I was pregnant at thirty. Divorced at thirty-one. Lost at thirty-two. How else would I have ended up in a place called Rudean’s? Rudean’s was an institution. It sat in a strip mall on a street, Beatties Ford Road, that had once been the heart of the new black middle class in Charlotte, North Carolina. As went the fortunes of black homeownership, entrepreneurship, wealth creation, citizenship, and health, so went Beatties Ford Road.

Rudean’s held on. So did Rudean. The establishment was named for its owner even though it perhaps would have sounded better were it not. But I do not tell old black people nothing. It is rude. What wasn’t rude was Rudean’s reputation. You grew up on jokes about the old players and aging Tressie McMillan Cottomfly girls living out their glory days at Rudean’s, the nightclub that also sold fried fish plates and chicken wings. You had to get there early because parking was slim pickings. And there were only maybe a dozen or so tables pressed up against a long wall on the empty side of the room. The other wall had the bar, wrapped in tufted pleather and papered with liquor ads featuring smiling, glorious black people living the high life.