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Even if her race training was gradual, however, Smith did recall especially significant childhood moments, which she called dramas. One particularly influential “drama of the South” began when a white clubwoman in her hometown of Jasper, Florida, happened to find a young white girl living with a black family on the black side of town (34). Convinced that the child had been kidnapped, the town marshal took the girl away and placed her in the Smith home, where she and Lillian became fast friends. Three weeks later, a black orphanage called and informed Smith’s mother that Janie was black. Told that her new friend must return to “Colored Town” and could never play with her again, Lillian demanded over and over to know why, until her mother, her voice “sharp” but her face “sad,” finally ended discussion of the matter with the same words that black parents often used in response to their children’s questions about race: “You’re too young to understand” (37). Although she accepted this answer, Smith knew that “something was wrong” (37). “I knew that my mother who was so good to children did not believe in her heart that she was being good to this child” (38). Nevertheless, Smith “felt compelled” to believe that her mother and other white adults were “right” because that “was the only way my world could be held together” (38).