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“You’re different,” Philbert says.

“Everything’s different,” I answer.

“You don’t have time for your hick family anymore?” He lowers his chin like
Aww, shucks.

“Shit,” I tell him. “You don’t have to be a hick if you don’t want to be. You can go anywhere.”

Philbert shakes his head. “There’s nothing out there for me.”

“Everything’s out there. Whatever you want.”

“I sure don’t want to end up like you,” he says.

That slices. “You wish you could be like me.” I puff up my chest. “They call me ‘Red.’ I run things over there.”

“I’ll bet.” There’s bitterness there. And distance. Layers of frustration and anger. The silence hangs between us, empty of all things good.

We glare at each other. In a second, maybe, he’ll lunge at me. We’ll be tussling on the floor like six-year-olds. My heart beats faster, waiting. Waiting.

Philbert and I have fought a thousand times. Hell, back in the day, we would be whaling on each other a dozen times a week. But it was always in fun. Always clear that we were on the same side, no questions asked, out in the real world. This feels like we’re no longer with each other; we’re against each other. And that punch hits deeper than any of the fists I’ve ever felt on me.

Slowly I reach for my wallet. Lay out some bills. Enough to cover the cost of the drinks plus tip — not too much, but enough to look like a big spender. I even kind of fan the bills out. Like a calling card or some nonsense.

Outside, I turn around swinging. Philbert’s ready. He has his hands up and blocks me. Gives me a body blow that sets me back a few paces. I jog in place. He circles.

“Really?” he says. “We’re going to do this? You know I’m gonna smoke you.”

“Maybe I got better.”

Philbert just smiles. Throws a couple punches. I don’t even see from where, but I feel it. Shoulder. Hip. Jaw. My fists are flying, too, but I can’t even touch him.

In an instant, it isn’t a fight anymore.

I drop my hands and laugh. Seems easiest. “Hell. You still got it.”

“You still don’t.” Philbert claps the side of my neck. Kind of hugs me to him from the side. “So don’t start anything.”

This is how we always were together, but it feels different now. I hate it. Here I am in my zoot suit, thinking how country everybody looks compared to me. Thinking,
How small is this place that I came from, and how’d I get so big that I can’t fit?

We walk back inside.

“I still don’t get it,” he says. “Why you went away. How you turned into . . . whatever this is.”

“Why’re you talking like that?” I ask him. “I’m here now.”

As if on cue, the barkeep walks up to our table with my next round: a beer and two shot glasses of whiskey.

“No, you’re not,” Philbert says quietly, staring at the libations in front of me.

I raise one shot in a mock salute. “We’re still family.”

Philbert acknowledges my comment with a nod. “We’re always going to be family, Malcolm.”

Doesn’t feel like it right now. I down the two shots of whiskey. “I wrote you.” Maybe he needs reminding. “I wrote you all the time.”

“I know,” Philbert answers. “I’m talking about more than that.”

“What?”

“The way you’re dressed. Your attitude. Do people really behave this way out East?”

Philbert can’t understand what it’s like. His stare, so heavy with judgment.

“Lay off me.”

“Why don’t you just come home?” he repeats.

It’s all I can do not to laugh. “Home?” The word echoes, like the empty cavern it is. “What does that even mean?”

Sounds to me like a thing long buried. Sounds to me like wooden planks someone kicked in, on a porch I used to walk.

“Forget it,” Philbert says. And the door closes on a thing he could see that I couldn’t. Some image of home, I guess.
“Forget it,” he says? I’m doing my best
.

That night we gather for dinner. Hilda cooks a familiar meal, and the whole house smells like our childhood. So strange, to sit around the table and feel like everything and nothing has changed all at once.

We eat the chicken and vegetable stew — Mom’s recipe — and everyone talks and laughs like it’s the good old days. Only difference is I smoked a reefer before I came in here to take the edge off and keep the memories at bay.

Reginald tells of some traveling he’s done, but I rival it all with stories of Roxbury nightlife, not to mention my recent forays into Harlem. I don’t hold back. I want them to be impressed by my adventures, but I get a different kind of reaction.

