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Shorty hands me a list of ingredients. About the strangest combination of items I could have imagined. Soap. Eggs. Vaseline. Potatoes. Lye. The only thing on the list that makes any sense is a comb — but I have to get two: one with wide teeth and one with narrow teeth.

Shorty waits for me at his cousin’s house, where he lives. I bring over my bags of conk supplies. We get to work straightaway.

“It’s gonna hurt,” Shorty warns. “The first time’s the worst. It’ll never hurt this bad again. Just think on that.”

“Sure.” Nervousness sets in a bit. I want the conk. Have to have it. I’ve been growing my hair out for weeks now, getting it long enough to straighten.

Shorty sets me up at the kitchen table. He dumps out a couple of potatoes. Hands me a knife. “Peel, homeboy.”

I scrape the skin off the potatoes.

Shorty’s in high spirits. “Gotta earn that conk,” he says. “Slice ’em thin, now.”

The potato slices go into a big Mason jar. Shorty pours the lye over them, cracks two raw eggs into the mix, and stirs it all up with a wooden paddle. The smell rockets to potent immediately.

“Whew.” I fan my nose. “Get a load of that.”

“You ain’t smelled nothing yet,” Shorty warns. “And it’s nothing compared to the feel. Touch the jar.”

The sides of the glass are piping hot. After the merest contact, I flinch away.

“That’s what’ll be on your head in a minute,” Shorty says.

As if he needs to remind me. I pat my bushy kinks. Time to say so long. It’ll be good riddance as far as I’m concerned, but the heat in that jar has me worried about getting from point A to point B. I glance at Shorty’s smooth head, figuring that if this homemade gel straightener is what he uses, it’s bound to work for me, too. “Congolene,” Shorty calls the goop. “Conk” for short.

“You ready, homeboy?” Shorty uncaps the Vaseline. I sit in the chair and let him rub it into my head by the scooped-out handful. He works it into my kinks and smooths it all over my neck, forehead, and ears. I might as well be a greased rabbit.

“Now’s when it gets hot,” Shorty reminds me, reaching for the steaming jar. “Keep it in as long as you can stand it. Makes a better conk.”

He pours the congolene on top of me. It’s warm. He grabs the wide comb and rakes it through my thicket of hair. This really isn’t so ba —
oh!

Oh, sweet mercy!

It burns!

It burns like the sun fell out of the sky. Like a hot coal in your fist. Like a whipping with a lash of flames. Hotter than the flames that once licked around my bed before Papa pulled me out of our burning house.

“Aaaah!”
I shriek. I let loose a string of curses — probably every one I’ve ever heard, plus a couple I make up right here on the spot.

“Get it off! Get it off!” I yell, stamping my foot.

“Hang on, homeboy,” Shorty yells back. “Just a minute. Just another minute.”

The stench of the congolene absolutely fills me. Everything I breathe, everything I taste. And above all that, the pain. I hold fast to the sides of Shorty’s cousin’s kitchen table, crazily contemplating whether the fire of a conk could lead a man to splinter wood with his fingernails.

Shorty scrapes and tugs with the comb. My scalp screams for mercy. There’s nothing in the world for me except the burning. A pain as deep as some sorrows I’ve known.

My eyes stream. My nose runs like a faucet. But how can I care, under the stinging? I leap up and race for the sink. Shorty follows, cranks on the water, and hoses down my head.

The cool water eases the burning, but only somewhat. My eyes drift closed. It’s all I can do just to breathe.

“Lie back,” Shorty orders. He scrubs the bar of soap against me. Rinses me off with a hose like a showerhead attached to the sink. Wash. Spray. Wash. Spray. Wash. Spray. On and on, until the fire on my scalp dies down to embers.

Back in Lansing, when I was small, Mom would wash my hair like this, pouring bucket after bucket over me while I squirmed. Not as rough, maybe. But similar.

Hold still, love
, I hear her scold me lightly.

“Hold still. I gotta get it all,” Shorty says, hands washing every inch of my skull. “If I miss a spot, it’ll keep on burning. Scald you something fierce.”

“Keep rinsing.” I tap the tears out of my eyes with shaking fists.

