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Mrs. DuPree got up, her chin high, her eyes glittering. She stepped past Isaac, not looking at him, and left the dining room, her skirt crackling, the heels of her shoes telling her displeasure. Isaac’s mouth twitched; he put a finger above his top lip as if to keep from smiling. He looked again at me. I widened my eyes to show I knew he was in for it. But Isaac wasn’t worried. Instead, he winked—lazy-like—as if we shared a joke. Startled, I laughed right out loud, and that was when I fell hard in love with Sergeant DuPree.

From then on there was nobody for me but Isaac DuPree. I woke up thinking about him. I’d think about cooking eggs and bacon for him, I’d think about pleasing him at dinner with the best cuts of meat and the creamiest mashed potatoes ever. But it didn’t work out that way, not for dinner. Invitations came from Mrs. DuPree’s friends asking her and Sergeant DuPree to luncheons and dinners, all given in his honor. Every day the two of them went out together, Mrs. DuPree dressed in her Sunday best and Isaac in his uniform. Trudy, who lived in the boardinghouse cellar, said they never got home much before eleven at night, sometimes closer on to midnight.

The house was quiet when Trudy told me about Mrs. Du-Pree’s plans. It was the third day of Isaac’s leave, and I was sitting in the dining room having a little coffee before starting dinner for the boarders. The newspaper was spread out before me. I stared at the print, but I was thinking about Isaac’s smile that came so easy, and how his fingernails were always clean, and how his hair had a soft wave to it.

“Mrs. DuPree’s trying to find him a wife,” Trudy said as she swept the floor. “That’s what these socials are for.”

I looked up. Trudy was older than me by a few years. She was tall and skinny, and her skin was a deeper black than mine.

“Lydia Prather this, Lydia Prather that. That’s who Mrs. Du-Pree’s picked out for him. Her and the sergeant had an awful row last night. Tried not to listen, but I couldn’t help it. They must’ve been sitting right by the parlor vent. Woke me up, they were that loud.”

A wife. I put my hands flat on the table to steady myself.

Trudy said, “Mrs. DuPree doesn’t have one good word to say about this ranch the sergeant’s got fixed in his mind. She wants him to help her look after the business. That’s what she called it. The business. She’s got money for another boardinghouse, only this one’s going to be for out-of-town visitors. High-class people, that’s what she called them. Doctors and professors and suchlike. Once he’s quit of the army, she wants him to run it. Him and his wife. Lydia Prather. She went on and on about it, how rich they’ll get and she’ll buy more and more till she owns every Negro boardinghouse in Chicago.” Trudy stopped to catch her breath. “She wants grandbabies too.”

Married. To Lydia Prather. Or someone like her.

“But no, ma’am,” Trudy said. “Sergeant DuPree wasn’t having no part of it. Said he was his own man, he didn’t want to depend on his mother. Said he has to stand on his own two feet. The army’s been taking care of him all these years, time to go out on his own.” Bending, Trudy swept a pile of bread crumbs into her dustpan.

She shook the crumbs into the garbage pail, then looked at me funny. “You all right?”

I nodded and because she was still looking at me, I said, “He’s sure got nerve.”

“I’ll say, standing up to his mama like that. The things he said. ‘Didn’t you raise me to be an independent man?’ That’s what he said. He said, ‘Think about it, Mother. A hundred and sixty acres. This is an opportunity. Father would want me to do it.’” Trudy upended the broom and knocked down a cobweb in the corner. “I’ll tell you what. That set her off, crying and wailing like a baby with a filled-up diaper.”

I shook my head; it was all I could manage. It pained me to think of Isaac married. But it grieved me even more to think of him giving in to his mother. I wanted him to be different