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into campus life, leaving the horror she’d witnessed behind. Study for the exam tonight. Rehearsal tomorrow afternoon. She joined the girls hurrying in to the stately Sisters Chapel for vespers. She passed through the tall marble columns to the sanctuary, slipped into her assigned seat between Jennie Lou and Josephine and lost herself in the soothing tones pouring from the organ, singing the words softly under her breath. “This is my Father’s world / He shines in all that’s fair . . .”

CHAPTER 2
    T hat afternoon, Sophie stood quietly at the window as she watched Dr. Carter depart with his daughter. “Ann Elizabeth’s quiet but stubborn, Julia Belle. You can’t handle this one as easily as you did Randy.”
    â€œRandy? What are you talking about?”
    â€œThat girl—what was her name? You said her father was a garbage man.”
    Abruptly Julia Belle got up to noisily stack dishes. “Goodness, that was just a high-school thing.” Public high school! The only one in Atlanta for Negroes. Full of all kinds of youngsters, some of them from nowhere. Will had insisted on it. “They need to meet different people,” he said. He was wrong.
    â€œCareful, Julia Belle, you’ll break that dish. Here, let me help you.” Sophie said, gathering up silver.
    Easy for her to be complacent, Julia Belle thought. Helen Rose was still in private school, while hers... Well it was difficult to keep them from becoming too intimate with the wrong people. Ann Elizabeth still kept in touch with that Clayton girl.
    â€œSadie, Sadie Clayton,” Sophie amused. “That was her name, wasn’t it? Lord, was that boy besotted! And I sure can’t tell why. Nothing to look at—coal-black with that real nappy hair. What would their children have looked like? No matter which gets the color, it’s always the girl who gets the kinky hair.”
    â€œTheir children? Sophie, what in Sam Hill are you thinking? They’d never—”

    â€œWell, he was that far gone. He could have married her,”
    â€œDon’t be ridiculous! He was only eighteen.”
    â€œEighteen and full of wild oats. What if he’d had to marry her?”
    â€œSophie! There was nothing like that going on.”
    â€œDon’t get so huffy. These things do happen and you know it. I don’t blame you for getting rid of Sadie.”
    â€œSending her to nursing school was not getting rid of her.”
    â€œYes, it was. Away from the college—and Randy.”
    â€œShe wasn’t headed for college. And she would’ve been more out of Randy’s reach as a live-in maid at the Grants’ estate. That’s where her father wanted to place her as soon as she graduated from high school.”
    â€œNo!”
    â€œYes. He called it a great opportunity. I guess it was from his perspective.”
    Sophie nodded. “Sure. Sure. At least she’d be out of Beaver Slide and living high. If you have to work as a maid, best to do it for rich folks.”
    â€œWell, I’m glad I talked him out of it.”
    â€œPaid her tuition, too, didn’t you?”
    Julia Belle shrugged. “Wasn’t much. Sadie has a good mind. I’d hate to see it wasted on other people’s toilets.”
    Sophie chuckled. “So you did her a favor, as well as yourself. Where is she now?”
    â€œWorking at Grady where she trained.”
    Sophie shook her head. “Strange isn’t it? A Negro doctor can’t get near the county hospital. Yet they train and hire colored nurses.”
    â€œNothing strange about it. Can you see white nurses handing out bedpans to Negroes in the colored wards?”
    â€œNot likely,” Sophie said, and they both laughed. “Still,” she added, “I understand colored nurses are also permitted to tend patients in the white wing.”

    â€œNothing strange about that, either. Haven’t we been waiting on