Читать книгу I Shared the Dream - Georgia Davis Powers - Страница 16
ОглавлениеNicky had been sent to Germany from Fort Knox and I was living with my parents while looking for a place of my own. When I mentioned my search to Mr. Robinson, he said, “Mrs. Robinson and I have plenty of room in our two-story house on Chestnut Street, and we’d be glad to have you there.”
The Robinsons and I got along well. Soon I was driving us both to work in Mr. Robinson’s new Buick. As we drove in one day, I noticed a tall, Black man with charismatic eyes standing, waiting for a bus. He was handsome, dressed in a gray, stylish suit, and was carrying a newspaper under his arm. In his tapered fingers he twirled a long cigar. Slowing the car I thought, he looks just like a Philadelphia lawyer. I watched him for a long moment, then continued on my way.
With my husband in Germany and little to do after work, I had a lot of free time. One evening I went to the Grand Bar for a drink and began talking with the shapely, bronze-skinned waitress who served me. Her name was Inez Gillings and she came from Costa Rica. High spirited and attractive, she played poker with some of the fellows who frequented the Grand and invited me to go with her to the sessions, even though I didn’t play. At one of the poker parties, I met the man I had seen on the street corner—the Philadelphia lawyer. His name was Jim Powers. He and I talked that night and he told me he was born in Canton, Ohio. He also mentioned that his wife, Gloria, was in Waverly Hills Sanatorium, a tuberculosis hospital where he visited her every day. “On Wednesdays,” he said quietly, “I cook food and take it to her and others in the hospital.” He had come to Louisville to work at Churchill Downs for the racing season, but hadn’t intended to stay. He had planned to go on to New Orleans for the season there, when his wife contracted TB. He put her in the hospital and found work nearby. They had a small daughter and there was another child on the way. As we talked, I could feel his concern for his wife and thought that he must be a very caring person.
The next time I saw Jim was at a Christmas Eve party at Inez’s house. Like that first evening, he was alone. I felt pretty that night. My hair was newly cut stylishly short and I was wearing a long-sleeve, white silk blouse, a black skirt and black suede shoes with ankle straps. I could feel him watching me. Although nothing was said, I think we both felt the attraction between us.
Jim didn’t have a car, so when I left he asked if I could take him to the Brown Derby. Since I was already giving another guest a ride, I agreed. When I pulled up at the Brown Derby, Jim tried to persuade me to go in for a drink, but I refused.
In the spring, Nicky returned to the States and was discharged from the Army. He found a job on the night shift at the Brown-Forman Distillery. I was still working at Robinson Realty Company. Robinson had a building listed for sale on Sixteenth Street in the “California area.” It was a long, brick building that once had five small businesses in the front and living quarters in the back. As always, I was searching for some ways to make extra money. I bought the building, paying six hundred dollars for it. Nicky and I spent most of our days renovating it into two two-room apartments and two three-room apartments. We added one inside bathroom accessible to each apartment. Once the renovations were finished, I quit Robinson Realty. I was busy working hard to make a home for us, and we had extra income from the rentals. I should have been content.
However, Jim Powers was still on my mind. Nothing had actually happened between us, but every time I saw Inez, she told me Jim was asking about me. By this time, I had also gone back to work at the Jeffersonville Quartermaster Depot as an inspector of Army uniforms. Nine months passed and Inez continued to bring me messages.
“Jimmy wants to see you.”
“I don’t want to see Jim Powers,” I insisted to her, but I couldn’t lie to myself.
True, Nicky and I were congenial and pleasant to each other, but by then I knew something important was missing in our marriage. I did want to see Jim Powers even though I didn’t want to admit it to myself.
Finally, one night I agreed to go with Inez to the Top Hat. Jim and Inez’s boyfriend were there. Jim had asked her to arrange the evening in order to bring us together. That night I finally came to terms with the truth about my feelings for him. When he asked me to meet him the following night, I said, “Yes,” almost without thinking.
“Let’s meet at the Orchid Bar,” he went on. I, who rarely found myself speechless, merely nodded.
Almost from the moment I arrived at the meeting place and sat down at the table where he waited, I knew we would be together later. As we sat sipping our drinks he leaned toward me, saying, “I’ve rented a room.”
That night began an affair that was to continue on and off for many years. I was ecstatically happy when we were together, totally miserable when we were apart, and often tortured by the guilt of cheating on my husband.
