“I don’t believe nobody in your family cared,” Belle said.
“What do you mean?” Diane asked.
“I think if you had brought a poor boy home who looked Negro, it might have been different. Your daddy might have tried to kill him, but then, if he had looked Negro and had been poor, I don’t think you would have wanted him in the first place.”
Diane sat up, her brown eyes wide. “Yes, I would have! I wouldn’t have cared! Don’t you think white people can be color-blind?”
“That’s a medical condition.” Belle looked down at her coffee. She hoped the baby would wake up, crying to feed, but leave it to that greedy child to stay asleep, for once.
In weeks, Diane had a key to her sister-in-law’s apartment, in case of emergencies. She had confided something else, this time at dinner, right in front of Geoff: she’d left Lawrence because she’d caught him cheating with an undergraduate student at Mecca, a young girl no older than nineteen. Or she assumed they were cheating: she’d seen them laughing together in the stacks at the library. Diane had rounded a corner to see the girl running her hand down Lawrence’s arm as he leaned over her, looking at her in a way that should be reserved only for his wife.
This conversation was women’s territory: Geoff had hung his head, ashamed over his brother. In bed that night, he’d said he hoped Lawrence’s misbehavior wouldn’t harm his own marriage, because Belle was married to a faithful man. She could take that promise to the bank and cash it.
At that meal in the small kitchen, Diane hadn’t identified the girl’s race. And when Belle had asked, had the girl with Lawrence been Negro or white? her sister-in-law had blushed and said she couldn’t remember. Belle knew then, even if Diane didn’t suffer from a medical condition, she truly didn’t care what race somebody was. Instead of pleasing Belle, this discovery made her furious, and she walked to the stove, though the burners were off and had cooled.
Belle stirred a pot of lukewarm greens to cover the noise of her loud breathing. Her outraged exhalations, as she considered that Diane was a white woman who could walk through the world and stay blessedly unaware of the color line.
*
The day of the first riot in the City was in fall 1967. Lydia pulled up on a chair and let go for several seconds. Belle was excited, and though she had visited Miss Martha’s store only the day before for their Wednesday Bible study, she decided to walk there and give the good news.
She was standing at the counter, holding Lydia, when she heard raised voices outside. Miss Martha held out her arms. The baby went to her, and Belle followed the old lady outside. In the street, folks were clotted, grumbling. A police car had stopped behind a late-model Buick. The driver’s door was ajar, and one of the cops, an older, short white man, had pinned a Negro man to the hood of the police car. The other cop, also white, was younger, taller and leaner. He had pulled out both his club and his gun.
The Negro was dressed in a shiny gray suit and his hands were interlaced behind his neck. His stomach rested on the front hood of the police car, and Belle could only see the back of his trimmed, neat hair.
“Um, um, um,” Miss Martha intoned.
“What you reckon he done did?” Belle asked.
“Probably nothing, child. You know how these polices is.”
“He shole look hot in that suit.”
“Don’t he, though? Bless his heart.”
Belle wasn’t sure what happened next, if the man in the fancy suit said something off to the white cop pinning him down, or if the steady, loudening rumbles of the crowd agitated them, but suddenly the younger cop hit the Negro on his head with the club. There were raw screams and blood poured, and Belle began to shake. She thought of her brother: what Roscoe probably had endured before he’d been killed.
Miss Martha told her she smelled trouble, and hurried with the baby inside the store. She returned shortly with a large sack. She placed Lydia inside her carriage and fitted the sack at the baby’s feet.