“You didn’t really sell marijuana cigarettes at the Roseland, did you, Malcolm?” Yvonne says, her eyes wide. Sure, I did.

I tell them about Sophia. Wouldn’t any guy be proud to squire a fine-looking woman like her?

“You date a white woman?” Hilda asks. “What happened to that nice pretty Negro girl you wrote me about? Laura?”

“That’s dangerous, Malcolm,” says Reginald. “What if you’re seen by the wrong people? You know what can happen!”

“No, it’s cool,” I tell him. “Lots of people do it.” I don’t mention that night on the docks.

Next I talk about the train work and how good I got at keeping on my feet, even wasted. “You were using drugs?” Wilfred says, his lips pursed in disapproval. “No wonder you got fired.”

I can’t take it. I stop trying to tell them what’s what. They don’t know what it takes to get by in the city. They haven’t been where I’ve been. They can’t understand.

Once I shut my mouth, the others take over. They talk, real familiar, about Wilfred’s new job and how well Wesley’s doing in school and the girl Philbert’s probably going to marry. Every story is good, every story is new to me, but they go back and forth like it’s normal to just be chatting. No one’s trying to impress anyone, except me, and it isn’t even working.

“Did you put a ham hock in this stew?” I ask Hilda, to change the subject. “It tastes amazing.”

“We don’t eat pork, Malcolm,” Hilda chides. “You know that.”

“Shoot. You don’t know what you’re missing.” I lick my lips. “Pork is delicious.”

My siblings pause their laughter to look at me.
“Mmm, mmm,”
I groan. “Bacon. Ham. Sausage. You should try it sometime.” Mom’s not around to scold me. I can eat whatever I want.

The others glance around, unsure what to say. I’m making them uncomfortable. Good.

“This chicken is delicious on its own,” Reginald says.

“Yeah,” I agree, letting them relax again. But the taste brings back a few too many memories. It’s almost like it used to be, in the long-ago days, in the old house. Almost.

We’re grown in some ways. I’m seventeen and living on my own. Wilfred, Hilda, and Philbert are on their own, too. Reginald and Yvonne look so different now; just in these two years they’ve become teenagers. But the youngest, Wesley and Robert, are still very much children. If we walked down the street together we’d probably look like a family — Wilfred as the father, Hilda the mother, with all these children. To look at us, to listen to us laughing, you’d think we had it perfect. But our circle is incomplete.

Boston, March 1943

Staying in Michigan is out of the question. I hop the first bus back to Boston. I pick up the train connection in Toledo. It gets me home much faster than the old bus route, which takes the back roads and stops in every small town.

I feel better almost immediately. The old rough streets that love me welcome me back. Back to Roxbury, hanging with Shorty and Sophia. Back to the worlds of Lindy, reefer, and jazz.

Being in Roxbury is better, but it isn’t quite enough. Everywhere I turn, things pop up. A fruit vendor dressed up in a big apple suit. A new tune popular around the Roseland called the “Harlem Hustle.” A magazine advertisement with a picture of the Empire State Building.

The siren call of Harlem is too loud. I can’t ignore it.

“You’re leaving?” Sophia pouts. She rolls onto my stomach, trapping me beneath her supple warmth.

“You can come visit me,” I promise. “As often as you want.”

I’m not sure what to make of this sudden bout of closeness. We’ve been mostly apart for months now, because that’s the way she wanted it. My brown skin, which she says she loves, suddenly became too brown for her to handle, I guess.

Well, I’m still brown.

“You won’t go,” Sophia whispers. “Not really. You don’t want to be without this.” Her mouth takes hold of mine. I’m used to leaping at her beck and call. She’s right about what I want — but only half right.

I can always get a girl. They flock to me. They call me good-looking. I know how to dance. And my mother sure enough taught me how to treat a lady right. I do want Sophia, but I can’t have her completely, and there are other things I desire.

It’s her turn to want.

