It started out as a showplace for a local businessman, a way to demonstrate his importance to the town and his mother-in-law.

Its street face was all chin-in-the-air pride and delicacy; stone lions and lilac bushes guarded either side of the front door’s walkway. The front room was lace curtains, hand-waxed hardwood floors and furniture, rugs from across the ocean, and both the doctor and the minister waiting in the marble-floored vestibule, hat in hand, each nervous about his welcome.

Children were born and raised there. Babies wearing diapers and wet, dripping grins lay on blankets on the floor. Learned to walk and raised bumps flailing into tables and dressers. Grew into children who succeeded or didn’t at the school down the street. Learned to tie ties, fold handkerchiefs, keep their business to themselves, and lie to teachers and parents.

Boys grew mustaches and defied the fathers they were still afraid of, and young women whispered their secrets into older, drooping bosoms. They left or got trapped there and sometimes came back, to raise the children hanging onto them or to care for elders who lived shut off in their rooms, wondering if anybody would come and sit with them for a while.

It was home to a family that grew and prospered and then declined a bit. Folks moved into larger houses in smaller neighborhoods, or maybe smaller houses in larger neighborhoods where they hadn’t been allowed to live before.

Every year or so a child from that house, or a cousin or other visitor, would be caught sneaking into the juke joint on the corner, until all the places downtown had to be integrated, and the youngsters had somewhere to go besides the place on the corner. The high school began to get principles and teachers from other neighborhoods, and nobody believed much in education anymore anyway. The Liberty Cash and the sundry store bowed to the inevitability of supermarkets and Walmarts. The ragman and iceman, who’d chanted to the clip-clop of mules’ feet and sung bass in the choir, died, and the mules died too. The congregants of the church all lived in other places now.

The only one who was left to know, not from family stories or history books or neighborhood folklore but from memory, was the old lady. She’d been a baby inside her mother’s belly when her daddy finished the house he’d built to show off his money and avenge himself on his mother-in-law. She’d lived beyond the proverbial fourscore, and it was time to do something with those memories.

The town council had refused to make a historical landmark of the old place—no matter that she’d made sure it was kept in livable condition. Now, lately, the children of her sons and daughters had been after her to sell out, put that money in the bank where it could do some good before rates fell any lower. Of course they were only thinking of her welfare, never mind that they were looking to be her beneficiaries sometime soon.

Humph. Well. She’d sold it, all right. Her relatives would all have strokes and heart failure when they discovered how little she’d let those left-over hippie folks have it for.

That one who’d been sent to do all of the negotiating for the group reminded the old lady of herself, a bit. Life had tried to beat that one down some, if the scar on her otherwise expensive, perfect face meant anything. Resembled a rose in its way. But, then, the old one tended to look for roses. She could thank her mother’s mother, Mamere, for that.

The grandmother’s name had actually been Rose. Almost everything in her home had either been a dusky red color or covered with the flower itself, from doilies to bedclothes to the rug in her front room. But neither the color nor the image was in anything she’d chosen for her daughter’s house.

Rose had understood nice things. She did fine sewing and other needlework for the wealthy women of East Stonewall. Coming in through the kitchen, she had the opportunity to examine the hallways, stairwells, and whatever could be glimpsed through open doors on her way up to the bedrooms, where well-to-do women waited for her in their slips. She’d become familiar with the slide of fine fabrics, the dull glow of imported woods, and gold bands rimming the tableware. Listening to the gossip and complaints of the women she sewed for, she began to understand that some of what she saw was considered quality, and some was not. Likewise some women were considered quality, and some, beneath their finery, were still common. Of course, she’d always known that some women came in through back doors to sew and cook and clean. And some did not.

Rose planned and scraped and worked hard with the intention of sending her daughter to Memphis, to the college there, where the girl would meet the sort of beau who read lofty books and wouldn’t want his wife working with her hands.

