there were people in those poshy-poshyflats who would not speak to her unless they
absolutely had to,and she didn’t really care. Besides, she was above them, andthey knew she was above them. It had occurred to her on more than one occasion that it must have galled
some of themmightily, knowing there was a nigger living in the penthouse apartment of
this fine staid old building where once the onlyblack hands allowed had been clad in white
gloves or perhaps the thin black leather ones of a chauffeur. She hoped it did gallthem
mightily, and scolded herself for being mean, for beingunchristian,but she did wish it, she hadn’t been able to stop the piss pouring into the crotch of her fine silk importedunderwear
and she didn’t seem to be able to stop this other flood of piss, either. It was mean, it was
unchristian, andalmost as bad—no, worse, at least as far as the Movement wasconcerned, it was counterproductive. They were going to winthe rights they needed to win, and probably
this year: Johnson, mindful of the legacy which had been left him by the slain President
(and perhaps hoping to put another nail in thecoffin of Barry Goldwater), would do more
than oversee thepassage of the Civil Rights Act; if necessary he would ram itinto law. So it was important to minimize the scarring and thehurt. There was more work to be done. Hate
would not help do that work. Hate would, in fact, hinder it.
But sometimes you went on hating just the same.Oxford Town had taught her that, too.
2
Delta Walker had absolutely no interest in the Movementand much more modest digs. She
lived in the loft of a peelingGreenwich Village apartment building. Odetta didn’t
knowabout the loft and Detta didn’t know about the penthouse andthe only one left who
suspected something was not quite rightwas Andrew Feeny, the chauffeur. He had begun
working forOdetta’s father when Odetta was fourteen and Detta Walkerhardly existed at
all.
Sometimes Odetta disappeared. These disappearancesmight be a matter of hours or of
days. Last summer she haddisappeared for three weeks and Andrew had been ready to
callthe police when Odetta called him one evening and asked him to bring the car around at ten the next day—she planned to dosome shopping, she said.
It trembled on his lips to cry out Miz Holmes! Where have you been?But he had asked this
before and had received onlypuzzled stares— truly puzzled stares, he was sure—in
return.Right here,she would say. Why, right here, Andrew—you’ve been driving me two or
three places every day, haven’t you? You aren’t starting to go a little mushy in the head, are you? Then she would laugh and if she was feeling especially good(as she often seemed to
feel after her disappearances), she would pinch his cheek.
“Very good, Miz Holmes,” he had said. “Ten it is.”
That scary time she had been gone for three weeks,Andrew had put down the phone,
closed his eyes, and said a quick prayer to the Blessed Virgin for Miz Holmes’s safe return.
Then he had rung Howard, the doorman at herbuilding.
“What time did she come in?”
“Just about twenty minutes ago,” Howard said.
“Who brought her?”
“Dunno. You know how it is. Different car every time.Sometimes they park around the
block and I don’t see em atall, don’t even know she’s back until I hear the buzzer and
lookout and see it’s her.” Howard paused, then added: “She’s gotone hell of a bruise on her cheek.”
Howard had been right. It sure had been one hell of a bruise, and now it was getting better.
Andrew didn’t like to think what it might have looked like when it was fresh. MizHolmes
appeared promptly at ten the next morning, wearinga silk sundress with spaghetti-thin
straps (this had been lateJuly), and by then the bruise had started to yellow. She hadmade
only a perfunctory effort to cover it with make-up, as if knowing that too much effort to
cover it would only draw further attention to it.
“How did you get that, Miz Holmes?” he asked.
She laughed merrily. “You know me, Andrew—clumsy asever. My hand slipped on the
grab-handle while I was gettingout of the tub yesterday—I was in a hurry to catch the
nationalnews. I fell and banged the side of my face.” She gauged his face. “You’re getting ready to start blithering about doctorsand examinations, aren’t you? Don’t bother answering;
after all these years I can read you like a book. I won’t go, so you needn’t bother asking. I’m
just as fine as paint. Onward,Andrew! I intend to buy half of Saks’, all of Gimbels, and
eateverything at Four Seasons in between.”
“Yes, Miz Holmes,” he had said, and smiled. It was aforced smile, and forcing it was not easy. That bruise wasn’t adayold; it was a week old, at least . . . and he knew better, anyway,
didn’t he? He had called her every night at seveno’clock for the last week, because if there
was one time when you could catch Miz Holmes in her place, it was when the
Huntley-Brinkley Report came on. A regular junkie for hernews was Miz Holmes. He had
done it every night, that was,except last night. Then he had gone over and wheedled
thepasskey from Howard. A conviction had been growing on him steadily that she had had
just the sort of accident she haddescribed. . . only instead of getting a bruise or a broken
bone,she had died, died alone, and was lying up there dead rightnow. He had let himself in, heart thumping, feeling like a catin a dark room criss-crossed with piano wires. Only there
hadbeen nothing to be nervous about. There was a butter-dish on the kitchen counter, and
although the butter had been covered it had been out long enough to be growing a good
crop ofmould. He got there at ten minutes of seven and had left by fiveafter. In the course
of his quick examination of the apartment,he had glanced into the bathroom. The tub had
been dry, the towels neatly—even austerely—arrayed, the room’s manygrab-handles
polished to a bright steel gleam that was unspot- ted with water.
He knew the accident she had described had not hap- pened.
But Andrew had not believed she was lying, either. Shehad believed what she had told him.
He looked in the rear-view mirror again and saw her rubbing her temples lightly with the
tips of her fingers. Hedidn’t like it. He had seen her do that too many times beforeone of her
disappearances.
3
Andrew left the motor running so she could have thebenefit of the heater, then went
around to the trunk. He looked at her two suitcases with another wince. They looked as
ifpetulant men with small minds and large bodies had kickedthem relentlessly back and
forth, damaging the bags in a way they did not quite dare damage Miz Holmes herself—the
waythey might have damaged him, for instance, if he had beenthere. It wasn’t just that she was a woman; she was a nigger, anuppity northern nigger messing where she had no
business messing, and they probably figured a woman like thatdeserved just what she got.
Thing was, she was also a rich nigger. Thing was, she was almost as well-known to the
American public as Medgar Evers or Martin Luther King.Thing was, she’d gotten her rich
nigger face on the cover of Time magazine and it was a little harder to get away with
sticking someone like that in the ‘toolies and then saying What? No sir, boss, we sho dint
see nobody looked like that down here, did we, boys?Thing was, it was a little harder
towork yourself up to hurting a woman who was the only heir to Holmes Dental Industries
when there were twelve Holmesplants in the sunny South, one of them just one county
overfrom Oxford Town, Oxford Town.
So they’d done to her suitcases what they didn’t dare do toher.
He looked at these mute indications of her stay in Oxford Town with shame and fury and
love, emotions as mute as thescars on the luggage that had gone away looking smart
andhad come back looking dumb and thumped. He looked, tem- porarily unable to move,
and his breath puffed out on thefrosty air.
Howard was coming out to help, but Andrew paused amoment longer before grasping the handles of the cases. Whoare you, Miz Holmes? Who are you really? Where do you go
sometimes, and what do you do that seems so bad that you have to make up a false history
of the missing hours or days even to yourself? And he thought something else in the
moment before Howard arrived, something weirdly apt:Where’s the rest of you?
You want to quit thinking like that. If anyone around here was going to do any thinking
like that it would be MizHolmes, but she doesn’t and so you don’t need to, either.
Andrew lifted the bags out of the trunk and handed themto Howard, who asked in a low