Part Five
Tazia, Topeka, 1914-1917
Chapter 19

“Dear Denton,” Elvan’s brother reads, standing inside his doorway while Tazia, Gemma clutching at her skirt, waits on the sagging porch. “The woman who handed you this letter is my good friend, Tazia Gatti.” His voice is gruff, unlike Elvan’s smooth cadences. Tazia’s empty stomach contracts. Perhaps coming here was a mistake. Denton plods on, his calloused finger pointing to each word as he sounds it out. “My friend needs work and she and her little girl, Gemma, need a place to live. I pray that you and Lula Mae can assist them, and may the good Lord bless you.”

As Denton stumbles through the letter, Lula Mae and six children, the oldest near ten and the youngest crawling, gather behind him in the front room of their two-room shack. Lula Mae taps her foot, waiting for her husband to finish. At last, he tells Tazia, “I don’t ... We barely get by ... a white lady ... ” Lula Mae nudges him aside with her hip, and pulls Tazia and Gemma inside.

“Where are your manners?” she clucks. “Making them stand in the cold instead of inviting them in for a meal.” She smiles at Denton. “And today the Sabbath.” He grins sheepishly.

The children stare. Tazia wonders if this is the first time a white person has been in their home. “Sorry, Ma’am.” Denton bows his head. “I get so nervous when I read, everything flies out of my head. Like I’m waiting for the teacher to whip me for saying the words wrong. I didn’t get as much learning as Elvan. After he left, us older kids quit school to help Mama with the little ones.” Denton’s eyes, unlike his voice, are kind and gentle. Maybe things will work out after all.

Lula Mae takes their satchel and shows Tazia where she and Gemma can wash up out back. Two of the Wright children follow them.

“You and your little girl, no one else?” asks Lula Mae, priming the rusty pump.

Tazia nods, wincing as the icy water washes away the grime of the long train trip.

Lula Mae hands Tazia a thin towel, patched in several places. “Your man done run off?”

“It’s just me and Gemma.”

Lula Mae nods briskly and thrusts Gemma’s hands under the gushing water. Gemma gasps at the cold, and her directness, but doesn’t pull away.

“Mama.” One of the Wright children, a girl about Gemma’s age, steps closer to the pump. “Her skin’s getting more white!”

“Her skin ain’t changing colour,” Lula Mae replies. “Just the dirt coming off.” Sceptical, the child puts her own hand under the water and rubs vigourously. “Mirlee Bee,” Lula Mae says, “all the washing in the world ain’t gonna turn your skin white. Besides, it’s fine as it is.”

“What about her hair, Mama,” asks a boy, a couple of years older. “It gonna wash out lighter too?” He pats Gemma’s head. “It soft,” he marvels. Gemma holds her breath.

“Her hair dark, same as yours, and curly, just not so much.” Lula Mae gently removes her son’s hand and smiles at Gemma, who lets out her breath. “Now you two stop being so nosy.” She shoos her children inside and says to Tazia, “Least we know Elvan ain’t your girl’s father.” She raises her eyebrows, waiting for an explanation of how Tazia knows Denton’s brother.

Tazia dries herself and Gemma. “I feel like I washed away the blood from the meat packing plant too.” She rests a clean white hand on Lula Mae’s brown forearm. “Elvan said you’d be kind. He was right.” She says nothing more about Elvan. They head inside.

The family sits around the table, smaller children squeezed on a bench to free two chairs for their guests. Denton says grace. Lula Mae dishes out the food. “Cornmeal mush and greens,” says, with apology. “We eat our big meal midday, after church. I figure on leftovers for supper, but ain’t never none with this crowd.” She wags a finger; the children poke one another and giggle. “No matter.” Lula Mae ladles deep into the pot. “We can always feed another couple of mouths.”