But Mattie had her own plans, which flowered as fully as anything planted in a pot or in the wild. A young man who lived nearby worked in the fields during the day and in a saloon on Saturday nights. For extra, he caught and sold fish and loaned out money at an interest. To Mattie he was the untamed earth beyond the garden’s edge, where things grew by their own design. He promised Rose that her daughter would work only in her own home and that it would be the best home of any colored person in all of Stonewall.

The wedding gown had a country mile of lace and hundreds of tiny silver beads. Rose ordered the materials from Nashville, charging them to the account of a client too rich to know when she was being robbed. The cake, too, came from the capitol, and the ceremony was held at the big new church. The groom’s father had two gold teeth, wore a plaid suit, and was loud.

Rose’s grief gave her a sharp tongue. She would ever refer to her son-in-law as That Fella, saying he had the manners of a brick and hands like one too.

When the promised house was finally erected, there were three children and another on the way. That last grandchild came two months early. Mattie and her new baby lay side by side for weeks, flickering back and forth between the world of the living and the land of ghosts. It had been Rose, the baby’s Mamere, who saved them both. She’d been there from before sun-up to near midnight every day, working hard to anchor her child and grandchild in the here and now. And in reclaiming her descendants, she also claimed stewardship of the house.

It happened by circumstance more than intention. The young mother’s food had to be cooked just so—healthy, fresh-killed animals, unspoiled vegetables, and no salt. The bedclothes needed daily boiling in herbs and such—no lye. With the mother so frail, there was the baby to be attended to and fed. There were also three other children to provide for, with clothes and education to be seen to. The sickroom had to be kept nice. When Mattie was finally able to sit up and receive company, there were other matters too—from the invalid’s hair to the state of the rugs in the entryway.

Even after her daughter was up and around, Mamere continued to come several times a week to make sure that the house remained a healthful place. She showed up with instructions for everyone and questions about whatever had happened or failed to happen in her absence.

Three or four days a week, That Fella, the prosperous businessman, sat at his breakfast table and watched his mother-in-law get down from the horse wagon along with his cook and his maid. Three women on their way to work, discussing the day’s plans. One of them wore hand-tatted lace and entered through the front door.

After nearly ten years of this, there came three days in a row when the old woman was expected and did not show. The cook’s nephew walked the three miles to Mamere’s place. He found her sitting in a chair, dressed, with her gloves in her hand and one leg gone useless.

Mamere spent three months at her son-in-law’s place, recovering from her stroke. For his wife’s sake, That Fella made sure the window in the old woman’s room faced the cottage being constructed on the back lawn. He figured that knowing there would be at least a partial balm for her dignity would keep the old scold breathing, and it did.

The cottage was finished in early spring. It was Mamere’s daughter who saw to the landscaping. And so roses finally came to that big house on the corner.

Now Mamere’s granddaughter sat in that little outside house for the last time. She laughed and thumped her own cane on the floor. Well. She’d started her first business after college. Her father, she could tell, had been surprised and secretly pleased: the girl had inherited the old man’s capacity for building on the slightest opportunity. What was rarely mentioned and never boasted of was the part of her that came from Mamere—demanding that the improvement and bettering grow into something sweet, demanding loveliness from hard work. And Mattie was there too, the one who’d sought out a strain of wildness to make the growing stronger and different.

The scarred woman had said that almost all the members of her group were home-grown. They knew, she’d said, the real Stonewall, Tennessee, the one still there beneath the blight. The people in the government facilities never saw anyone’s daughter, couldn’t remember when the beardless face behind the gang symbol had smiled and called somebody Paw-Paw. These home-grown folk with the other-land clothes and tangled hair didn’t plan to heal the city, but they could, said the scarred woman, make a start.

To the old lady they seemed to be trying to make something solid and strong out of moonbeams and dust. Well. Their plans might work out and they might not. Most likely the city would be getting this property soon, just as they had everything else around.

She’d kept roses around the little house in honor of her grandmother. They weren’t much more than sticks right now, but it was nice to know they would bloom again, at least for a while.