I gradually learned everything about Jim, including the fact that what he had first told me about his place of birth was untrue. He had made up that story because he hated the South and the segregated life there and was ashamed of his place of birth. “I left Alabama as a teenager,” he told me, “went to Knoxville, Tennessee and worked as a waiter in a railroad dining car. Then I left Knoxville and went to Chicago, continuing to work on the railroad, until I landed a job as a waiter in the Palmer House.”
The snob in me was bothered a little by the fact that he was a waiter. He was far too distinguished-looking for what I considered such a menial job. He was a very good waiter, though, and was working at the Old House, one of Louisville’s best restaurants.
Gloria, Jim’s wife, was now out of the hospital and doing well. One evening at Joe’s Palm Room, I saw her for the first time. A tall, almond-skinned woman with black, wavy hair, she was from Jamaica. She spoke with a Spanish accent and was very intelligent. That evening she completely ignored Jim and talked animatedly with Dr. Maurice Rabb, a local physician, and some other professional people. She paid little attention to the others gathered there. Jim had told me that she preferred the company of the well-off and this seemed true, since she spoke to no one else.
Though there appeared to be no good solution for our relationship, Jim and I continued to see each other until fate intervened.
I got a call from a friend, Nellie Taylor, whom I had met in Lexington when my husband, Robert, was stationed there. Her mother had died. I drove there immediately to be with her and went to her home where the body was placed for viewing. Walking in, I could not help but notice a white woman with striking silver-white hair and electric blue eyes standing by the casket, weeping. A little Black boy was holding her hand and a young White girl was standing beside her. All three soon left together and I asked Nellie about them.
“The lady and her husband owned a farm outside of Lexington,” she said. “When the little boy was born the doctors told his mother, Eva Marie, that she had given birth to a Black child, even though he looked as pale-skinned as any of the other White babies. They tried to convince her to leave the baby at the hospital to let him be adopted, but she refused. Eva Marie thought she could pass him off for White and she wanted to keep him. She named him William and called him Billy. Of course, as Billy grew older, his Blackness began to show; he had curly hair and his skin began to darken.
“When the woman’s husband became suspicious, he confronted her; she admitted that a farmhand had fathered Billy. Her husband ranted and raved but then agreed that she could keep the boy, not as their child, just as a farmhand. This arrangement continued during Billy’s preschool years. He was fed and turned out into the fields alone to talk to the animals and the trees. However, word spread around Lexington that his mother had had a Black child. It was considered a scandal and when visitors came to the house, Billy was locked in his room.
“When Billy was six, his mother had to find a school for him. Kentucky schools were segregated and Billy couldn’t go to the neighborhood school with his older sister. Eva Marie sent him to live in Lexington where he could go to a Black school during the week and come home on weekends.
“My mother,” Nellie continued, “had been keeping Billy in Lexington and sending him to school, but now other arrangements will have to be made for him.”
Soon after I returned home from the funeral, Nellie called me.
“Would you be interested in adopting Billy?” she asked.
I was taken by surprise. Even though I knew I couldn’t have children, Nicky and I had not considered adopting a child.
“I’ll have to think about it and talk to my husband,” I replied.
Nicky and I talked about it for a week. The more we talked, the more we felt we wanted Billy. I had always wanted a child, and even though we had been married eleven years and had become accustomed to thinking only of ourselves, we believed we could adjust and become good parents. We went to Lexington to talk to Billy’s mother. Eva Marie told us the story of Billy’s conception and birth, crying the whole time. She said she had become close to Billy’s father because her husband was away a lot. She came to depend on him.
“He was always there when I needed anything. After a while, he was so good to me that I came to love him.”
She had agonized over her decision to give Billy up, trying to find any other solution.
“I’ve tried to find an integrated boarding school I could afford and I’ve also considered leaving my husband and going to New York. I’ve had to reject both of these plans because I don’t have any money of my own.”
“We really want Billy,” Nicky and I told her and we arranged to pick him up at Nellie’s. That morning, he carried a little suitcase in which, besides his clothes, he had several cans of tuna fish, his favorite food, and a picture of his mother.
We enrolled Billy in Phyllis Wheatley Elementary School in the fall. When Christmas came, we spent as much as we could afford to make it a happy one for him, buying him winter clothes and nice toys.
