Free The Wedding by Dorothy West

they were not immune to accidents. The arms gently pulled her away from the tree and held her racingheart against a quiet hill, and a clean, soft handkerchief with a scent she could never know but never forget dried her downcast face. The voice, as gentle as snow falling, slowed her shuddering and her sobs.
    “What’s your name, darling?” the mother’s face asked.
    “Shelby.”
    There was something about that name that sounded familiar. “Shelby what, dear?” the woman asked.
    “Shelby Coles.”
    That sounded even more familiar. The mother called to the watching women. “She says her name is Coles. Does that ring a bell?”
    It did for somebody. “That sounds like the name of that colored child they’re looking for. Seems to me it was Coles or something like that.”
    “So what?” someone else cried out. “It takes more than a name to change black to white.”
    “I’m not blind,” the mother said indignantly. She turned back to Shelby. “Run home, dear, and tell your mother to change your clothes and keep you home so you don’t get lost.”
    “I am lost,” said Shelby softly, admitting it to herself for the first time, and unable now to go another step unless it was in the direction of home.
    “This one’s lost too,” the mother groaned. “Are you sure you don’t know the way home from here?”
    Shelby nodded mutely.
    “But at least this one’s been found. I just hope her family isn’t too frantic.”
    “The quickest thing to do is to call the police in casethey’ve had a call from her mother. Tell me your name again, dear, slowly.”
    “Shelby.”
    “Tell me your whole name.”
    “Shelby Coles.”
    This had to be more than a coincidence. Reason rejected the possibility that two children were lost with the same name and the same outfit. And yet it was just as improbable for a white child to be colored, but what else was there to think? She called to the women. “One of you come here for a moment. Just one. Too many might frighten her.”
    A woman quickly outran the others, sniffing something special and wanting to be part of it. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
    “I know you’re going to think I’m crazy, but this has to be the child they’ve been looking for.”
    “You’re crazy, all right. You really think so?”
    “There’s only one way to find out.”
    “How?”
    “Ask her.”
    “Ask her?” The mother was horrified. “I couldn’t do anything so awful. Suppose she isn’t? It might leave a scar.”
    “Well, we’re wasting time this way.”
    The mother looked at Shelby carefully, studying her blond, sun-bleached tresses and her beautiful blue eyes. “It’s a fool question, but I’ll ask it.” She took Shelby’s hand. “Tell me, little girl, and don’t be afraid. Are you colored?” Without knowing it, both women stopped breathing.
    Shelby stared at the mother, trying to find some clue inher still face, but all she saw was discomfort. “I don’t know,” she said after thinking it over, because she didn’t. She had heard talk at home of “white” and “colored” people, but no one had ever defined the terms for her.
    The mother could take command now. The following question was easy. “Are you white?”
    Shelby looked at her hand. It was dirty, but when it was clean, it was white. At any rate, the mother’s encouraging tone seemed to want her to say so.
    “Yes.”
    “Well,” a redheaded woman with small eyes and sun-blasted skin said dryly, “white or not, she’s lost, so you’d better get the telephone.”
    “I feel like a fool,” the mother sighed, “telling them I have another lost child with the same name. But it’s not the same child—it just doesn’t make sense.”
    “Look,” the sunburned woman snapped. “Watch,” she said briskly to Shelby, “I’m not going to hurt you.” She took a strand of Shelby’s hair and rubbed it forcefully, then she lifted the strand and gave it a little tug. “You see, it’s real gold, it didn’t rub