A week after she paid the deposit on the old house, Nita drove to the home of her long-time friend Sophia. As Anita pulled into Sophia’s driveway, an advance guard of rose thorns scraped at her paint job, and hordes of hornets and wasps flew past the windshield, exuding subtle threats. She could have parked on the street, but that would have meant walking through the thick grass, home to snakes, moles, toads, and who knew what. As it was, all three inches of her heels sank into the ground the moment she stepped out of the car.

She noticed that the Old Guys next door were watching, hanging out on Sophia’s neighbor’s side porch. None of them were young, but not all of them were really old. They weren’t a vocal group and didn’t call attention to themselves by fussing at other people’s children, shouting at women, or starting fights among themselves. They just sat around, different ones at different times, watching whatever happened on the block.

Nita leaned over the fence, waving to get the attention of the man who owned the house. She’d known him since she was thirteen and referred to as “that fast-tail Skinner girl,” back when half the town was debating whether she’d corrupt Sophia before the quiet, sanctified preacher’s daughter had time to redeem her.

“Mr. Tate, how are you all doing today?”

“We okay.” He didn’t smile, but he didn’t ogle her either. The other old fellows just sat looking.

“Have you seen my friend?”

Mr. Tate pointed at the back gate and then took a pull from the sack-covered can he was holding.

“Thank you. You all have a nice day.” Nita’s smile was tight as she turned and walked on down the driveway.

Every year, just before Easter, Sophia would get into what Anita referred to as her “Earth Mother mode.” She’d plant a vegetable garden and spend all spring and half the summer caroling about the elegant, graceful plants yielding their bounty for the nourishment of the people.

Blah, blah, blah. Anita refused to accept the hypothesis that Paradise can be found at the Farmers Market. In her opinion, if plants had any control over the matter, Adam and Eve would have been carnivores by default. No, Sophia worked the earth because it made her feel good.

There’d always been someone there—parents, husband, even Anita herself—to buffer Soph, protect her from the sharp edges of things. Sophia had no biological siblings; Nita wasn’t close to hers. But even people who knew them said they were enough alike to be sisters. Best friends since middle school, they had the same mannerisms and habits of speech. Both were dark-skinned with long hair. Anita’s skin was like good planting soil, and her frosted weave was plaited close to her scalp. Sophia was more the color of expensive chocolate and had dreadlocks.

They were also different in a lot of ways. Folks tended to think that Sophia was the soft, sweet one and that Anita was harder.

Now both were seated in Sophia’s living room, separated by a table covered in snacks and dips. Neither of them wore very much. Anita’s skirt, jacket, and blouse hung in the bathroom, dotted with some kind of miraculous, all-natural spot-remover that Sophia swore by. Her shoes were on the back porch, waiting for a trip to a restorer whom Sophia also swore by. The pantyhose were in the garbage.

Sophia wasn’t much into clothes. After a shower to get rid of the garden sweat, she’d returned to the front room in an old over-sized Burning Spear tee shirt and boxers, smelling like peppermint castile soap.

They lounged in the front room, comfortable with their near-nakedness. They’d been meeting and talking under this roof, off and on, for the better part of three decades. Few things caused barriers between the two women, and a little uncovered flesh wasn’t one of them.

Anita sat on the sofa, holding a clump of cauliflower and frowning at the assortment of dips. “Miss So-So, don’t you ever have anything besides tofu?” She swished the cauliflower around in a dip, frowning.

“You should like tofu. It’s good for managing your weight.” Sophia bit into a stalk of celery.

“Yeah. It does tend to make fasting seem attractive.”

“There’s fruit in the box. Melons, grapes, strawberries.”

Anita looked at her friend suspiciously. “It’s not organic stuff, is it? That never seems juicy enough to me.”

“When you drop by unannounced, you should gracefully accept what you’re offered.”

“Well, thank you very much.” Anita munched on her cauliflower. “Hey, I’ve got an idea. What about a health-food restaurant slash coffee bar to help fund Home House?”

