QUOTE : She imagined marching across the street to explain herself. Standing in Loretta’s cavernous living room, Loretta balanced on one moving box while taping another shut. Loretta wouldn’t look angry to see her—she wouldn’t look like anything at all, and her blank face would hurt even more. Stella would tell her that she’d only said those terrible things about Reg because she was desperate to hide. “I’m not one of them,” she would say. “I’m like you.” “You’re colored,” Loretta would say. Not a question, but a statement of blunt fact. Stella would tell her because the woman was leaving; in hours, she’d vanish from this part of the city and Stella’s life forever. She’d tell her because, in spite of everything, Loretta was her only friend in the world. Because she knew that, if it came down to her word versus Loretta’s, she would always be believed. And knowing this, she felt, for the first time, truly white.