After filling Denton’s plate, Lula Mae doles out the next biggest portion to Tazia, then heaps Gemma’s dish too. Tazia worries her daughter will balk at this unfamiliar food, but the hungry child lifts the bowl to her mouth and scoops up every bite, silently watching the other children over the rim. When Gemma’s plate is clean, Lula Mae winks and gives her a sugar cube.

“Aw, Mama,” the oldest child protests. “How come we ain’t getting no sugar tonight?”

“You done had your treat today. This poor child travelled a long way to our table.”

Gemma holds the sugar cube, uncertain what to do with it. “Put it in your mouth and suck it,” says Mirlee Bee. Still, Gemma hesitates.

Lula Mae laughs and hands each child a piece of sugar. “Here, show her how it’s done.” The children pop the cubes between their lips, followed by Gemma. Tazia reminds her to say thank you, which she does, drooling sugary saliva. The Wright children titter. Gemma covers her mouth, but dimples betray a smile. The others grin back. Soon she is laughing with them, sated and happy. Tazia, too, relaxes. Packingtown seems long ago and far away.

***

When she’d gotten off the train late that afternoon, and shown the station master the address she was looking for, his eyebrows had shot up. “What do you want in that part of town?” he’d asked, before directing her to the trolley. She and Gemma were the only ones to get on board, and the trolley conductor, grateful for the company, had been friendlier. When Tazia asked about the huge copper-domed building they passed, she got a tour guide’s description of the Kansas State Capitol. “Took thirty-seven years to build,” he bragged, “and cost over three million dollars.” Tazia asked whether Italian artisans had worked on the Renaissance-style structure. “Indeed,” he said. “Italian marble all over and hand-hammered copper columns with the state’s native wild flowers.” Tazia planned to take Gemma to see the building once they were settled.

They passed shops, closed on Sunday but with bright window displays. Then Smoky Row, where the conductor said no respectable woman ventured. Soon the faces on the street changed from white to black, and multistorey brick buildings gave way to squat wooden structures. Tazia saw a hodgepodge of salvaged barn boards, tin, and tar paper, with newspaper stuffed into the chinks. “How do they keep out the snow?” she’d asked, thinking of Chicago blizzards.

“Topeka’s below the snow line so our winter is pretty dry. Wind is the real problem. Cuts through you like a plow blade. Then summer’s so hot and sticky, even the atheists pity the poor ministers who have to wear collars around their necks.”

“You must be grateful for fall and spring,” Tazia had mused.

“Fall’s pretty. But spring…” The conductor hooted. “…is the worst. Thunderstorms, tornadoes. Scariest are the hailstorms. We get some as big as baseballs.”

Instinctively, Tazia’s hand had covered Gemma’s head, but the sleeping child, slumped against her, didn’t stir. After trying to keep her amused on the train, Tazia was grateful to talk to another adult. She missed Veronika and was sorry when the trolley stopped to let them off. “You be careful now,” the conductor said, before clanging the bell and turning back toward downtown.

Tazia had stood in the middle of the desolate street, amid a swirl of dried leaves, until she spotted a Negro man and approached to ask directions. He’d looked at her as suspiciously as the white station master had but pointed to a house with a tangle of tacked-on rooms. Then she’d led Gemma, fully awakened by the bell and her curiosity, to the Wrights’ porch.

***

Now, sitting at their table, Tazia twice thanks Lula Mae for the meal, uncertain where their next one will come from. “Elvan doing all right?” Denton asks. She can’t admit she’s hardly seen him the past three years, not if she wants the Wrights’ help. So she answers, “As well as someone in that job can be.”

“Foreman still got it in for him?”

“Mucha’s got it in for everyone,” Tazia says, shuddering.

Denton frowns. “Harder for a dark man. People like that foreman are scared of us.”

“Lately he’s more scared of union organizers. If Elvan steers clear of them, he’ll be fine.”

Denton splays his fingers. “Union’s right to protest working conditions at the plant. We ain’t got it easy here, but it beats ripping open a hundred and fifty hogs a day.”

