Tomorrow I return to work at Mrs. Winters’s house. Last spring her porch was painted, and I’m to scrape up the drips. She’ll likely stand over me while I do it, monitor me the way she did when I removed her storm windows. She’ll play radio station WPJL (We Proclaim Jesus Lord) and pick, pick, pick. She and her husband cleaned Trailways buses for forty years, and because they’re black, I imagine they’ve heard every insult in the book.