She kisses me deeper, and I almost change my mind. When we lie like this and I can feel her against me, I don’t want to ever move, or leave, or think, or act.

But she won’t stay. So I can’t, either.

Shorty’s more matter-of-fact about it. “I’m not gonna save your room,” he tells me. “I gotta make rent.”

“I’ll miss you, too, buddy,” I say, making a face at him.

Shorty grins, but there’s a sadness behind it, like he really will miss me. “Just want to make sure you’re serious.”

“Yeah,” I tell him. “It feels right to go there.”

“Hey,” he says with a shrug. “Then you gotta follow that.”

“Come and visit,” I tell him. “Trust me. Harlem is the cat’s meow.”

We slap skin. “You always got a couch to crash on here in Roxbury, OK?”

“Likewise,” I assure him. “Soon as I’ve got a place.”

Ella can’t understand it. “What’s wrong with here?” she asks. “You’re doing just fine here, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, I guess,” I say. “But Harlem’s so . . .”

“I know. You want the big city and the lights.” She sighs. “I suppose I started you on that. Bringing you here.”

True enough. But Roxbury, Sugar Hill, and Boston aren’t where the action is anymore.

Ella reaches over and rests a hand on my arm. “You could achieve so much,” she insists. “The minute you stop going down the Hill, into whatever it is you do there.”

I shrug. She’s like a broken record, playing Papa’s old tune. The same damn story.

“Why can’t you see how intelligent you are? You could do anything. Right here in Boston. You could have everything you ever wanted.”

I find the volume knob in my mind and turn her down. I don’t have to hear it. I’m my own man now.

I stir in my seat. Don’t even want to be sitting. Want to walk out the door so fast . . . but Ella has been good to me. She’s blood and kin and the closest thing to home, yet it’s making me crazy to stay. She radiates this dark-black pride, but not the way I want it. All that stuff she’s saying, she’s just trying to hold me back. Keep up the lies and keep me in my place. But I’m my own man now.

“I like it there,” I say. “I was born for Harlem.”

I simply know it to be true. Everything I’ve dreamed of and imagined is right there in the New York City skyline. There’s a me-size slot waiting somewhere in the streets of Harlem. I can feel it. Calling me.

Harlem, 1943

Soon as my feet hit the ground in Harlem, I start making the rounds. Stop by the Braddock Hotel to see which musicians happen to be in town. Swing by Small’s Paradise, fold myself in among the hustlers there.

On the road in between, everything I see is like a vision. There’s new magic in every sidewalk crack, in the traffic rush, in the lurch of beggars on the corner. Every piece of this world is fresh and exciting. And unlike before, I’m here to stay. I never have to leave.

Small’s Paradise is the place to be, I think. I love the worn wood walls and the low light, and the quiet old men who sit around the bar in their nice pressed suits and talk about their street days.

The high wooden bar forms one long
L
down the length of the room. The leather covers on the round bar stools are worn to tearing from use.

“Hey, Red, long time no see,” says the bartender. “Where’ve you been?”

“Out of town,” I answer. “But I’m back now.”

I let him know I’m looking for a slave.

“We’ve got a waiter gig open,” he says. “Talk to Charlie.”

Charlie Small runs Small’s Paradise.

“Really?” I say. That would be perfect. I can’t imagine a better place to work than my favorite place in all of Harlem to hang out.

The bartender nods me toward the back. I walk into Charlie’s office. Walk out five minutes later with a freshly minted slave.

Working at Small’s is a dream come true. All the hustles and the talk and the suits and the laughter. Now I’m not just stopping by, watching it all happen; I’m a part of it.

The old hustlers sit around the bar, and I bring them food from the kitchen.

Even though all the regulars are hard-core old-time hustlers, Small’s carries on as an upstanding, respectable place. People from downtown stop in for a drink. White people. Out-of-town people. Servicemen, especially. All of them thinking that this is the safe place in Harlem. Clean and straight up. Meanwhile they’re sitting across the bar from the biggest-known pimps and numbers runners on the island. It’s like an untold joke that everyone around the place is in on.