The doctor, one of the first colored doctors in the country, had not very much to say—except he's seen my butterfly before and with it the aches in the bone—but there are other things I do not feel and that make him hopeful. He says the tired comes and goes. He says sometimes people die. He says I'm lucky I didn't have a baby, because sometimes that makes it worse.
Through this all he was more reserved than he had been before. Quite a bit more reserved. In fact, it took a few days for me to get the appointment. Finally, after the examination, when I was dressed and about to leave, he cleared his throat and said what I believe he had been trying to say all the while.
"Madam, when I first met you I was impressed by your deportment." (I would rather he had said intelligence and simple grace.) "You were in a difficult position, but you handled yourself with modesty. (I would rather he had modified the modesty perhaps by adding simplicity, humble modesty.) "All eyes could see that you were in the best and the worst sense of the word married. But you bore the yoke with..." (Did he call it grace?) "When you married, we were happy for you. Every Negro man who had a mother forced or cajoled by the master raised a cup to your victory. But now you come to town with no husband, only an intent on sullying the good name of one of the great dark men in the Capital City. I can't but join my fellow citizens in disapproving."
"I don't think you know anything of my situation."
"I can smell him on you."
It was the most vulgar sentence I had ever had spat at me. I know what he meant. I had washed the linen at Beauty's. Being a doctor is another kind of washing of the bedsheets.
"He will never be elected again if he keeps up with you. Voting Negroes won't vote for a man living with another man's wife." I tried to interrupt him, but he wouldn't be stopped. "Whoever you think you are, in the polite society of Negro teachers and preachers and lawyers and doctors, you will always be the Confederate's concubine." He was on a roll. "You have a greater chance of being accepted among old white families than new colored ones." And he kept on going. "We're a prim and proper lot."
I hadn't thought of this. I hadn't thought of very much at all.