"What has happened, Flora?" Catherine had lost her uneasiness. Flora had a vestige of the familiar, at least; her gray bathrobe was an old one Catherine had given her.
Flora sat down in a purple chair and began to rock back and forth, moaning. Tears ran down her cheeks, gleaming on the bruises.
At a sound behind the door Catherine turned, to find the solemn round eyes of a little boy fixed upon her. He scuttled over to Flora, burying his face on her knees.
"Is he yours?"
"Yes'm." Flora cradled one arm about him. "Yes'm. He's my baby." Her voice rose suddenly into a wail. "An' my li'l girl, where's she! They took her off to shut her up—all 'count of that"—she shook one fist in air—"that man!"
Gradually, in broken and violent bits, Catherine gathered the story. Flora had married her professional gentleman. He hadn't wanted her to keep the children. They were hers, she had worked for them always, and dressed them nice, and left them with a neighbor when she went off to work. She wanted them to grow up nice. She even put little socks on her girl, and the teacher at school said why should she dress her up that way, picking on her because she was black. She was twelve. Then Flora found out her professional gentleman had another wife down south. She let him stay, anyway, "so long as we'd been married, and he was handsome." Then she had to put him on bail to leave the little girl alone, always fooling with her. "I told her to stay with Mis' Jones till I got home." And finally—Catherine was cold with pity and horror—Flora had discovered that he hadn't let Malviny alone, that he had ruined her, and stolen the money she had saved to pay the rent, and was packing his suitcase to leave. "I started out to kill him," she said briefly, "but he knocked me down." Then the police had come.
"They said I let Malviny run the streets. She's awful pretty, Mis' Hammond, most white, she is. Her pa was pale. I was working for her, wasn't I?" Flora's gesture was wide with despair. "Providin' for her and him—" she rocked the boy against her breast. "I done the best I could. She wanted things, and he give her money. She's only twelve."
At last Catherine fled down the stairs, feeling that perversion and horror and the failure of honest, respectable effort barked at her heels. Flora couldn't come back to her, not at once. She had to testify. She won't ever come back, thought Catherine. She'll be ashamed, because I know all this. She had, when Catherine had tried to offer sympathy, shrunk away, into the collapse of the structure of herself as competent, self-respecting working woman. "I done my bes'!" Her pitiful wail dogged Catherine's feet through the brittle, freezing slush of the street.
VI