Sophia thought about it. “I don’t know. None of us has ever run that type of business. Anyway, where would the clientele come from? There are barely seven thousand people in Stonewall.”

“If we put it out by the interstate, we could attract some of the students and business travelers.”

“We still wouldn’t have anybody who knew how to run the place.” Sophia shrugged. “Anyway, Miriam’s gets most of the college trade. There’s not enough to support two spots.”

It was Anita’s turn to shrug. “We’re trying to build a community institution. Sometimes the individual gets sacrificed for the good of the many.”

Sophia stared at her friend, then laughed, only partially amused. “You’re serious, aren’t you? You’d give up Brother Hassam’s place just like that. You’d probably sacrifice me if you needed to.”

“Hey, you all chose me to look after our financial interests. I’m trying to do the best I can. And as long as you’ve known me, I’ve never done anything that wasn’t in Sophia Ransome’s best interest. Don’t go accusing me of that kind of backstabbing.” Anita scowled.

“Mm-hmm, I know all that.” Sophia spoke softly, trying to sound soothing but not patronizing. “You’re good people; you’ve always been a good friend to me. I know that’s not about to change. And you’ve done a good job managing the money with your investments and all. I don’t expect that to change either.”

“Actually, you’re right too: none of us knows anything about running a restaurant.” Anita leaned back, letting go of her mood. “So it’s kind of a moot point.”

They both laughed, and things were easy again.

Still smiling, Sophia asked, “So why are you here, anyway?”

“Again, thank you very much.” This time there was a laugh at the end of the words.

Sophia bit into a cherry. “Juicy, just like the gossip I’m about to hear.”

Nita picked up a strawberry and brought it to her lips. “I don’t do gossip.”

“That’s too bad. I want to hear it anyway.”

“We have a place for Home House.” Nita pushed the strawberry into her mouth.

“What!” Sophia jumped up, knocking a bowl of fruit from the table. Nita, knowing her friend and her habits, caught the bowl before Sophia was halfway to her feet.

Home House was the project that the two women and the rest of their crowd had been working on for years now. It was to be a privately owned community center, without a Big Brother hanging over their collective shoulder.

“You’ve found a place you think we can use? Tell me about it.”

“It’s that big place on the corner of Cheatham and Polk.”

“The haunted house?”

“It’s not haunted,” Anita said. “It’s large. Two and a half floors on a sixteen-thousand-square-foot lot, with the house itself more than two thousand. And it’s got a wraparound porch, still sturdy, that’ll be just right for Deka’s herbs.”

“Okay. It sounds ideal. I was just thinking of how we were all afraid of that place, way back then.”

“You all were afraid of it.” Nita smiled now, a wicked smile. “I went in there all the time. The first time was with Johnny Paige.”

“Mm-hmm,” Sophia said. She didn’t want to talk about Anita in dark places with guys. “So how much do they want for it?”

Anita stroked the keloid strip beside her left eye. “I got an exceptionally good price for it.” She announced a figure low enough to make Sophia yield one of her rare bits of profanity.

“Fuck! That is good. Especially for something that size.” Then, worried, she said, “You talk like you’ve already closed the deal.”

Anita touched the scar beside her eye again. “I paid fifty percent down, plus closing. We have nine months to pay the balance.”

“That must have put a really big hole in our bank account.”

“Pretty big, yes.”

Sophia stared at her. “You’re always telling me not to make big purchases in a rush.”

“Who said I was in a rush?” Anita sounded annoyed. “We’ve been seriously looking for a place for a while now. Besides, I’m used to making fast-paced deals.”

Sophia sighed. “It is a good price.”

Nita leaned forward, tapping a finger against the table. “Listen. You know how you’re always going on about how you wouldn’t mind having your own office, without Kwame’s shit and the ghosts from your childhood everywhere.”

“Yes.” Sophia wouldn’t have defined her husband’s business paraphernalia as “shit,” but it’d be nice to have somewhere to work besides the kitchen.

“Well, there’s a little outhouse on the property that’s going to be just for you.”

“Oh?”

