"I just can't endure it any longer, Peter." She shuddered again. "I
can't stand Niggertown, or this side of town--any of it. They--they have
no _feeling_ for a colored girl, Peter, not--not a speck!" She rave
a gasp, and after a moment plunged on into her wrongs: "When--when one
of us even walks past on the street, they--they whistle and say a-all
kinds of things out loud, j-just as if w-we weren't there at all. Th-
they don't c-care; we're just n-nigger w-women." Cissie suddenly began
sobbing with a faint catching noise, her full bosom shaken by the
spasms; her tears slowly welling over. She drew out a handkerchief with
a part of its lace edge gone, and wiped her eyes and cheeks, holding the
bit of cambric in a ball in her palm, like a negress, instead of in her
fingers, like a white woman, as she had been taught. Then she drew a
deep breath, swallowed, and became more composed.
Peter stood looking in helpless anger at this representative of all
women of his race.
"Cissie, that's street-corner scum--the dirty sewage--"
"They make you feel naked," went on Cissie in the monotone that succeeds
a fit of weeping, "and ashamed--and afraid.
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