In the beginning, he seemed to enjoy being with us, but after a while he became withdrawn. He lost his appetite and would sit at the table picking at his food. One day, tired of waiting for him to finish, I got up and started washing the dishes. I turned around and saw him holding his plate below the table where our collie, Shep, was. I hid my smile.
“Good, Billy. You’ve eaten all your food, I see.” I didn’t let on that I had seen him feeding it to his constant companion, Shep.
Nicky and I grew to love Billy. He called us “Mom” and “Dad” as we asked him to, but we couldn’t seem to get as close to him as we wanted. He was reserved, quiet, and spent a lot of time looking out the window in the front room. It wasn’t until much later I found out that Billy had not been told the truth about where he was going and why. His mother had told him he was going to Louisville on a vacation after which she would come and get him. To save herself the pain of telling him the truth, she had set him up for the incredible disappointment and lifelong pain of wondering why his mother never came. Billy was in high school before he gave up hope that his real mother and dad would come back and get him. He, of course, believed that his mother’s husband was his biological father. I wanted so much to be a good mother to Billy and I couldn’t understand why it was impossible to bridge the distance between us in those early years. I understand it now.
It is one of the regrets of my life that I didn’t seek counseling for Billy to get to the root of the problem while he was still a young child. However, professional counseling was not a part of ordinary peoples’ thinking in those days; even if we had known about it, we wouldn’t have had the money to pay.
With my new home and Billy to take care of, my life seemed settled. Inwardly, however, I was in turmoil. I knew I had to do something about Jim Powers. Our affair had gone on for three years. Even though I had stopped seeing Jim at that point, I knew I would start again and it was just a matter of time before Nicky found out. Not long before, Nicky had met Jim at a party and talked about how much he liked him. This made me even more nervous. Moreover, Jim was making our relationship increasingly difficult and dangerous for me. He told me he’d never give me up. He was drinking heavily because he felt trapped in his marriage and in his job as a waiter.
Once, in the middle of the night when Nicky and I were asleep in bed together, the phone rang. I answered it.
“I just had to hear your voice before I went in,” I heard Jim say.
“You must have the wrong number,” I said, and hung up quickly.
The next time we spoke, I begged him not to ever call my house again, but if he was drinking, he did. Even to me, my excuses to Nicky began to sound like lies.
Questions ran through my head all day, every day. What am I going to do? Jim is not going to leave his wife and their three children. We’re never going to be together legally. I have to get him out of my system, I decided. The only way I could foresee ending the relationship was to put miles between us. Nicky and I would have to leave Louisville and make a life somewhere else.
I decided that we would go to California, where my cousin Frances lived. It was not hard to convince Nicky to leave since he didn’t like Louisville. I called Frances in Los Angeles, put our building on the market, and made plans to move to California. I didn’t dare tell Jim about my plans. He was still saying, “I will not give you up.”
I decided I’d write him after I got to California. We sold our building for three thousand dollars. Afterward, Nicky, Billy, and I left for California in a 1949 Ford convertible with only our clothes, a little cash, the check for three thousand dollars, and Shep the dog. It took us four days to drive there.
There was no such thing as electronic banking at that time, but it had not occurred to us that we wouldn’t be able to cash our check right away. We couldn’t, of course, and it took ten days for the check to clear. Meanwhile, we ran out of money and lived on the fruit basket hotel management had placed in our room. Finally, we had to tell Cousin Frances about our situation and borrow some money from her. In addition to the money, she generously gave us a large box of home-cooked food—a roast, green beans, mashed potatoes, and homemade rolls. As we gratefully accepted it, I couldn’t help thinking that home-cooked food is a bond between poor people, Black and White, a special pleasure that the rich cannot fully appreciate.
As soon as we got some money, we rented a three-room apartment and bought just enough furniture to get by. I went to Cheli Air Force Base in Maywood and applied for a job as a data processing trainee. They were only hiring six trainees and I had to take a comprehensive test in all kinds of academic subjects. The test lasted for four hours and it was difficult. I was skeptical about my chances of being selected, but a few days after the test I was called and told to report to work. My test score had been a ninety-four, the highest actual score made. Another trainee had gotten a score of ninety-six, but she had had five points added on because she was a veteran.
During the next few weeks, I learned how to operate IBM data processing machines and how to do minor repairs when the IBM cards were torn and got tangled in the machines. I liked the work and they seemed to appreciate the seriousness with which I approached it. In three months, I was promoted to supervisor at Cheli and taught others how to operate the machines.
