Chapter 3
"You mean you're going to move in with that ... that ... white man!"
"That's right, Ma!" Naomi said over her shoulder as she reached into the closet and pulled the dresses off their hangers. Then she hurriedly packed them into the suitcase on the small bed.
"But why! Why?" her mother insisted from the door.
"Why! To get away from this! That's why!" Now seated on the bed, Naomi cried out the words, looking contemptuously around the small room. Her mother's eyes followed hers, taking in the peeling wallpaper, the dingy-scarred furniture, and the cardboard that was used to cover up the broken window panes.
"I want to live nice for a change! Have nice things. Feel warm and clean ... and ... and ... wanted!"
"That's not why he's doing it and you know it, Naomi!" her mother said with a sad shake of her head. "It's just that you're a ... a ... mulatto ... and you know what white men think of mulatto girls! Do you think he'd have made the offer if you were darker? You know he wouldn't!"
"I don't care! I don't care why he's doing it!" Naomi shouted. "I only know he's doing it ... and that's all that matters to me!"
Her mother came over to the bed and forced Naomi to look into her face. She tried to look away, but the strong hand under her chin prevented it-the skin rough with the labor of years of scrubbing floors to feed them scratched Naomi's face poignantly.
"You're no better than a whore ... a prostitute, if you go through with this, Naomi! You're selling your body for some nice clothes and a decent place to live!"
"I don't care! I don't care!" Naomi screamed. "It's the only chance I'll ever have to get out of this! To live a better life! And I'm going to take it!"
Her mother's hand snaked out and slapped against the naked cheek, leaving the stain of her finger marks against Naomi's flesh. Naomi clutched at the hurt and began to cry hysterically.
"But I didn't raise you to be a whore!" the older woman said in a loud voice. "You're a good girl! And now yOu're going to ruin your life....
"I gave you religion. Worked hard every day of my life to feed and clothe you after your Daddy died. Tried to show you how to get satisfaction out of your life between God and hard work.
"Naomi, there ain't no more out there for a Negro girl, no matter how light-skinned she is. No matter how pretty she is! Don't you know by now that there's no place out their for a black woman beyond hate, abuse, hard work, and being used for the white man's own ends. No one outside the boundaries of the black people give a damn about you, Naomi! Even with a few drops of white man's blood and light skin, you've got none of the rights or future that your white cousins do. You're a nigger to them. A nigger! And you always will be. Ain't no one going to make you white or privileged not ever, so long as there's one ounce of black man's blood in you!"
Naomi threw herself down on the bed and buried her face in the pillow. "I don't care what you say!" she sobbed. "I'm going to do it no matter what! I want to do it. I have to do it! Can't you understand, I have to do it?"
"Have to do what?" the deep voice queried from the door.
Her mother turned to look at the intruder.
But Naomi didn't have to look. She knew from the sound of the voice who it was. It was Lincoln Potter, the man she had planned to marry.