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“Exactly how many boxes have you folded, J.C.?” Her intonation was sober.

“Eighteen.” The boy's answer matched her seriousness. His head barely reached the counter top. She took a small box from a shelf behind her.

“Then here's eighteen cents.” She pushed the coins around counting them, then poured them into his cupped palms.

“O.K.” He turned on unsure young legs and collided with me. He mumbled “Thank you.”

Louise rounded the counter, following the little voice. She ran past me and caught the door a second after he slammed it.

“J.C.” She stood, arms akimbo on the sidewalk, and raised her voice. “J.C., I'll see you next Saturday.” She came back into the store and looked at me.

“Hi. Marg-you-reet. Boy, am I glad to see you. Excuse that scene. I had to pay off one of my workers.”

I waited for her to continue. Waited for her to tell me how precious he was and how poor and wasn't it all a shame. She went behind the counter and began slipping records into paper jackets.

“When I first opened the shop, all the neighborhood kids came in. They either demanded that I ‘gi’ them a penny'”—I hated whites' imitation of the Black accent—“or play records for them. I explained that the only way I'd give them anything was if they worked for it and that I'd play records for their parents, but not for them until they were tall enough to reach the turntables.”

“So I let them fold empty record boxes for a penny apiece.” She went on, “I'm glad to see you because I want to offer you a job.”

I had done many things to make a living, but I drew the line at cleaning white folks' houses. I had tried that and lasted only one day. The waxed tables, cut flowers, closets of other people's clothes totally disoriented me. I hated the figured carpets, tiled kitchens and refrigerators filled with someone else's dinner leftovers.

“Really?” The ice in my voice turned my accent to upper-class Vivien Leigh (before Gone With the Wind).

“My sister has been helping me in the shop, but she's going back to school. I thought you'd be perfect to take her place.”

My resolve began to knuckle under me like weak knees.

“I don't know if you know it, but I have a large clientele and try to keep in stock a supply, however small, of every record by Negro artists. And if I don't have something, there's a comprehensive catalog and I can order it. What do you think?”

Her face was open and her smile simple. I pried into her eyes for hidden meaning and found nothing. Even so, I had to show my own strength.

“I don't like to hear white folks imitate Negroes. Did the children really ask you to 'gi' them a penny'? Oh, come now.”

She said, “You are right—they didn't ask. They demanded that I ‘gi’ them a penny'” The smile left her face. “You say it.”

“Give me a penny.” My teeth pressed my bottom lip, stressing the v.

She reached for the box and handed me a coin. “Don't forget that you've been to school and let neither of us forget that we're both grown-up. I'd be pleased if you'd take the job.” She told me the salary, the hours and what my duties would be.

“Thank you very much for the offer. I'll think about it.” I left the shop, head up, back straight. I tried to exude indifference, like octopus ink, to camouflage my excitement.

I had to talk to Ivonne Broadnax, the Realist. She was my closest friend. Ivonne had escaped the hindrance of romantic blindness, which was my lifelong affliction. She had the clear, clean eyes of a born survivor. I went to her Ellis Street house, where she, at twenty-five, was bringing up an eight-year-old daughter and a fifteen-year-old sister.

“Vonne, you know that woman that runs the record store?”

“That short white woman with the crooked smile?” Her voice was small and keen and the sound had to force itself past white, even teeth.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“She offered me a job.”

“Doing what?” I knew I could count on her cynicism.

“Salesgirl.”

“Why?”

“That's what I've been trying to figure out. Why? And why me?”

Ivonne sat very still, thinking. She possessed a great beauty which she carried nonchalantly. Her