* * *
The club found its objections on Wednesday.
They came by way of Mr. Dabney, who stopped her father outside the maintenance shed with a typed sheet of paper. The Women's Committee had reviewed the Labor Day program. The Women's Committee had some concerns.
"Proper tennis attire," Mr. Dabney read aloud, "is required of all players on club courts. Predominantly white. Collared shirts or tennis dresses. No cut-offs, no T-shirts, no colored sneakers." He looked up at Dee, at her denim shorts and her Washington Street Rec T-shirt and her black Chuck Taylors, which she'd bought because they were on sale at Belk's and because Mr. Grant wore them. "And the committee would like it understood that this is an exhibition, and the young lady is a guest, and guests don't use the members' locker room. She can change in the staff restroom."
"That's fine," her father said, before Dee could say anything. "That's fine, Mr. Dabney."
"And Raymond." Mr. Dabney lowered his voice. "There's been some talk that Isaiah's been helping her. Off property. I'd be very careful about that, if I were him. Some of the members feel it isn't his place."
"I'll tell him," her father said.
He did tell him. Dee was there. He walked into the restringing room that evening and shut the door and said, "Isaiah, Dabney says some of the members feel it isn't your place," and Mr. Grant, who was knotting off a string, didn't look up.
"I've heard that sentence," he said, "about once a year since 1962." He clipped the string. "Five-thirty tomorrow, Miss Pruitt. Ebenezer."
Her father stood there a moment longer. Then he said, "I'll drive her," and Mr. Grant looked up, and the two men looked at each other over the stringing machine for a while, and something passed between them that Dee wasn't part of and didn't need to be.
The whites came from her mother.
Carol Pruitt didn't own a sewing machine, but Mrs. Fripp on Prince Street did, and on Thursday night after her shift Dee's mother sat in Mrs. Fripp's back room with a white cotton church dress of her own from 1966 and a pair of scissors and a mouthful of pins. She took it in at the waist and cut it off above the knee and hemmed it and put in two pleats in the back so Dee could run, and when it was done Dee stood in front of Mrs. Fripp's mirror in it and didn't recognize herself.
"It's not a real tennis dress," Dee said.
"Says who," said her mother, around the pins.