in helping them progress. I go through all the comic books before we hand them out, just to check what is inside, and I have found absolutely nothing to concern even the most sensitive of minds.”
“But you’re foreign!” Mr. Porteous interjected.
“Mrs. Beidecker came to our school with the highest of credentials,” Mrs. Brady exclaimed. “And you know it, Henry Porteous. Why, doesn’t your own niece attend her classes?”
“Well, maybe she shouldn’t.”
“Settle down! Settle down!” Pastor McIntosh climbed to his feet. “Now I understand feelings are running high. And yes, Mrs. Brady, there are some of us who do have reservations about the impact of this library on formative minds but—”
“But what?”
“There is clearly another issue here . . . the employment of a colored.”
“What issue would that be, Pastor?”
“You may favor the progressive ways, Mrs. Brady, but many in this town do not believe that colored folks should be in our libraries.”
“That’s right,” said Mr. Van Cleve. He stood, and surveyed the sea of white faces. “The 1933 Public Accommodations Law authorizes—and I quote here—‘the establishment of segregated libraries for different races.’ The colored girl should not be in our library. You believe you’re above the law now, Margery O’Hare?”
Alice’s heart had lodged somewhere in her throat, but Margery, stepping forward, appeared supremely untroubled. “Nope.”
“Nope?”
“No. Because Miss Sophia isn’t using the library. She’s just working there.” She smiled at him sweetly. “We’ve told her very firmly she is under no circumstances to open any of our books and read them.”
There was a low ripple of laughter.
Mr. Van Cleve’s face darkened. “You can’t employ a colored in a white library. It’s against the law, and the laws of nature.”
“You don’t believe in employing them, huh?”
“It’s not about me. It’s about the law.”
“I’m most surprised to hear you complaining, Mr. Van Cleve,” she said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, given the number of colored folk you got over there at your mine . . .”
There was an intake of breath.
“I do not.”
“I know most of them by person, as do half the good people here. You listing them as mulatto on your books doesn’t change the facts.”
“Oh, boy,” said Fred, under his breath. “She went there.”
Margery leaned back against the table. “Times are changing and colored folk are being employed in all sorts of ways. Now, Miss Sophia is fully trained and is keeping published material in commission that wouldn’t otherwise be able to stay on the shelves. Those Baileyville Bonus magazines? You all enjoy them, right? With the recipes and the stories and all?”
There was a low murmur of agreement.
“Well, those are all Miss Sophia’s work. She takes books and magazines that have been spoiled and she stitches what she can save back together to create new books for you all.” Margery leaned forward to flick something from her jacket. “Now, I can’t stitch like that and neither can my girls, and as you know, volunteers have been hard to come by. Miss Sophia isn’t riding out, visiting families or even choosing the books. She’s just keeping house for us, so to speak. So until it’s one rule for everyone, Mr. Van Cleve, you and your mines and me and my library, I will keep on employing her. I trust that’s acceptable to y’all.”
With a nod, Margery walked out through the center of the room, her gait unhurried and her head held high.
* * *
• • •
The screen door slammed behind them with a resounding crash. Alice had said nothing the whole journey back from the meeting hall, walking a way behind the two men, from where she could hear the kind of muttered expletives that suggested an imminent and volcanic explosion. She didn’t have long to wait.
“Who the Sam Hill does that woman think she is? Trying to embarrass me in front of the whole town?”
“I don’t think anyone felt you were—” Bennett began, but his father threw his hat on the table, cutting him off.
“She’s been nothing but trouble her whole life! And that criminal daddy of hers before her. And now standing there trying to make me look a fool in front of my own people?”
Alice hovered in the doorway, wondering if she could sidle upstairs without anybody noticing. In her experience Mr. Van Cleve’s tantrums rarely burned out quickly—he would fuel them with bourbon and continue shouting and declaiming until he passed out late in the evening.
“Nobody cares what that woman says, Pop,” Bennett began again.
“Those coloreds are listed as mulatto at my mine because they’re light-skinned.