“How do you do. I . . . I . . . would like to see one of your rooms.”
The woman eyed Emma Lou curiously and looked as if she were about to snort. Then slowly she began to close the door in the astonished girl’s face. Emma Lou opened her mouth and tried to speak, but the woman forestalled her, saying testily in broken English:
“We have nothing here.”
Persons of color didn’t associate with blacks in the Caribbean Island she had come from.
From then on Emma Lou intensified her suffering, mulling over and magnifying each malignant experience. They grew within her and were nourished by constant introspection and livid reminiscences. Again, she stood upon the platform in the auditorium of the Boise high school. Again that first moment of realization and its attendant strictures were disinterred and revivified. She was black, too black, there was no getting around it. Her mother had thought so, and had often wished that she had been a boy. Black boys can make a go of it, but black girls. . . .
No one liked black anyway. . . .
Wanted: light colored girl to work as waitress in tearoom. . . .
Wanted: Nurse girl, light colored preferred (children are afraid of black folks). . . .
