“I respect you and your amazing accomplishments, Matthew, and it is always an honor to be pursued. Yet I said no as gently as I could five years ago, and I haven't changed my mind.”
Mrs. Stepforth had her share of pursuers in Washington D.C. during the years she had been divorced from her husband, and it had made no sense to her until the day she had realized: a lot of them likely had bones to pick with her husband for how he and his born-in-the-rural-South-and-also-Black-male self had still beaten them out for major government contracts and status and money – he was a twelve-figure man, a billionaire, while they were “just” millionaires.
To such men, two or three decades after the fact, she was just a Black female actor in their revenge fantasy.
One could never know it about an individual man until he said it, but...
“Well, why not me? I'm younger and stronger and better positioned now!”
Better positioned now … ah ha .. so that was it.
“The fact that you do not respect the fact that my no means no is enough,” she said. “Nine figures or twelve figures make no difference: you insist on your respect, and I also insist on mine.”
Mrs. Stepforth called this “The Subtract Two Centuries Test” – two centuries before in American history, no woman was considered worthy of respect with any man. She was property, even if she were white. So, all you had to do as a woman was insist on respect, and you would find out whether the man you were talking to wanted to treat you like 1820, or 2020.
Matthew failed the test spectacularly; it was like the pitfall had been custom made for him.
“You old –.”
Ah. It all came out then, but, Mrs. Stepforth touched the “end call” button and let him tell the phone how he really felt about her.
Yet just as one phone call had been the end of Mrs. Stepforth's life in New York, this phone call represented the beginning of the end of Mrs. Stepforth's life in Washington. She was 65 and Black and female, and had no illusions. The new virus posed a certain existential threat to an old woman living alone, but angry, insecure men of Matthew's type had been deadly for 400 years. They felt crossed and disrespected for even being reminded that others were worthy of the same respect they enjoyed, and nothing would happen to them if they were careful about how they made something happen to her. Not even Thomas Stepforth Sr., billionaire, could change the whole system that much – not that he would not destroy himself and everything in his path and thus might succeed at that high cost in getting a measure of justice, but –.
Mrs. Stepforth was not about to put herself and her husband in that position.
Hi deeanndmathews,
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