Tazia sees her opening. “Elvan said you worked on a wheat farm. Can you help me get a job there too?”

“Only women there are the wife and daughter of Mr Tapper, the Swede who owns the place. They cook for us farmhands, do barnyard chores.” Denton frowns. “Mr Tapper’s near as poor as us. Don’t reckon he needs another woman in the kitchen or the henhouse.”

“I want to work in the fields,” Tazia says.

Denton grips the arms of his chair. “You don’t understand how it is, Mrs Gatti.”

“Please, call me Tazia.” After Veronika, being called by her last name sounds so lonely.

“Mr Tapper can’t afford large teams of horses, let alone steam-powered tractors like the rich farmers use. We break sod by hand, clear two or three acres a day. Machines do five times that. Same with planting. We ain’t got no broadcast seeders to drag behind the plow. It’s hard work, and it ain’t fit for a woman.”

“It’s what I did on my family’s olive tree farm in Italy. Every step by hand. Backbreaking work, but an honest day’s labour.” So different, Tazia thinks, from mixing unspeakable things into the sausage and finding any excuse to dock your pay. “I can do it.” She flexes her muscles.

Denton squirms. “But Mrs ... I mean Tazia. The farmhands ain’t only men. We’re all of us Negroes too. Mr Tapper is the only one who’ll hire us.”

“In Chicago, your skin colour mattered less than whether you were tough enough to do the job. It ought to be the same here.”

“Ought to be, but it ain’t. White farmers and farmhands ...” Denton trails off. “Let’s just say there’s been trouble.”

“Have you been hurt?” Tazia is alarmed. She expected Topeka to be safer than Chicago.

“Mr Tapper got threatened a time or two in town, at the general store, but nothing’s happened.” Denton looks at the children, who have stopped fidgeting and are listening closely.

Tazia takes a deep breath. “Mucha threatened Elvan,” she says. “But he always backed down because your brother was too good a worker. I’m a hard worker too, and I know farming.”

“I just don’t think Mr Tapper is going to like the idea of a white lady in his fields.”

Lula Mae stands. The children’s eyes follow her. “Now, husband. You let that farmer decide for himself.”

He grins. “Just like you let me decide for myself, wife?”

She grins back. “Yes.” She taps her foot. “So, what will it be?”

Denton nods and says to Tazia, “Mr Tapper’s son comes in a wagon to fetch us by sunup. Parks right down the street. You can come along tomorrow.”

“Meanwhile, you’ll stay with us until you’re settled.” Lula Mae ignores Denton’s gaping mouth. “Gemma will sleep with Mirlee Bee; Tazia next to the stove, where it’s warmest.”

“Plenty of places for you to rent in the poor white part of town, two trolley stops back,” Denton informs Tazia. “You would have passed it on your way here.”

“I’m not riding the trolley in the dark to get here by sunup every day,” she tells him. “I’ll find a place near here.”

Denton explodes. “You’re asking for real trouble. More for us than for you. Just cause this ain’t the South, don’t mean white folks aren’t afraid to burn and lynch Negroes.”

“Nonsense,” Lula Mae shoots back. “Topeka was the heart of the abolitionist movement. Lots of freemen came to Kansas to start a new life. We got a regular land of opportunity here.”

Tazia looks from one to the other. She doesn’t know who to believe. Denton and Lula Mae glare at each other, then break into peals of laughter. All Tazia can figure is that both are right.

Lula Mae says the Mabley place, on the corner, has been empty since the old woman died, and her sons are eager to rent it before hooligans turn it into a bawdy house. It’s only two rooms, but they’re big, plenty of space for Tazia and Gemma. The house is also half brick and keeps out the wind. It needs a few repairs, but Denton will fix it up after work this week and they can move in next Sunday. “I’ll watch Gemma every day while you’re at the farm,” Lula Mae says.

“If Tazia gets the job,” Denton says.

“I should pay you,” Tazia says, knowing she has nothing to give.

