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dog, Frenchie, came to the door and bared his sharp teeth. He hated me, dreamt every night, I was sure, about ripping out my throat. But we both loved Feather and so kept an uneasy truce.
    “I don’t care what they say around here or over at Carthay Circle, honey, but black people aren’t running around crazy, shooting at people.”
    “That’s what they say on the news,” she said.
    “I know they do. But they don’t talk about why people are mad. They don’t talk about all the bad things that have happened to our people. You see, sometimes people get so mad that they just have to do something. Later on they might wish that they didn’t but by then it’s too late.”
    “Is that why you were crying, Daddy?”
    “When was I crying?”
    “The other night when you were looking at the news and I was supposed to be in bed.”
    “Oh.” I remembered. It was late and Bonnie had been stranded in Europe because of a series of thunderstorms around Paris. I was watching images of the rioters on the late news with the volume turned off, witnessing those poor souls out in the street fighting against an enemy that I recognized just as well as they. I had read the newspapers and heard the commentaries from the white newscasters. But my point of view was never aired. I didn’t want the violence but I was tired of policemen stopping me just for walking down the street. I hated the destruction of property and life, but what good was law and order if it meant I was supposed to ignore the fact that our children were treated like little hoodlums and whores? My patience was as thin as a Liberty dime, but still I stayed in my house to protect my makeshift family. That’s what brought me to tears. But how could I say all of that to a ten-year-old girl?
    “I was sad because the people didn’t understand each other,” I said. “That’s why people fight.”
    “Why?” Feather asked. She leaned her head against my jaw and all the pain released.
    “Because they don’t know what it’s like to be in the other man’s skin,” I said.
    “I’m hungry, Daddy,” Feather said, and I knew I had found the right words.
    “Hi, baby,” Bonnie Shay said.
    I leaned back and looked up, like a child, and saw her upside- down image. She looked down on us with eyes that took me away from America to a place where music was part of talking and walking and even breath.
    Her skin was as dark as mine and her smile knew a happiness I craved. She squatted down and put her arms around Feather and me. Bonnie was the only woman I had known in my adulthood who could make me feel like a child in the presence of maternal love. I leaned back against her and closed my eyes. I’m a big man, weighing one ninety, but her work as a stewardess had prepared her to deal with heavy objects.
    Feather sighed and Jesus came over to beam down on us like the sun on his own ancient homeland. For a moment there I almost forgot about the smoldering slums and Nola Payne’s cold body laid up in a white room under lock and key.
     
     
    BONNIE AND I had a deal that I’d always make dinner on the day she returned from a transatlantic flight. I made glazed oxtails and collard greens with cornbread and tapioca pudding. It took fifty-seven minutes for me to do it all from scratch. That’s how you can tell who’s a good cook: by his speed and timing. There are a lot of men, both white and black, who call themselves gourmet cooks. They only work once a month or so and then they make only one dish. Those men have no idea what the real art of cooking is.
    A real cook comes home not knowing what’s in the icebox because he doesn’t know who has eaten what since the last time he looked. You have to be fast on your feet making a balanced meal that has got to be on the table no more than five minutes after your brood gets hungry. And everything should be ready at the same time. I’d like to see these weekend gourmets come up with something new and tasty five days a week on a budget