“OK, Red. Let’s take a look.” Shorty whips the rubber apron off my neck and blots my hair and neck dry. “You feel any spots still burning?”

“No.” Everything stings, but it isn’t the active sort of flames. “It’s just sore now.”

“That’s normal,” Shorty says. “It’ll fade.” He dips into the Vaseline again, massaging it all over my hair. “It took real nice,” he says. “OK, get up.”

We look at me in the mirror. It worked! No more tangled, kinky bush. Each strand of my hair is razor straight. Straight as any white man’s hair I’ve ever seen. Straighter. It lies flat back, gelled smooth with Vaseline. “Whoa,” I keep saying. “Whoa.” I touch my new crown tenderly.

“That’s a nice conk.” Shorty wipes his hands clean of all the mess. “You’re a new man, homeboy.”

A brand-new man
, I agree, running my fingers through the straight reddish-brown locks. In the afternoon light, my hair looks almost golden. I barely recognize myself. It’s shocking. It’s beautiful. I love it.

My scalp still buzzes a bit. But I can handle the pain if that’s what it takes to erase the old me. All his stinging sorrows, washed down the sink like congolene. Nothing left to scald the new me. Rinsed clean.

Ella lights into me the minute she sees my conk. “What have you done to yourself, Malcolm? You have taken out every beautiful curl that the Lord gave you! Why are you putting these chemicals in your hair? I don’t like these characters you are hanging around with.”

I smooth my palms over the sides of my head, like I’ve seen other cats doing. “What’s the big deal? It looks fly.” I admire myself in the mirror over the table in the entry hall. In the reflection I can see her pacing and flaring.

“Why do you persist . . . ?” Her voice trails off, and she throws up her hands. “I have to get supper on. Wash your hands and come set the table.”

I go on into the bathroom to scrub up. Ella might not approve of much of what I’m doing, but that isn’t going to stop me from doing it. She’s not my mother. And she’s not my father, either, even though she takes after him. I don’t have to do her bidding. I’m my own man now.

You are my son.

I look around, like he’s actually there, speaking to me.

The Almighty God has granted you a great destiny. Do not lose faith, son.

I run the water louder. Ella doesn’t get a say. Papa either.

Seeing myself in the mirror over the sink just makes me all the more sure. I’m a whole new me.

Ella starts bringing dishes to the table while I set our places. Fried chicken, okra, greens, and corn bread. A regular southern feast. We eat this kind of food a lot. Ella says she likes to eat food that reminds her of growing up. I’m glad enough about that for her, but I’m even gladder because this kind of food doesn’t remind me of anything.

I chow down on a chicken leg. I’ve gotten used to eating my fill now; no longer any need to force away the memories of hunger churning deep.

Ella’s still muttering about my conk. “What would Papa think about this?” she drones on. “Not in school. Out in the streets at all hours . . .” I tune out her voice. Imagine Lindy music playing in my ears.

“You better be careful,” I hear. “All this new, new, new. You’re gonna wake up one day and not recognize yourself.”

I smile to myself. Isn’t that the point?

Ella can say what she wants. Starting fresh feels good. Nothing’s going to bring me down.

Boston, 1941

Every night after work, it seems, Shorty knows of some house party or other we can swing by. The result: I sleep half the day and I’m up all night. It’s practically daybreak by the time I stumble in. The foyer smells like brewing coffee. Ella’s downstairs in the kitchen already, getting ready to cook up some breakfast.

Good timing. I can grab a plate of whatever she’s fixing, then catch some shut-eye.

I call out hello but don’t wait for an answer. I go up into my bedroom, dump out my bag of tricks.

I’ve got a reefer high going, and everything is soft. It was a good night; between tips and sales, I have about twenty bucks in ones and change denting my mattress.

I riffle through my pouch of extras, cataloging what needs replacing. Rubbers. Reefer. A laugh escapes me. Always low on reefer. Nobody can get enough reefer. Me included.

A knock at the door.

“Yeah?”

Ella pokes her head in. “Are you going to want some breakfast?”

“Sure.”

Frowning, she pushes the door wider and steps inside. “Malcolm.”

“Yeah?”