Lula Mae waves away the idea. “The Lord put us here to do for each other. Besides, in a couple of years, she and Mirlee Bee will be off to school.” Tazia looks at her daughter, no longer a baby. With a pang, she realizes that Gemma will soon leave the cocoon she has spun.

“Now, if you insist on helping,” Lula Mae says to Tazia, “let’s get these dishes washed.”

The children race outside, the oldest carrying the youngest on her hip. Denton follows and sits on the porch, lighting a corncob pipe. Soon the women join him, Lula Mae taking the rocking chair next to his, Tazia perched on the top step. Their neighbours rock, smoke, and talk too. The wind has died down, and while the air is chilly, no one wants to waste this fall evening inside.

One by one, porch conversations cease as people notice Tazia. “Evening Denton, Lula Mae,” the man next door calls over. He looks pointedly at Tazia and frowns, then at Denton.

“Lady knew my brother Elvan, back in Chicago,” Denton says. Tazia is silent. Opening her mouth will only make matters worse. “She just wants a place to settle down, raise her little girl,” Lula Mae says, looking straight into the neighbour’s eyes, and those of the people rocking across the street. Some suspend their pipes in the air, others puff faster. No one speaks.

“Didn’t you never play leap frog?” Mirlee Bee crouches next to Gemma, who shakes her head and startles as a bigger Wright child vaults over his little sister. Nonetheless, when told it’s her turn to get down, Gemma obeys. She pokes up her head after Mirlee Bee clears the jump. “Now you leap over me,” Mirlee Bee orders, tucking herself into a tight ball.

Instead, Gemma gingerly steps over her, but her back foot catches Mirlee Bee’s shoulder and she tumbles sideways onto the hard-packed earth. Tazia bolts from the porch, ready to rescue her, but Lula Mae pulls her back. Tazia waits for her daughter to cry.

“Rest a hand on my sister’s back for balance,” says an older child, helping Gemma stand. “First-timers can cheat.” Gemma brushes herself off, palms Mirlee Bee’s head, and eases herself over the top. The Wright children clap. Mirlee Bee pops up and she and Gemma spin in a circle.

Children descend from the other porches, forming leap frog lines up and down the street. Their parents glower, but the children ignore them. Soon they are deliberately falling and rolling in the dirt. Next, they crumble dried leaves on one another’s heads. Gemma sticks close to Mirlee Bee, but in the fading light, her pale skins becomes indistinguishable from the dark ones.

“Look Mama,” she calls. “I’m playing.”

Tazia smiles, but when the parents continue to glare, Lula Mae’s dinner backs up in her throat. She and Gemma don’t belong here. In Packingtown, they blended in, another immigrant family seeking a better life. These Negroes are more American than she is. On the other hand, Ayal would never look for her here. Topeka is not ideal, but it’s the best Tazia can do. For now.

The children play until the outlines of their bodies merge with the night. Their elders rock in silence, the glow of the men’s pipes the only sign of their presence. Lula Mae ushers everyone into the house. She casts an evil eye on her neighbours, even though they cannot see her curse. By the time she closes the door, the Kansas wind has again picked up and it is downright cold.

***

In the wagon next morning, the others stand back, creating an island around Tazia and Denton. It’s too early, as they roll through the white part of town, for them to be seen, yet the men glance nervously around. Denton deserts Tazia too, riding midway between her and the other Negroes.

The farmer’s eyes bug open when Tazia gets down from the rig, but he extends his hand. “Hampus Birger Tapper. Birger is Swedish for one who helps. What can I do for you?” Tazia tells him she wants a job. Not in the house, in the field. “Well, Ma’am. I’ve always hired Negroes. I admire their work ethic. But a woman ...” He repeats what Denton said about the work being physically demanding. “I’m afraid ladies don’t have that kind of stamina.”

