Wherever There Is Light by Peter Golden

have enough for a couple of years. If I need more, I’ll find work. I know Grandpa would want me to try.”
    â€œNot if he was your father, he wouldn’t. And getting him to change his mind was about as easy as sticking your head up your hind parts and reciting the Gettysburg Address in pig Latin. Nohow would he put up with a daughter of his running off to New York.”
    â€œI’m not running off.”
    â€œYour grandfather used to say that a colored man has to be twice as good to go half as far. And I can tell you it’s worse for a colored girl.”
    â€œDoes the past have to be my future?”
    â€œYou don’t change the past by taking up with a white man. Some white men would like nothing better than to take a rich, good-looking colored girl up North and pass her off as white.”
    Calmly, Kendall said, “I know I’m not white. And if I forget, they’s lots of nearby folks to remind me.”
    â€œThat’s God’s own truth, so I suppose I taught you a thing or two. And here’s something else. White people don’t have a clue what it is to be a colored. Not one damn clue.”
    Kendall was not as calm as she appeared. Her time with Julian had been wondrous. When they’d finished making love, Kendall was sore, and Julian had drawn her a bath, sprinkling in bath salts that made the water as redolent as the air after a thunderstorm. As she soaked he changed the blood-spotted sheets, then brought her a terry-cloth robe, which he’d warmed up in a tumble dryer, and when they were done drinking another glass of wine, her soreness was gone, and they got into bed, and he rubbed her with baby oil. Then he was kissing her—everywhere—until she couldn’t take it anymore, and this time there was no pain, just their pushing against each other until someone who sounded exactly like Kendall started singing a scat song with the refrain, Fjul-uck-jul-jul-ian-ian , and she shuddered as the tension began to leave her in long, slow beats. But the next day, as Kendall ate breakfast with her sorority sisters in the hotel coffee shop, she was distressed by Julian’s failure to see the people on Ocean Drive gaping at them with revulsion. And though Kendall ached to be with Julian now, that didn’t mean Garland was without wisdom; one reason her mother was so vexing: she frequently knew what she was talking about.
    Garland said, “Where do you come to a boy like Julian? I swear you got ahold of the only Jew who drinks.”
    â€œMama!”
    â€œDon’t ‘Mama’ me. I don’t have a prejudiced bone in my body. But Kendall, our family’s made a name for itself, and we did it when white folks thought we should be doing for them. What’s his family got?”
    â€œHis father’s a professor—”
    â€œWithout a nickel to his name. The mother grew up in an orphanage and their son ran away to become a moonshiner. Like Jarvis Scales. Not even a high-school diploma. This boy Julian’s not good enough for you. He’s got nothing but the ability to forget his place.”
    â€œJesus, God, you’re talkin’ like one of those Main-Line white ladies Grandpa couldn’t stand.”
    â€œYou’re not hearing me because you’re like a man now—a person more interested in what’s happening in his drawers than his head.”
    They laughed, both of them embarrassed. Save for the facts-of-life talk Garland had given Kendall years ago, it was the frankest conversation about sex she’d had with her daughter.
    Garland wagged an index finger at Kendall. “Don’t you bring me any of those zebra babies. No black-and-white stripes, you hear?”
    â€œI hear.”
    Garland had calculated that by now she’d be furious. Yet her fury had deserted her, leaving her so sad she couldn’t bear it. In a searing flash of memory, she recalled Ezekiel sitting in his rocker with Kendall on