“You can’t get away from me,” said Dennis.

“Punk,” said Derek.

“Call me that again and you’ll be lookin’ like one of them polio kids. They’ll be havin’ to fit you for some of them braces and stuff.”

“That’s enough,” said their father, his eyes on the TV.

Derek rolled Dennis so that one of Dennis’s hands was pinned beneath him. Derek felt around and tried to get purchase on Dennis’s other hand. Instead he grabbed Dennis’s crotch.

“You like that, boy?”

“Like what?”

“You got your hand on my rod!”

They rolled into the hi-fi and laughed.

“I said that’s enough,” said Darius. “I ain’t even finished payin’ on that console yet.”

Darius Strange had bought the hi-fi and the television on time. He had first gone downtown to George’s, on 8th and F, but the salesman there, a chubby white man, had treated him with disrespect. When he walked in, Darius had heard Chubby laughing with one of his coworkers off to the side, talking about he was gonna sell that guy a “Zenick” and saying, with his idea of a colored voice, “Can I put it on lays-aways?” Chubby hadn’t thought he’d heard him, but he had. Darius hadn’t raised a stink about it, but he’d left right away and driven over to Slattery’s on Naylor Road, where the man himself, Frank Slattery, had written him up for the Zenith and the Sylvania, gotten him credit, and delivered it all the next day. The colored money got put together with the white money in the register, and once you counted it out come closing time, you couldn’t even tell the difference. That’s what Chubby didn’t understand.

Like the car, he’d be paying on these things for a long while. Darius didn’t worry on it, though. He expected he was going to be working for the rest of his life.

“You gettin’ strong,” said Dennis, looking his younger brother over with admiration as they both got to their feet.

“Bet I can take you soon, too.”

“You can try,” said Dennis. He made a head motion in the direction of the kitchen. “Go ahead, man.”

“I’m gone.”

Dennis chuckled as he pushed Derek’s forehead with the flat of his palm. He tried it again and Derek ducked away, snatching the milk bottle off the record stack and walking through a short hall back to the kitchen.

“Boy wrinkled my shirt,” said Dennis. “I was gonna wear it tonight, too.”

Darius Strange looked over at his older son. “You goin’ out?”

“I’m fixin’ to. Why?”

“Who you goin’ out with? That no-account I seen you with down on the Avenue?”

“Kenneth?” said Dennis. “He all right.”

“He ain’t look all right to me.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry. We just gonna drive around a little with his cousin, is all. Maybe check out that All-Star Jamboree they got down at the Howard. They got Baby Cortez and the Clovers on the bill. Anyway, I won’t be late.”

“Don’t be. You comin’ to church tomorrow morning with us, right?”

“I’m going to temple. There’s a service in the afternoon.”

“ Temple,” said Darius with a grunt. “You mean that place on Vermont Avenue?”

“Minister Lucius presiding,” said Dennis.

“He gonna be presidin’ now, huh?”

“The man is a disciple of Elijah Muhammad.”

“I know who that is.” Darius tapped the newspaper in his lap. “There’s an advertisement your man paid for right in here. Calls himself the Anointed Leader. Asking for donations, says he wants to build a hospital. Ain’t they got hospitals already in Chicago?”

“This one’s for our people.”

“Oh. If you so taken with him, why don’t you send him some of your money?”

“If I had any I would.”

“The man is just another hustler. He ain’t no better than any old pimp you see out here on the street. And he ain’t even Christian.”

“That’s the point. Jesus is the white man’s god.”

“Don’t let your mother hear you say that, boy.”

“Look, to me the Christian church is like that paper you readin’. Supposed to be for us, but it’s not. You see the ads they run in there?” Dennis picked up the newspaper in front of him, opened it, and read off the page. “‘Black and White Blanching Cream-a brighter, lighter, softer, smoother look.’ Here’s another one: ‘Dr. Fred Palmer’s Skin Whitener.’ And the pictures of the women write these social columns they got? Those women all got light skin, and the way they got their hair fixed, I mean, they look like they’re trying to be white. So who is hustling who? What you think this newspaper is trying to sell us here, huh?”

“I got eyes. You might think I’m blind, but I am not. Things are changing slow, but they’re changin’. It ain’t all good in this world, but for right now, it’s what we got.”

“You just gonna settle for what we got, then.”

“You’re young,” said Darius. “Sooner or later you’re gonna see, you got to go with some things to get along.”

“You mean like last summer, when we went down to the shore? Remember when you got Jim Crowed, how you just went along? How’d you feel that day? How you think it made us feel?”

Darius had driven the family down to the Annapolis area, looking for Highland, the beach that allowed colored. But he drove to the wrong place, and before he could back up and turn around, he got told by some man in a booth that they didn’t allow his kind. Got told this in front of his wife and sons. Anger was what he felt. Anger and shame. But he didn’t answer his son.

“Things ain’t changin’ quick enough for me,” said Dennis. “I don’t want to just get along. And just so you know, I’m gonna be goin’ to that march next week, too.”

“What march is that?”

“Youth March for Integrated Schools. They say twenty-five thousand strong gonna meet down at the Sylvan theater.”

“Mind what you get yourself into.”

“I know what I’m doin’.”

“You think you do,” said Darius Strange. “But y’all start rising up too hard, they gonna start doing you like they did that boy in that Mississippi jail.”

“I ain’t worried.”

“Course not. Like I said, you’re young.”

In the kitchen, Derek Strange put the bottle of milk in the Frigidaire and went to the sink, where his mother stood washing dishes. There was a window over the sink, but at present it did not let in much light, as Alethea Strange had taped cardboard to the bottom panes. She did this so the humans in the kitchen would not scare the birds that had built a nest in the window frame outside.

“Hey, Mama,” said Derek, touching his mother on her hip.

“Derek,” she said, looking him in the eye. Sometime in the past year, her youngest had reached her height. “Anything special happen today?”

“Nothing special,” he said, thinking of the incident at Ida’s, wondering if he had just told his mother a lie. “How about you?”

“Oh, you know, just work.” Alethea moved a bottle of Kretol roach killer that sat on the sill and peeled back a corner of the cardboard on the window before her. “Look here, son.”

Derek leaned forward on the counter. A mother robin was feeding her babies in her nest. Three featherless heads were going after one half of a worm.

“Where the father at?” said Derek.

“He’s still around, I expect. He built the nest and now the mother is taking care of the kids. How we do around here.”

Derek nodded. His mother had told him this many times before. He watched her tape the cardboard back in place and leaned his back to the counter.

“Lydell came by,” said Alethea.

“Yeah?”

“Was looking to see if you wanted to go fishing up at the Home. Said he’d come back to pick you up in a little while.”

“Can I go?”

“Yes, but not for long. Sun’s gonna be going down soon anyway, and your father and me were thinking we’d go to a movie tonight. Want you back in the house before we go.”

“What movie?”

“I wanted to see that one, Imitation of Life, ’cause everyone’s been talkin’ about it. But you know your father; he said he wasn’t gonna pay to see no ‘weepie.’ He was pushing for some western, but I am not getting dressed to go out and see some show with men got dust on their clothes. So we made a compromise. We’re gonna go see that new picture I Want to Live! down at the Lincoln.”