Tazia describes the exertions on the olive farm where she was used to working long hot days and chilly moonlit nights. For the past three years, she shoved bloody meat through a grinder in the Chicago yards. She is fully capable of breaking sod and pushing seeds into the ground. The farmer turns to Denton, who shuffles and says his brother swears she’s a good worker. The other men glare at Tapper’s leathery face. He looks out at his fields, then at her.

“Ma’am, I’ve never even hired their wives. I don’t see how mixing black and white, and men and women, can work.”

Panic washes over Tazia. She hates to beg, would rather let her work speak for itself, but she remembers Gemma greedily eating Lula Mae’s food last night. So, swallowing hard, she tells Tapper she has a young child to feed and doesn’t want to work in a factory where bosses will take advantage of her. “You strike me as a good man, sir. I trust you to treat me well.”

He reddens at the praise, then looks at the men’s implacable faces. Denton steps forward. “I can’t testify to the lady’s stamina, but I can account for my brother’s character, and I’ve never known him to speak an untrue word.” Tapper shifts from foot to foot. As daylight peeks over the horizon, he stands firm, having made up his mind. “I ain’t sending the wagon back to town until this evening,” he tells Tazia, “so I might as well give you a try for today. We’re planting winter wheat and I can use an extra hand.” He orders Denton to fetch Tazia a hoe and a sack of seeds, then adds, “She can work alongside you, Cyrus, and Willie in the southeast quarter field.”

With the memory of the farm in her muscles, Tazia soon establishes an easy rhythm with the tools and seeds. When the sun is high in the sky, Nellie, the farmer’s daughter brings a pot of stew and tin plates to the field. The men will not eat with Tazia. However, the barn cat, who has followed the smell of the meat, wraps himself around her legs. Nellie says his name is Alvar, Swedish for elf warrior. Tazia is hungry, but nevertheless she first offers a piece of meat to the cat. Without hesitation, he gobbles it up and his coarse tongue wipes the gravy from her fingers.

“I’ll be,” declares Nellie. “I’ve never seen him eat from anyone’s hand, let alone lick it.” She clicks for the cat to follow her back to the barn, but he yawns and curls up beside Tazia. “He’s supposed to eat varmints,” Nellie warns her, “so don’t feed him too much.”

By late afternoon, Tazia has helped the men clear and plant a quarter-acre more than any other team. When the sun sinks level with the top of the barn door, Tapper’s daughter brings a water bucket. The others continue to sit apart from her, but after they finish drinking, they set the bucket next to her and wipe the ladle clean with dry leaves. Tazia nods her thanks. Still, none of the men look at her when they climb into the wagon to go home. Only the farmer gives her a hand up. He also says she can come back tomorrow and, if she keeps up this pace all week, he’ll take her on permanently to help with the spring crop too. He shakes his head at his own decision, but explains to the wagon load, “A good worker is a good worker, regardless.”

***

That weekend, Tazia moves with Gemma into the Mabley house. She is grateful for a week of Lula Mae’s hospitality, but glad to escape the questions and her habit of ordering people around. Denton has fixed the roof, taped windows, and filled in cracks between the bricks. His wife teases he’s made the place nicer than theirs. Tazia sews curtains from a worn-out dress of Lula Mae’s. The dead woman has left behind all the furniture they need, including a dresser. Tazia hides Ayal’s note and Elvan’s rattle, both still wrapped in her nonna’s shawl, in the back of the top drawer.

Mother and daughter settle into a routine. Having declined Lula Mae’s invitation to eat with the Wrights, Tazia and Gemma have breakfast at home. Then they walk down the street, where Gemma plays with the younger children while the older ones do chores and get ready for school. Tazia and Denton board the wagon. She gets used to riding by herself and watching the rising sun burnish the Capitol dome in the early morning silence. At day’s end, she thanks Lula Mae, who often hands her a pot of beans or greens, scoops up Gemma, and returns with her to their private cocoon. Once Gemma asked to spend the night at Mirlee Bee’s, but Tazia cannot bear the thought of sleeping alone. To cushion her disappointment, Tazia tells stories when they go to bed each night, about cats who perform magic tricks and birds who fly in patterns like embroidery stitches around the sun. Gemma, transfixed, never asks to sleep at her friend’s again.