On Sundays, I attended the St. Mary’s Baptist Church with Cousin Frances. It was a far cry from the “shotgun” house church I had gone to as a young child. St. Mary’s was a huge, beautiful, pink stucco structure which had cost more than a million dollars to build. Sunday services were broadcast live on the radio every week.
Robert Harmon, the tall and stylish pastor, was in his late thirties. He had a smooth, mocha-cream complexion and a voice to match. The man was an actor in the pulpit. Each Sunday after his sermon, he would leave the podium while the choir sang a couple of songs. Ten minutes later, Harmon would re-enter wearing a complete change of clothes and “open the doors of the church” to new members. After a few Sundays, I responded to the call to be saved.
The church clerk asked “Do you believe Christ died for your sins and rose again?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“Will you come by letter or baptism?”
“By baptism,” I said.
I had never been baptized by immersion in water. Two Sundays later, the day of the baptismal service, the clerk called out the names of those to be baptized. My name was not called. Thinking it was just an oversight, I went down anyway and was baptized. As I was leaving the church that day, the pastor asked me to come back to the church at six o’clock that evening. “I want to talk to you about church doctrine,” he said sternly.
I did as was requested. When I went to his office that evening, he locked the door. It was soon clear what “doctrine” he wanted to discuss.
“Were you wearing a bra when you were baptized this morning?” he asked. When I didn’t reply, he went on. “Your name wasn’t called because I wanted to personally baptize you this evening.”
He put his arms around me and embraced me tightly. I was caught off guard. Even though men had made unwanted advances toward me before, no minister of the Gospel had ever tried to seduce me. He tugged at me, trying to kiss me and pulled at my dress until he tore the seam under one arm. I continued to resist and finally was able to get to the door, unlock it, and run.
I stopped going to church; there was no way I could sit and listen to Harmon after that. Later that same year, the Los Angeles Sentinel reported that a girl had charged pastor Harmon with trying to seduce her when she joined the church. As I read her account of what had happened, it was like a tape replaying in my head; he had used the same words with me. Once again, as when I had been raped, I kept the fear and humiliation engendered by the incident to myself, continuing my childhood habit of keeping my own counsel and bearing my sorrows privately.
I was still in California when I read in the newspaper about the Supreme Court decision on school desegregation. The very concept of “separate but equal” schools had been struck down. The Court ruled that segregated “schools were separate, but inherently unequal.” The landmark decision caused me to remember the five-year-old, obsolete, hand-me-down books passed from the White schools to students in segregated Black schools. By the time we got them, they had been written in and pages were missing. This had emphasized to us that because we were Black children, we were not first-class citizens.
On December 1, 1955,1 first saw Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on national television. He was responding to questions from a reporter about the arrest of Mrs. Rosa Parks, an attractive, Black woman whose dark hair softly framed her face. She was a charming and respected member of the local chapter of the NAACP in Montgomery, Alabama who had refused to give up her seat on the bus to a newly-boarded, White, male passenger. I was impressed, surprised, and happy to see Black people confronting the discriminatory bus system. But I was afraid for them, thinking of the danger they would face in the days to come.
The reporter asked Dr. King, “What does the Negro want?”
He responded, “What the Negro wants is absolute and unqualified freedom and equality in this land of his birth, and not in Africa or some imaginary state.”
I thought, this man is expressing my thoughts and feelings. This is what I want.
The reporter asked, “A majority of the bus passengers are Black, how will they get around if they don’t use the buses?” King said, “Where there is a will, there is a way. Many will walk, others will use private cars and taxis.”
Watching the television intently, I felt my own pride growing. By facing the Whites who opposed their bid for equality without visible fear, Blacks were dispelling the image of being scared and slovenly people with low self-esteem. For the first time, I was seeing Black people as a race rise up against their oppressors and I knew eventually Black people would get justice in this country. I wanted to be there.
By then, Nicky was working at the California Gas Company as a laborer. With two salaries coming in we were able to move to a better apartment building called “Cadillac Square.” The circular design of the building enclosed a large swimming pool. On Christmas Day 1955, nearly a year after we had arrived, we spent the holiday California-style, swimming in the pool.