Ella takes the pouch out of my hand.

“It’s not mine,” I blurt out. “It’s just for work. Extras, you know?”

“Extras.” She studies me. “This is what you do?”

“Mostly shoe shines,” I say. “But you have to have extras.”

“Malcolm, no. This is not acceptable.” Ella paces my room, hand on her forehead. “This is over the line. I’m responsible for you,” she says. “I took you in. To protect you. Not to have you . . .” Her voice trails off.

“I want you to get a different kind of job,” she says. “I don’t want you going down to that club anymore.”

“But —”

“No.” She all but shakes her fist at me. Then her eyes widen. “Townsend’s Drug Store.”

“What about it?”

“They’re looking to hire a new soda-fountain clerk. You worked in a restaurant before, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.” Back in Lansing. All the more reason I’d rather be doing something new.

“Then it’s settled. I’ll talk to the owner. He’s a friend of mine.”

How well I know. I can’t mention anything about this town without Ella name-dropping someone she knows. It’s one of the things I hate about the way you have to be to live on the Hill.

Ella presses on. “I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to have you.”

“No, but . . .” My reefer high makes me feel like I’m protesting from under water. “I really don’t want —”

“Well, you can’t keep doing this.” With my reefer pouch, Ella points at the other incriminating items strewn over my bedspread. “I won’t permit it.”

She has that look on her face, the insistent one that I hate, that makes her look exactly like Papa. I yank the pouch back from her, sweep all the things toward one corner of the bed, and lie down with my back to her.

“Malcolm, did you hear me?” Ella demands. I close my eyes, but I can still see that face, hovering, disapproving, trying to push me in a direction I refuse to go.

“Malcolm Little!” The voice is loud in my ear. The hand on my shoulder, trying to nudge me to turn and face it. I can’t win if I let myself face it. Instead I try to shut my mind and hope it goes away.

“So help me, Malcolm, if I have to go down to that club myself . . .”

“No, don’t,” I blurt out. I spin upright and face the voice. It’s a surprise, somehow, that it’s Ella I’m looking at. I blink. My mind is reefer-blurred. My heart is under attack.

This is not who you are, my son.

“I can be anything I want to be, right?” I repeat the refrain, nearly shouting it. “Isn’t that what you’re always saying?” Looking her straight in the eye, I want to grin. It’s only Ella I see now. Maybe I
can
win.

Ella flinches and purses her lips. “You can
achieve
anything,” she amends softly. It sucks the air out of me.

I duck my head. Ella still believes in Papa’s stories. Papa’s “someday, maybe” dreams. Papa’s lies.

That’s the fire in her eyes, and it’s a thing I used to have, too. I can take it away with three little words:
Just a nigger
. I should say them. Eventually, she has to know the truth so she can go about living in a way that’s real. But I can’t bring myself to be the one to tell her.

“Malcolm?” Ella says.

“All right,” I tell her. “I’ll go see them tomorrow.”

When I tell Shorty the news, he doesn’t seem surprised. “You were going to outgrow that deal eventually,” he says. “Once you got the hang of everything.”

“Ella’s got me a job on the Hill. Soda clerk at Townsend’s.”

Shorty hoots. “Damn, homeboy! You’re moving up in the world.”

“I’m not thrilled about working up the Hill,” I admit.

He looks at me kind of funny. “A slave’s a slave,” he says. “Anyway, tips are probably good up the Hill.”

Maybe so. Still, I’m not looking forward to it. The only thing I’m happy about is the schedule. At Townsend’s I’ll have a normal working day and get off for the night at eight. Now, unlike ever before, I’ll have my nights free. I can come to the Roseland just to dance.

Shorty’s way of thinking about my Townsend’s deal gets me cheered up about it. It isn’t just a new job. It’s a change of station. Moving up in the world. Instead of doing what’s right for people’s feet, I’ll be working for their mouths and for their bellies.

This is a time to celebrate. A brand-new slave for a whole new kind of man. So I go back to the suit shop. This time I don’t need Shorty to back me up. They know me at that store now. I’ve been paying my weekly bill on the blue zoot suit, real steady. When I walk in, they look me up in their book. Tell me I have an A for my credit.