Sundays are solely for Tazia and Gemma too. They take the trolley to Most Pure Heart of Mary Church. It is one of only two Italian Catholic churches in Topeka; all the rest are German. Afterwards they play in the park where Tazia photographs Gemma on the swings with naked trees as the only backdrop. Come winter, when it is too cold to play outside, they’ll have to go home after church. Tazia hopes to teach Gemma to sew but worries her child is too impatient. Gemma, who is tall like her father, prefers to run and jump, pumping her long and sturdy legs.

“Why not come to church with us?” Lula Mae had asked Tazia on her third Sunday in Kansas. “It’s one street over, no need to take that child and yourself all the way downtown.”

Denton knocked ashes from his pipe. “What would they do in a Baptist congregation?”

“Pray and sing,” his wife had retorted. “God hears better through thin clapboard walls than thick stone ones.”

“Lula Mae, you don’t believe that.” Denton chuckled. “You could whisper from under a boulder and the good Lord would hear you.” He turned to Tazia. “But in this town, you’ll need God’s protection whether you’re Catholic or Baptist.”

Tazia frowned. Was she about to hear again that Topeka wasn’t as safe as she thought?

“Town’s overrun with Germans,” Denton had explained. “Mostly Lutherans. Protestants can’t abide Negroes but they’re no friends of Catholics either.”

“And everyone hates Pentecostals,” Lula Mae had added, at which the oldest child began babbling nonsense. The younger ones copied her, and Gemma joined in too. Lula Mae tittered but admonished them to stop. They shuffled their feet, embarrassed. Tazia was confused.

“Speaking in tongues. Glossolalia. Folks think it’s weird, especially if they’re looking to pick on someone who ain’t one of their own. Guess even we’re guilty of shutting folks out.” It was as close as Denton came to apologizing for the Negroes giving Tazia the cold shoulder. At least now the men nodded with grudging respect when Tapper paid her the same wages as them.

***

The first morning a dusting of snow covers the ground, the horses step gingerly and the wagon arrives at the farm late. White men cluster outside the farmhouse, carrying signs. The sky, although overcast, is by now light enough for Tazia to read them: NIGGER LOVER, NO COLOURED IN KANSAS, NO SLAVES FOR HIRE. The marchers swig from jugs of whiskey.

“Looks like trouble’s moved from the town store to the farm,” Denton says. He and the other men grip the sides of the wagon.

“What the hell, is that a white woman riding with them?” one of the white men yells.

Too late, Tazia ducks behind Denton.

Thrusting their signs like battering rams, the men storm the wagon, shouting “String up them niggers” and “Lynch the coons.”

Tapper’s son yanks the reins and tries to turn the horses. They balk and the wagon almost tips over. Two farmhands jump out, grab their harnesses, and lead them in a tight circle until they are facing back toward town. Hands reach down to pull the men in just as the mob arrives. The driver cracks his whip and the horses tear over roads that they’d minced along minutes ago. White men stumble into their rigs and follow. The Negroes reach town in half the time it took to get to the farm. Amid their silence, Tazia’s heart thumps louder than the clattering wheels.

When they reach town, the Negroes dash to their houses to grab shovels, rakes, hoes, and anything else long and sharp. Tazia jumps from the wagon before Tapper’s son screeches around the corner, turns the horses, and hightails it home. She runs inside the Wrights’ front door just as Denton exits. He joins the other men in a defensive line down the middle of the street.

“What’s going on?” Lula Mae demands, trying to follow her husband outside.