A few months later, Nicky and I bought a two-bedroom house in a suburb of Los Angeles. We were working hard, but we still found time for family outings. We enjoyed going to the beach in Santa Monica and went there almost every weekend. Nicky would put Billy on his shoulders and wade out into the surf. While they played in the water, I sunned on the beach and watched them.
Although I told myself that I should be happy with our new home, a good job, and our young son, I still thought about Jim Powers. Soon after we got to California, I had written to him explaining that I had to get away to try to make a life for myself—but distance did not erase my feelings.
That August I made one of my usual Sunday calls to my family in Kentucky. When I asked about everybody, there was silence on the line. “We’re all well except Carl,” Mom finally said. “He’s been lying around all day and he’s got a temperature. I’m taking him to see a doctor tomorrow.”
The next day, when I called I found out that a Dr. Rosenbaum had examined Carl and done some medical tests. On Thursday, he sent for my parents and broke the shocking news that Carl had acute leukemia and had only three months, at the most, to live.
When my brother Phillip called to tell me, I couldn’t believe it. Though I knew older people who had died, no one in my family had. I couldn’t believe such a thing could befall my youngest brother. Still in a daze, I went to work the next morning and arranged to be off for two weeks. I left Billy, who was nine, with Nicky and took the Super Chief train home.
Seeing my brother and knowing his fate was one of the most difficult things I’d ever done. Carl had grown since I left, he was six feet tall now. He had lost weight. He didn’t know he had a terminal illness and he was proud of the weight loss. He wanted to stay in shape and play sports. My parents made up excuses why they wouldn’t let him. He talked of going to Central High School and practiced his saxophone, so he could be in the school band. The rest of us watched him with tears in our eyes. My heart ached for him. It was so hard to keep up a good front, but I did my best.
Though I told myself not to, I called Jim Powers while I was home. “When can I see you?” he asked. We spent the next day together and saw each other a lot after that.
Because of my guilty conscience, I called Nicky often. He always assured me that he and Billy were doing just fine and said that I should stay as long as I needed to. I called work and asked to have my leave extended for another two weeks.
Carl entered high school in early September and joined the band. He still hadn’t been told the truth about his illness. One night we were watching television together. The program was about a person with leukemia. The narrator said the woman’s body was creating an overabundance of white corpuscles. At one point, Carl quietly said, “That’s what I have.” We all sat there motionless. Every heart in the room was breaking.
It was almost impossible to leave Carl when my four weeks were up. I knew I would not see him alive again. Back in California, I went to work every day, but my mind was still in Louisville. I called home as often as I could. The news was always bad. He received more and more transfusions, felt progressively weaker, and was in and out of the hospital. Finally, Carl’s condition became critical and he entered the hospital for the last time. The family stayed with him around the clock and prayed for his soul to be saved. Weeks before he died, Carl accepted Christ as his Lord and Savior.
“I’m not worried about Carl now,” Mom said. “He’ll go home to live with Jesus.”
I didn’t intend to make the trip back home when Carl died. I had said all I could to reassure him of my love while he was alive. In addition, I now knew I couldn’t stay away from Jim Powers if we were in the same town.
When I told Nicky the news about Carl’s death, I said, “I don’t think I’ll go to the funeral since I was just there.”
“Georgia, your family needs you. You’ll never forgive yourself if you don’t go,” Nicky responded.
I have to try to be truthful with this man, I thought to myself. “Nicky, if I go, I won’t be back,” I said. If Nicky had said he wanted to stay in California, our marriage would have ended then. He didn’t and he didn’t question me.
“If that’s what you want, we’ll all go back,” he answered.
We were just getting settled in our new home. Both of us were working; we each had our own car and we had just paid off the debt for our four rooms of furniture. We were much better off financially than we had ever been. None of that mattered to me. I told myself I was going home to be with my family and say a final good-bye to Carl, but in my heart I knew it was Jim who was drawing me back to Louisville. Even though the relationship caused me so much misery, I couldn’t give it up.
Grieving for Carl was hard on all of us, but Pop’s grief overwhelmed him. My mother seemed to be able to block it out somewhat by keeping busy, but Pop couldn’t. He had prayed so hard for Carl to live. My father actually believed that he could pray Carl back to health and so he felt betrayed by God when Carl finally died. For six months, Pop went to work, ate, and when he was home, laid on the living room couch staring at the ceiling, not speaking to any of us.
