“They don’t always,” she added, at the end.

The invitation to Princeton had come from Paul Muldoon, Irish poet. He chaired the Princeton Creative Writing Department at the time. He had not informed me that the invitation originated with Morrison. I suppose I could have guessed, but I would not have done that, then. I was new to writing, new to publishing, new to New York, new to being blurbed. One thing that first meeting showed me was that Morrison had really read my book. She treated me like she knew me; like she had drawn conclusions from the writing. She didn’t say, “I know you,” but that’s how she behaved. And so, based on her invitation, I moved to Princeton. Eventually, she invited me to visit her astonishing house on the Hudson. I drove the long distance.

In that apartment in Tribeca, I decided that I would call her Miss Chloe, aloud, which is how I had thought of her from a distance. I had known her given name since I’d read “The Bluest Eye.” Since she had summarily erased the distance between us, I decided to be daring, and true.

She never asked me to stop calling her Miss Chloe, and so I didn’t. I wrote to her, occasionally, using Dear Miss Chloe then, too. This first of many permissions set our relationship on a course, more intimate than just professional. We both recognized this as a liberty, granted.

I served on the faculty at Princeton for six years, during which I learned so much about her, and learned directly from her. I also had a baby. She advised me as I grew round and full and had to haggle with Princeton about maternity time. I owned a house in the French Quarter in New Orleans, before Katrina, before Princeton. I wanted to go back there to have my daughter. I needed a semester off to make that happen, and Princeton declined my request. I called Miss Chloe to ask for her advice. “They can’t tell you where to have your baby,” she said bluntly. And so, I told Paul Muldoon I was leaving, and I went for that semester and the summer back to New Orleans, and brought my daughter home, in April, to our house in the Quarter. We returned to Princeton in the fall.

Those were some years; that was some education. Toni Morrison’s incisive intelligence, incredible wit and astonishing imagination were never on pause. She loved to laugh; she loved to reason, especially when others seemed not to. She encouraged me frequently to be who I was, to lean into language, to write, always write. When I got into a kerfuffle with my publishers about my cowboy book , she asked bluntly, “Who’s writing the book? You?”

Her reasoning caused me to stop arguing — with white women editors about my cast of black cowboys. That novel awaits a keen editor’s eye, still. The black cowboys’ time will come.