“Now what? I thought that’d make you happy.”

“I don’t see why I need my own outhouse. Why can’t I use one of the two and a half baths inside?”

Anita rolled her eyes. “I don’t mean an outhouse like Uncle Lufus back in the woods. More like a mother-in-law apartment.”

“Oh.” Sophia felt a little rush of excitement and clamped down on it immediately. “Doesn’t sound fair that I’d have that all to myself.”

“Says who?” Anita asked. “That little spot is painted a funny shade of pink, and it’s got flower beds around it. There’s not a man in Stonewall—Black, White, Brown, or green—who’ll set one foot in the place. Actually, the women we know might not want it either. They’d claim that pink for a woman is counter-progressive.”

“Well, you know how people can be. Even if no one says anything, they still might not like me having it for my own. I don’t want to cause any disharmony.”

“Disharmony with who?” Anita groaned.

Sophia looked away, shaking her head. “I don’t know. I like the idea, but even though I’m a supporter, my work won’t have much to do with the center. It’s not as if I’ll be one of the instructors.”

“Defining your role in this project as ‘supporter’ is a major understatement. You’re one of the chief financial backers. Plus, you know I have plans for you, girlie, big plans.”

Sophia frowned, shaking her head. “Come on now. I’m not cut out to be any type of director. Anyway, we’re supposed to make decisions by majority rule.”

“We’re trying to develop an institution here,” Anita said. “A community resource. Somebody needs to coordinate everything, to make sure everybody works together. You’ve been in on this idea since we first started talking about it. You know what we’re trying to do, and you know the people trying to do it. You’ll be the supervisor, and I’ll run the business end of things. We already know you and I work well together.”

There was a silence. When Sophia spoke again, she started on a different topic. “Don’t forget, part of our mission is to counteract disrespectful assumptions about the female body. That place you’ve got for us is smack in the middle of PV.”

Anita speared a chunk of cantaloupe with her fork. She wasn’t going to push Sophia. She could just about read her friend’s mind at this point, and she knew Sophia was beginning to accept the idea. So she pursued a conversational side street: “See, there you go projecting your middle-class Bible Belt values. Those sisters over there are getting paid—an excellent lesson in creating alternate avenues for building wealth.”

“Alternate? Isn’t that supposed to be, like, the oldest profession?”

“Mm-hmm.” Anita began peeling a kiwi fruit. “Yes, but I hear the way they practice it in Pussy Valley can be real creative and real alternate.”

“Oh, hush, girl.” They both laughed, leaning into the crooks of each other’s arms.

That was when Kwame Achebe walked in, to find his wife wrapped up with another woman, both of them near naked and happy with it.

HOME HOUSE takes place in the college town of Stonewall, Tennessee, during the final days of the 20th century. Two of the primary characters in the novel are Sophia Ransome and Anita Skinner. Anita and Sophia have been best friends since childhood. During their college years, along with other close friends, they were heavily influenced by instructors who were active during the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. As the 21st century approaches, the two women and their group are attempting to establish Home House, an independent community center free of governmental influence.

Sophia is married to Kwame Abimbola, an itinerant vendor. The couple’s contribution to the funding of Home House will come from Sophia’s income from building websites for small businesses. Anita and Sophia both know that Kwame is depressed over his inability to invest in the project. Sophia constantly tries to assure him that he is a part of everything she participates in. He has attended meetings concerning the center since its conception.

Anita is the group’s financial coordinator. She’s been searching for an affordable home for the center, and one day she tells Sophia that she has found and paid the deposit on a suitable location. In an effort to make Kwame feel that he is a major participant in the project, Sophia asks him to go with Anita to examine the property, while she finishes a client’s webpage.

When Sophia wakes up the next morning, she realizes that Kwame hasn’t come home from his trip with Anita.

HOME HOUSE touches on the political and cultural ideals of the 1960s and ’70s. It describes how the beliefs of that era shaped the mindsets of contemporary advocates. It’s also a tale of long-term relationships between friends and between spouses.