The homeless man stepped into the street in front of her.

She screeched to a stop, the front wheel of her bike between the homeless man's legs.

The homeless man flipped her off.

She flipped him back.

He didn't move.

She walked her bike backward a couple of steps, then revved up and drove around him, flipping him off again.

He double-flipped her back, then strode back to the sidewalk.

"Home with you," said Ceese.

"Then get in the car."

He did. By the time they got to the street, neither the motorcycle nor the homeless man were anywhere to be seen.

At home, Mother was strangely nice about his being away all afternoon and half the evening, and when Dad got back late from work, he didn't say much, either. "Well, it's nice that Miz Smitcher will have a child to look after," Dad said.

"She didn't sound too happy about it," said Ceese. "I'm going to be helping her by tending him during the day."

"That'll keep you out of trouble," said Dad, laughing a little. And then it was on to other topics with Mom, as if finding a baby happened every day in their neighborhood.

It was all sort of anticlimactic. There was nobody to tell about the motorcycle woman or the homeless man. Nobody who even wanted to hear more about finding the baby. It was all just... done.

Over with. It'll just be Miz Smitcher's little boy growing up next door, and everybody will forget that I found him and diapered his little butt and fed him and didn't throw him down the stairs.

He ate a late supper and went to bed and lay awake for a long while. The last thing he thought was: I wonder if Miz Smitcher is going to smother little Mack in his sleep.

Chapter 6

SWIMMER

Mack Street grew up knowing the story of how Ceese found him in a grocery bag and Miz Smitcher took him in. How could he avoid it, with neighborhood kids calling him by nicknames like

"Bag Boy" and "Safeway" and "Plasticman."

Miz Smitcher wouldn't talk to him about it, even when he asked her direct questions like, Why don't you let me call you Mama? and, Was I born or did you buy me at the store? So he got the straight story from Ceese, who came over every afternoon at four-thirty to take care of him while Miz Smitcher went to work at the hospital.

Mack would ask Ceese questions all the time, especially when Ceese was trying to do his homework, so Ceese made a rule: "You get one question a day, at bedtime."

Mack would store up his questions all day trying to decide which one would be tonight's bedtime question. A lot of times he had one that he knew was great, the most important question ever, but by the time bedtime came around he had forgotten it.

"You don't got to answer it now," said Mack. "Just write it down so I don't forget."

"Write it down yourself."

"I can't," said Mack. "I'm only four."

"If you can't remember it and you can't write it down, that's not my fault," said Ceese. "Now let me do my homework."

So that night, Mack's question was, "Will you teach me to read?"

"That's not a question," said Ceese.

Mack thought for a minute. What was a question, anyway? "I don't know the answer and you do."

"That's a request."

"If that one doesn't count, then I get to ask you another."

"Hit me."

Mack hit him.

"Ow!" said Ceese. "When somebody say 'Hit me' it means 'Go ahead.' "

"What would you say if you wanted somebody to hit you?"

"Nobody wants somebody to hit them. And that's your question, and that's my answer, go to sleep."

"You're mean!" called out Mack as Ceese went back into the living room to watch TV till he fell asleep on the couch, which is where he spent every night that he tended Mack.

"I'm the meanest!" called back Ceese. "Miz Smitcher specially picked me to tend you cause I'm the most wicked boy in Baldwin Hills!"

That was why Mack Street started teaching himself how to read when he was four years old, by copying out letters, not knowing what they said, and then asking Miz Smitcher to tell him what the letters spelled. She could always answer when he copied them down in the same order as on the page, but when he changed the order she'd say, "It doesn't say anything, baby." Finally she gave up and taught him the sounds of the letters, and pretty soon he was sounding out words for himself.

But by that time he had already asked Ceese the most important and worrisome questions.

How come they sometimes call me Ralph's? "Cause it's the name of a grocery store. Like Safeway."

Well, why do they call me grocery-store names? "That's a second question so you better save it till tomorrow."

Next night, he remembered and got the answer. "Cause when you was found, Mack, you was a naked little baby in a plastic grocery bag, covered with ants and lying in a field."

The next night: Who found me? "Me and Raymo, only Raymo wanted to kill you like a cat and I wanted to save you alive."

Bit by bit Mack got the story from Ceese. He wasn't sure he believed it, so one of his questions was, "Is that all true? Cause if it ain't, when I'm bigger I'll beat the shit out of you."

"Who taught you to say shit?" demanded Ceese.

"Is that your question for tonight?" said Mack.

"My answer to your question, before you said a nasty word that Miz Smitcher going to wash out your mouth with soap, my answer is Yes."

But thinking about what Miz Smitcher might do drove out what he'd asked. "What was my question?"

"That's another question, which I don't have to answer, nasty-mouth baby."

"Shit shit shit shit shit."

"I'm going to get the stapler and fasten your tongue to your nose and see if you want to say any more nasty words."

"If you do I'll bleed on your shirt!"

"You bleed on my shirt, I'll pee on your toys."

Mack loved Ceese more than any other human on earth.

In good weather, which was most afternoons, Ceese took Mack out to play in the neighborhood before dinner. Ceese was way older than any of the children Mack played with, so he always brought along a book so he could read, but then most of the time Ceese would get involved in the kid games they played, sometimes cause there was a fight and Ceese had to break it up, but mostly cause kid games were more fun than the books Ceese had to read for school.

"Mack, if you happen to live to be my age and somebody tells you you going to have to read The Scarlet Letter I recommend you just kill yourself right off and get it over with."

"Ask me at bedtime."

Mack didn't know he was having a great childhood. Ceese tried to tell him one time. About how rich kids grew up in big empty mansions and never saw anybody except servants and nannies. And poor kids grew up in the ghetto where people were always shooting bullets into their house so they never slept at night and they got beat up every day and stabbed if they went out of their house. And kids from in-between families lived in apartments and never had anybody to play with but mean ugly kids at day care.

"But you, Mack, you got a whole neighborhood full of kids who know who you are. You're famous, Mack, just for being alive."

Mack didn't know what famous was. So what if everybody knew who he was? He knew them right back. Was everybody famous?

Okay, so everybody thought he was special or weird because he was found instead of being born or adopted. But that wasn't what made Mack different, he knew.

It was the cold dreams.

He tried to talk about it to Ceese one time. "I had a really bad cold dream last night."

"A what?"

"A cold dream."

"What's that?"

"Where you dream and it's really real and you want it so bad, and when you wake up from it you're shivering so hard you think it's going to break your teeth."