“What kind of talk, Dad?”
“Somebody saw you at a movie house in Raleigh,” he
said. “They say you was with a Mexican and he had his
arm around you. Is it true?”
“Is he Mexican?” Steve demanded.
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HARD ROW
“Would that make a difference?” she said coldly.
“Damn straight it would!” said her brother Tom.
“I’m thirty-three years old. I’m divorced. I’m a sher-
iff ’s deputy. Who I choose to see is my own business.”
“Oh dear Jesus!” her mother wailed, bursting into
tears again. “It
Her father’s shoulders had slumped and for the first
time, she realized that he was getting old. Suddenly
there was more white than red in his hair and the lines
in his face seemed to have deepened overnight without
her noticing.
While her brothers fumed and her sister and mother
twittered, he held up his hand for silence.
“Mayleen, honey, you know we’re not prejudiced.
If you’re seeing this man, then he’s probably a good
person.”
“All men are created equal, Dad. That’s what you
always told us.”
He nodded. “And they’ve got an equal right to ev-
erything anybody else does. But there’s a reason God
created people different, honey. If He intended us to
be just one color, with one kind of skin and one kind
of hair, then that’s how He would have made us. He
meant for each of us to keep our differences and stay
with our own.”
“So how come you didn’t marry another redhead,
Dad?”
It was an old family joke, but no one laughed tonight.
“That ain’t the same, and you know it, honey.”
“It
little darker than ours and his hair is black, but it’s no
205
MARGARET MARON
different from Steve and Tom and Shirlee being freck-
led all over and marrying people with no freckles.”
“We’re
people. White Americans. I bet he’s not even here le-
gally, is he? He probably wants to marry you so he can
get his citizenship.”
“He’s been a citizen for years,” she snarled back.
“And believe it or not, butthead, he wants to marry me
because he loves me. He even thinks I’m beautiful. So
maybe you’re right. Maybe there
