Rainbow’s End

The rent collector Mr. Coody comes by for the rent and finds Nan Dear cooking eggs for a heavily pregnant Dolly. He notes that he will re-evaluate their lease in light of Dolly’s pregnancy, but Nan Dear takes him to task for consistently invading his tenants’ privacy and imposing too many rules. She throws eggs at him, and he flees.

Dolly and Nan Dear look at Dolly’s old family tree assignment, and Dolly shares that she plans to name her baby after Papa Dear. She confesses that she is worried she won’t love the baby. Nan Dear says that Dolly is finally a woman and thus ready to hear the truth: Gladys’s biological father is a White man who raped Nan Dear when she was a teenager. This is why Nan Dear has been so opposed to Dolly’s relationship with Errol––especially because Errol has the same surname as Nan Dear’s attacker. When Dolly shares that she broke things off with Errol because he wants to take her away from her family, Nan Dear encourages her to consider leaving. At the same time, she insists that Dolly mustn’t resume her relationship with Errol, and Dolly agrees.