"Hello," she said, startled as always to see him, as if she had never seen him before.

"Just getting home?" His eyes glowed and his protruding Adam's apple wallowed in brisk little quivers of skin and bristling hair. As she walked toward her bedroom he came after, close on her heels, treading in his sticky socks across the carpet.

"Don't," she said.

"Don't what? Why you just getting home?" He pursued her. "Stop off with some of your nigger friends?"

She closed the bedroom door after her and stood. On the other side his breathing sounded: a low rattle, like something caught in a metal pipe. Not turning her back to the door, she changed to a white shirt and levis. When she came out he had returned to his chair. Before him the TV set radiated.

Entering the kitchen, she said rapidly to her mother: "Did Gordon call?" She avoided the sight of her father.

"Not today." Mrs. Rose Reynolds bent to inspect the casserole steaming in the oven. "Go set the table. Be some help." Back and forth, scurrying between the stove and sink. She was thin, too, like her daughter; here was the same sharp face, eyes that moved constantly, and, around the mouth, the same lines of worry. But from her grandfather-now dead, now buried in Forest Slope Chapel Cemetery in San Jose-Mary Anne had got her directness, the aloof boldness; and her mother lacked that.

Mary Anne examined the contents of pots and said: "I think I'm going to quit my job."

"Oh, good Lord," her mother said, tearing at a package of frozen peas. "You would, wouldn't you?"