Down there I could be smart without having to show it; unlike up North, you could just use it in your daily life. My mother, languid toward new dresses, had been admonished on her duty to the dressmaker—“We owe it to Miss DeVore.” Obligation was different from convention; fewer people—often nobody—could be blamed, either for expense or offense. Gossip, open and catty, was so polite you could mistake it for lessons in etiquette. I learned once again how my mother had come to be as she was, when we talked to my father on the phone, as of course we did—with everybody in the house listening. I tried to be as knowledgeable about him—knowledge is charity—but with him that was not the same. I wanted him to be a mystery so that I could still love him. For the sake of them both, I succeeded in losing the silver bracelet, but Greensboro, furnished with two systems of vigilance, one black, one white, unfortunately restored it to me. Nevertheless, when we came home I was not wearing it.