Tazia stops her. “Out the back way,” she says, “to my place.” She prays her bricks will withstand battering better than the Wrights’ flimsy boards. It is also a few houses down from where the centre of battle is taking shape. Together, she and Lula Mae herd the children through the rear door. They’re too scared to exclaim over the first snowfall. At Tazia’s, they hover next to the stove. Even the older ones hold onto their mother’s skirt. When Tazia goes back out, Gemma follows. Tazia tells her to stay with Lula Mae, but Gemma clings to her, refusing to be left behind. Tazia takes her daughter’s arm and runs to the back of the next house. She bangs on the door.

A frightened woman opens it, children hiding behind her skirts as well.

“Hurry,” Tazia says, panting. “Everyone to my place.” The woman looks at her like she’s crazy. Tazia kneels down. “Gemma, tell the children they’re invited to our house for a party.”

“Is it my birthday again?” her daughter asks, puzzled.

“Today we’re going to celebrate every child’s birthday!”

Gemma hesitates, but after Tazia gives her a big smile, she invites the children to come home with her. They clap and follow her out. Tazia turns to their mother, who tosses her head but follows too. After they are safely inside, Tazia and Gemma repeat this scene with all the other mothers and children. Back at their house, there is not much food to offer them, but fortunately Tazia has baked biscotti that Sunday. Gemma tells the children a story about tiny fairies and they compete to see who can nibble the tiniest bite of cookie. Their mothers look on nervously.

In the front room, Tazia draws aside the curtain. Snow dampens the sound, but she sees a line of Negro men facing an angry white mob. Everyone is still standing but blood spatters the mounting drifts of white. Before she can close the curtain, a white man spots her and within five seconds, he’s banging on the front door. She steps outside and closes the door firmly behind her. Two men are on the porch. One brandishes a cracked bat, speckled with blood, the other a log wrapped in kerosene-soaked rags. He pulls a box of matches from his pocket. “Turn those nigger ladies and kids outta there or I’ll set your house afire,” he says with a woozy grin.

Visions of flames with no exit flash before Tazia’s eyes. “There’s a white child in there,” she says, clearing her head of the frightening memory. “You planning on killing her too?”

“Get her out first,” he demands.

Tazia refuses. She must protect her own child, but she cannot let the others face the flames either. The man lights the torch. Tazia steps up to the fire and stares down the drunken animal. “You’ll have to kill this white woman first,” she snarls into his reddened face. He squirms.

“Come on, Nigel,” the other man says. “Them niggers is gonna whip our boys if we don’t get back to help ‘em out.”

“I ain’t moving til this nigger-loving lady clears out the premises.”

“I’m not moving until you clear off my porch.”

The bat-wielding man snickers. “She’s a tough one. You ain’t gonna best her. Come on.” Reluctantly, Nigel throws his torch into the snow, where it sizzles but continues to flicker. Tazia marches down the steps and stomps it out. The two men return to the street fight.

An hour later, it is over. The Negroes have driven off the whites, for now, but there is no telling when or where they will strike again. Denton bleeds heavily from a gash on his forehead, Cyrus has a broken arm, and Willie’s nose is battered. The others sustain breaks and bruises too. Tazia’s house becomes a field hospital. Men lie shoulder to shoulder on the floor, while children clamber for space in their mothers’ laps. Tazia fetches Nigel’s log and tosses it on the stove.

A man called Preacher leads everyone in prayer. “Dear Father, thank you for the strength in our arms that allows us to defend our families and the strength in our necks that allows us to hold our heads high.” They sing the hymns Elvan used to serenade Tazia with. When they get to “His eye is on the sparrow,” she thinks of the magic sewing bird in the nighttime stories she tells Gemma. This morning, God has stitched a protective border around her neighbours.

The women briefly go home and return with sheets torn into bandages, and food. The men eat with Tazia, while the wives hold the children, Gemma included, on their laps. Denton and Lula Mae hold tightly to each other. Tazia longs for Elvan’s arms, but also feels embraced by those around her. She will never be one of them, but she can be one with them. For now, that is enough.