Wednesday Afternoon
December 5, 1962
- Brother Jacobs is locked up and Abby can talk and walk again, but things aren't exactly coming up roses for Abby and Patience, particularly in the finances department. Without the barbershop and Strong to contribute, money is beyond tight.
- After a few months of this, Abby's teacher, Miss Pat, contacted the county in hopes of getting some financial assistance for Abby and Patience.
- Patience is visiting Sister Lightsey and Abby is cutting dolls from the newspaper when a woman from the county shows up.
- Abyssinia tells the woman—named Miss Miller—that her mother isn't home, at which point Miss Miller says she'll wait for her return and just walks right into the house and starts looking around.
- Then Miss Miller walks over to Abyssinia and lifts up her dress—without asking or even giving the poor girl a warning—to see if her underwear is clean. Needless to say, Abyssinia is not having this, so she runs to grab a mop and screams at Miss Miller to get the heck out of her house.
- Miss Miller, being the classy broad that she is, threatens to deny Abby and Patience so much as a cent of financial assistance if Abby doesn't drop the mop, and then she goes one step further and calls her the N-word.
- Understandably, this pushes Abby completely over the edge, and she shoves the wet mop in Miss Miller's face, chasing her out of the house.
- The Miss Miller problem taken care of, Abby returns to cutting out paper dolls, wondering "how somebody so white could treat people so dirty."