from The Street by Ann Petry:
Whenever she entered a room where they were, they stared at her with a queer, speculative look. Sometimes she caught snatches of their conversation about her. “Sure, she’s a wonderful cook. But I wouldn’t have any good-looking colored wench in my house. Not with John. You know they’re always making passes at men. Especially white men.” And then, “Now I wonder---”
After that she continued to wait on them quietly, efficiently, but she wouldn’t look at them—she looked all around them. I didn’t make her angry at first. Just contemptuous. They didn’t know she had a big handomse husband of her own; that she didn’t want any of their thin unhappy husbands. But she wondered why they all had the idea that colored girls were whores.
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