Hit from the inside out

File 1.4 - Billie bumps heads with everyone; Wilma provides color

Saturday, November 12, 1955, Late Evening

Billie shuddered in the back of the limousine, reliving her brother-in-law’s near outburst of the word nigger around Hubert Law’s dining room table. The slur hit Billie from the inside out, making her breath jerk, stuck between her diaphragm and chest. The banker wasn’t a friend of Blair House but encouraged an apology to his waitstaff occupying the room. Among them were four Blair House women: his long-term employee, Addie, and Bertha, Liberty and Lilly whom Addie brought in to help with Hubert’s daughter’s engagement party.

“I didn’t like it either,” Buchanan turned to stare out the window.

“Why didn’t you say something?” Buchanan had been mute most of the evening, Billie forgot he was there.

“I didn’t want to embarrass him by scolding him like a child. Besides, Hubert took care of it.”

“You said nothing so it looked like you sanctioned his views.”

Kellen had had a lot to drink and while Billie had heard him say ignorant things before, Kellen would tell anyone who accused him that he was not a racist. He simply believed in doing what he could for his own kind. He didn’t see the point in helping others because, “Humans are revengeful and after the shit that’s been done to them, when push comes to shove, they wouldn’t move a finger or lend a dime to help us.”

Billie had only been around him a handful of times in the decade she’d been married because he lived in the Midwest but now he was moving to Los Angeles. Billie worried her unit would think Kellen had too much influence over Buchanan for her plan to work.