Farewell, Amethystine

by Walter Mosley

She was in her mid-thirties, an age that was kind of a DMZ dividing youth from adulthood.

Her not-quite-smiling visage brought to mind some kind of philosophical farmer standing amid an infinite field of patience. This equanimity called up a feeling of guilt in me. Not that I was culpable or insincere, but more like I bore a sin as old as Adam’s and now I was about to blame Eve.

I was always a little nervous standing around in a white neighborhood. That fear was composed of four hundred years of experience crushed down into fifty short years of life.