Mr. Barbour had told her to cook the same breakfast for herself that she was cooking for him. She was used to porridge with bread and water, so eggs and steak were a treat. After breakfast, he’d told her to bathe. When she was clean, he’d given her a new dress and a new head tie to wear to court. That’s when Roxanne realized that her master wanted everyone to think she was well cared for. Roxanne thought about tearing the dress to pieces, but she was afraid of what Barbour would do to her, and she didn’t believe that anything she did would help. She had tried to imagine her father victorious and the family reunited, but her imagination had failed her. Barbour was white, the judge was white, and everyone who mattered but Roxanne and her father were white. They were going to lose. Barbour’s gray, two-story house stood in a copse of cottonwoods, a mile outside the city limit. In the morning, they had driven to town in his buckboard with Roxanne seated beside him.