We faced death again as a family in 1962 when my brother Rudolph was killed in an automobile accident in California. He had just finished Bellarmine College, where he had been a basketball star, and was serving in the Air Force in Ft. Ord, California. Driving on a rainy night, he lost control of his car in a curve and was impaled on a railing. He was killed instantly. Even though our grief over losing Rudolph was great, it was not as terrible as watching Carl slowly die.
Carl was buried on December 6, 1956. I called Nicky and asked him to send Billy by train so I could be with him for Christmas. Nicky stayed in California to sell the house, the furniture, and my car. In March, he joined us in Louisville. We rented a small four-room house near my parents. Nicky got a job as a laborer at DuPont and I went to work in the data processing department of the Louisville Medical Depot, a federal installation. After living in the “doll house,” as we called it, for nine months, Nicky and I had saved enough money to buy something bigger.
Looking for a house to buy, I learned that the one thing that had not changed in Louisville was housing discrimination. Blacks were still relegated to living in certain areas in the city: the periphery of the downtown business district; a section in the west end called Parkland, where we lived; a small area in the east end of downtown called Smoketown; and the semi-rural area in the city called Little Africa. Blacks in Little Africa still raised chickens and hogs within the city limits, just as they had when I was a child. The financial institutions limited property loans to Blacks at 80 percent of market value of the property, if you could get approved. Blacks had to have exemplary credit and paid higher interest rates. The insurance companies redlined targeted properties in the Black areas, blocking out and refusing Blacks from acquiring insurance.
We bought a duplex with my brother Jimmie and his wife. It was an ugly, brown, two-story wooden frame house with a porch across the front. There were just no duplexes in good condition for us to chose from. Marie and Jimmie had three large rooms and a bath on the first floor and we had the second floor with two bedrooms, a large living room and kitchen combined, and a bath. Nicky built a food bar to separate the two rooms and put a fireplace in the living room.
Marie and I spent many days and nights sitting on the porch, talking about world news and what was going on in the country. Marie was born and raised in West Medford, Massachusetts. She had not experienced the blatant discrimination that Blacks faced in the South. Jimmie had met her while he was in the Air Force in Texas. Nicky and I were trying to make a home, but I was haunted by my feelings for Jim Powers. Eventually I gave in and saw him again. Before long, our relationship picked up where it left off.
Nicky and I didn’t argue, but we didn’t communicate either. Fie was unhappy with Kentucky, but I didn’t want to live in the Northeast again. The pace was too fast. While living in New Jersey and working in New York, I found myself talking and walking faster, trying to keep up with the Easterners. I was not accustomed to not knowing who lived next door to me or to not offering a guest a drink or some food, as is the custom in the South. I vowed that if I ever made it back home, I would never move from Kentucky again. As time passed, my consciousness of the inequalities faced by Blacks and by the poor grew as my life took dramatic turns and I faced new experiences.
In 1958, I learned firsthand how poor people were treated in public institutions. I was having severe pains in my abdomen; my monthly periods were erratic and I bled profusely during them. I had never had any real health problems before and I didn’t know what was happening to my body. Nicky and I were only able to meet our financial obligations monthly and I did not have the money to get a private physician. My alternative, therefore, was to go to the general hospital where indigent people were treated.
I walked into the huge lobby of the yellow brick building on Chestnut Street. The place looked dirty inside. Sick people, Black and White, were slouched on benches, waiting. Empty food wrappers and cigarettes littered the floor. I signed in at the registration desk. An arrogant, elderly, White woman looked over her glasses at me and said, in a loud, demeaning voice, “What are you doing here? You don’t look like you belong; you’re too well-dressed.” Before I could answer, she said, “Have a seat until your name is called.”
I sat down next to a Black woman who said, “I have been sitting here over an hour. I am so sick, but they don’t care.” I turned to look at her more closely. Her mouth was wet, her bottom lip protruded and saliva drooled from her mouth due to the medication she had to take. She said she came to the hospital on a regular basis to get treated.
I said, “This is my first time here.”
She answered, “I can tell that. If you want help here, you have to look poor or they think you can afford a private doctor.”
I didn’t think I was overdressed as I had made the wine-colored, crepe, sarong-type skirt that I was wearing. With it I had on a simple white blouse and black patent leather sandals. My hair was neat and I was clean. But as I looked around, I saw that many of the people there were disheveled, unclean, and unkempt.
