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Updated: June 3, 2025
Zenie beamed. "Oh, mos' any kin'. Whateveh you think is pritty. I pay you fo' it." Mary Louise promised and departed. She walked home very thoughtfully. Ten dollars a week! Ten dollars just to get the cooking done! She had had her eyes fixed very clearly indeed on the coveted goal to brush aside such an expensive obstacle.
Mary Louise gazed searchingly for a moment and then, as the figure would have passed the door, on around to the rear of the house, stepped out on the porch and called: "Zenie! Zenie! Come in this way. There's nobody around there." Zenie raised her head in mute surprise and then slowly obeyed.
On a table to the right reposed a glass case with a base of felt and a rounded top the mausoleum for an ancient bird creature that looked like a prairie chicken, very droopy and, in spite of its interment, quite dingy with dust. It was vaguely familiar to her somehow. Zenie was watching the inspection with an eager, expectant look.
"What in the world !" she said at length and hated herself for the vulgar surprise in her tone. Zenie turned away from the inspection and, finding herself and appendage the centre of interest, bridled with a timid pleasure, and then poked a ruminative finger into the swaddle of shawl and comforter. "Yas'm," she began in explanation. "Done brung 'im to show t' Mis' Susie. Didn' know you wuz home."
Her manner had all the affable ease of a conscious equal. Mary Louise rubbed her eyes. Time was bringing changes; Zenie had once been humble. Her voice rang with an accusing hardness. "I thought you'd shut the door on that worthless Zeke of yours." Zenie did not raise her head but continued the aimless poking in the bundle, which strangely responded to the treatment and was quiet again. "No'm.
Zenie raised her eyes and smiled. It was a sudden unmasking of a battery in a peaceful landscape. "Nausea Zekiel Thompson," Zenie continued, gazing down into the bundle with the simplicity of a great emotion. For a moment silence descended upon the room. Mary Louise could not trust herself in the customary amenities.
She looked at Miss Susie and smiled a most uncertain smile. And then for the first time was the import of the visit brought fully to the visitee. "So," Miss Susie exploded, "that's where you've been. Out of town! Humph! You ought to be ashamed of yourself." Zenie looked as though she would like to defend herself, but it was useless.
Her voice had a quavering falsetto break in it and her laugh, when there was occasion, was dry and withery and short-lived like a piece of thistle-down. Mary Louise was watching with interest. Zenie struggled for a moment and then turned and faced the inevitable. There was a growing decision in her manner. "H'do, Mis' Susie! Yas'm. I 'cided I'd drop in on you-all. Show him to his white folks."
Of course Zeke was the father. Such a question to the emancipated Zenie would be paternally insulting. She countered skillfully: "What's his name?" Zenie shifted the bundle in her arms and then reached over with her toe and thoughtfully pushed the stove door. "Name Nausea," she replied softly, still regarding the door which refused to shut entirely. "Name's what?"
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