Ruth didn’t realize her hands had been shaking until Xavier covered them with his own.

Nothing bad had happened. No violence. No one hurt. It had been nothing.

Yet her muscles contracted, leaving her body rigid. She thought of her own son, just a few years younger than that bucket boy. What if that had been him with his legs wrapped around a bucket and a cop standing over him?

The country had just elected Obama president, giving their dreams wings. But that was then. Now, the clarity of a new day trimmed their feathers as it always had, making it damn near impossible to take flight.

Back home, Xavier tugged at the hem of her shirt, and soon she lay on the sofa, staring at the halo of his neatly cropped Afro. His lips on hers held her in place, and she looked into his eyes, as soft and brown as chocolate orchids in bloom. She wondered if most people kissed with their eyes closed to block out all senses except for touch. But she needed to see his eyes, to determine how he might handle her truth if she ever found the courage to share it with him.

She had tried to tell him so many times—during their Netflix binges, on the way to Firestone to get an oil change, or in bed when they recapped their days before falling asleep at night. Those times when they lay side by side, the quiet of the dark would sometimes give her permission to speak, and she rehearsed what she might say. Remember when we saw that cute kid at the mall? Well, I have one of those. Or You wouldn’t judge me if you found out I had a kid out there somewhere but didn’t know where, would you? All of it sounded ridiculous and impossibly wrong when she played it out in her head.

A man took pride in his seed, a flag in the ground that said he’d been there. A Black man trying to find his way needed something to call his own, a part of him that would endure beyond anything the world threw at him. Ruth’s son didn’t grow from Xavier’s seed.

“Not now. Not tonight,” Ruth said, peeling his hand from her thigh.

“Okay, you’ve had a long day. Just let me hold you.” They repositioned themselves until they were spooning, her back pressed against his chest with his arms folded around her.

Xavier had always been a patient man, proposing three times before she was finally convinced that happily ever after could be hers, too.

“You’d be the perfect mother,” he’d whisper to her on the street as they watched grimy kids with potato chip crumbs at the corners of their mouths being cursed and dragged by baby-faced mothers.

Ruth couldn’t tell her husband that she was no better than those young women and, actually, probably even worse, since she’d walked away from the life she’d created, leaving some other, nameless, faceless woman to mother her child.

Three

Ruth

Chicago glittered at night along the Magnificent Mile, people bouncing along in a fog of unadulterated bliss. They passed pristine holiday window displays that Ruth swore had to be video frames lifted from a Hallmark Channel movie. The only discordant note was the car horns punctuating the strains of Christmas music floating along Michigan Avenue.

Ruth inhaled to take it in fully, and a blast of cold air mixed with roasting coffee beans from a nearby café filled her nostrils. The muscle of this city flexed around her, and she stood so small next to the skyscrapers. In Ganton, the most massive structure in town was the Fernwood plant. But in Chicago, she got whiplash every time she walked in the Loop trying to absorb every sight.

Tess and Penelope strolled a few feet ahead in their matching white pantsuits with white faux fur wraps. Their locs slapped their faces when they twisted their heads excitedly to point out various shops and gift ideas. Every few blocks, Ruth glanced up at Xavier to see if he was just being coy about not knowing where they were headed. With a hint of mischief on his face, he smiled, pretending to be more clued in than he really was. He carried a folding table under his arm like it was a newspaper and bounced along with that happy warrior countenance as usual. She swung a picnic basket by her side, enjoying the tingling sensation of flirting with the unknown. They were joined by other friends and casual acquaintances heading to the secret, undisclosed location, and the mystery added to their giddiness.

Only the man at the front of the crowd, in the white top hat with the matching white cane, knew their destination. Victor was a casual acquaintance of Xavier’s, whom he’d met on the treadmill at the East Bank Club. Having lived in Paris for a few years, Victor had been a frequent attendee of D?ner en Blanc, the invitation-only, pop-up event that hadn’t made its way from France to the United States yet. When Victor relocated to Chicago, he’d brought his own unofficial, bootleg version with him.

As the group of about forty moved west of Michigan Avenue, people on the street stared at this merry band of Black folks waving their white cloth dinner napkins. Crowds parted like the sea to let them go by. Ruth tried to imagine how they must have looked to the white and Asian people they passed. Don’t make a spectacle of yourself, Mama often said. They already think we do nothing but sing and dance. Don’t give them a reason to believe it’s true.

You could pay a price for thumbing your nose at respectability. Ruth knew this. If she’d eschewed respectability, she wouldn’t have made it to Yale or the consumer-packaged-goods company. She wouldn’t have this life where she could put on a white chiffon dress and white leather boots to prance down the street this time of year just to be irreverent.