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Then, barely a month of saving later, Mr. Ostrowski saw fit to enlighten me about the truth of my great potential. The world turned upside down. What was the point in going back to school after that? I didn’t need a high-school diploma to be a nigger.

I had to second-guess everything. The classmates who had elected me president — did they really think I was the best in the class, or was I just a novelty object they wanted to play with?
He’s just a nigger, but, hey, we’ve never seen a nigger who can do what Malcolm can do.
My stomach ached every day and every night, thinking about it.

And Papa — all the good warm memories I was holding slowly faded. Moment by moment, I realized how deep into me all his stories had burrowed. His promises. His lies. Pulling them out hurt more than anything, like yanking myself up by the roots.

No, I couldn’t stay in Lansing. Not after the way things had changed for me. I counted my money first thing when I woke every morning and last thing before I went to bed. The good news was now I only needed to earn half the money I’d been working toward. No round-trip ticket for me. The minute I had enough money saved to go one-way, I’d be out of there.

Boston, 1940

To celebrate my first night in Boston, Ella prepares a large dinner of baked chicken. Bowls full of side dishes adorn the table: okra, sweet potatoes, corn on the cob, greens, homemade bread. The food is plentiful and tasty. After the meager meals I managed on the bus ride, I delight in eating my fill.

“I don’t want you to look for a job just yet,” Ella says over dinner.

I raise my head in surprise. “You don’t want me to work?”

“Well, I want you to go to school,” she says pointedly. I can see Papa in her face, the way her cheeks drop sternly as she levels a familiar gaze at me.

Education is vital, son. Knowledge gives you power.

I look away. If knowledge is so important, how come Papa didn’t tell me the truth?

“Naw.” School used to be fun, back when I thought something would come of it. But now I figure I’m better off just getting on with my life. “I’ll get a job. Help pay my way.”

“Eventually,” she answers. “But first I want you to take some time to experience the city.”

I step out onto the front porch, looking left, looking right. Which way to go first?

I want to go everywhere. Walking around Sugar Hill, I do my best to keep hold of the street names, but it’s easier just to remember the landmarks and the turns. I keep the route real smooth in my head. But I don’t want to know just this neighborhood. I want to go everywhere. Yesterday I might have said I’ve had enough of buses for a while, but it’s a brand-new day, and riding the city bus seems more exciting. I buy a handful of tokens and jump on board.

In downtown Boston, the buildings are tall and stately. A hundred years old or more. With plaques drilled into them, from the days of the American Revolution, the one promising freedom and the right to pursue happiness. No one mentioned that the pursuit would be so long.

Back near Ella’s house, I get off the bus and just walk. Sugar Hill itself is something of a mixed neighborhood. Black folks and white folks, walking together. Together as in among one another. And together as in holding hands. I see some couples made up of one black, one white. It’s amazing to me. In Lansing things were very separate. Here people of different races pass on the sidewalk without seeming to even notice each other.

Down the Hill, though, I discover the most exciting things I’ve seen in Boston so far. Walking down from Sugar Hill into the next neighborhood is like getting to the depths of something. The heart. It’s a beating pulse of a place, full of music and laughter and energy. Most buildings aren’t so shiny, clean, and new. They’re solid and worn and real. Some blocks are run-down; others are really nice. Every door looks weathered but approachable. Places you can get into, things you can actually touch.

People lounge around on their front porches, laughing and talking. Some might think they’re no good, but to me they seem like the sort of people you want to spend an afternoon with, just shooting the breeze. A lot of the young fellows, not too much older than me, wear the most amazing billowing suits. They walk with a sort of swagger, swinging their arms and looking left to right with their hats pulled low.

They use long lines of words I’ve never heard before. Everything is “cool,” and the guys look “hip,” which is how they score “chicks” and take them out dancing. Afterward they might go back to someone’s “pad” and “pull some tones” off a record or the radio. You dig?

Roxbury, the neighborhood is called. It’s not the mixed place that the Hill is. Nearly all of the faces you see down here are Negro. And it isn’t a buttoned-up polite sort of place like the Hill, either. It’s tough and energetic and makes my senses come alive. Jazz strains leak from behind the doors of the hippest clubs. Any given block might steam with the scent of chicken and rice or sausage and fries or a simmering vat of chowder. The people move fast, and they’re all so different, covering every imaginable size, shape, and shade, with skin light as mine to darker than even Papa was. And style. I’ve never seen such swinging threads. Shop doors are propped wide so it’s easy to see in. The sort of place where everything’s all out in the open.

It’s not so hard — being black — when I’m surrounded by so many others, and everyone seems to be getting along just fine, from the rich-looking dark men in pressed suits to the vagrants in the alleys. Mothers lugging babies and groups of pretty girls in short, smooth dresses with purses to match. Schoolboys with satchels and newsboys on bikes. Milkmen and mail carriers and shopkeepers and barmaids. All Negro.

No such thing as “just a nigger” in Roxbury. I love it.

Boston, 1940

Ella frowns with concern over my repeated explorations into Roxbury. “You should stay on the Hill,” she tells me. She reminds me about a place nearby, called Townsend’s, a drugstore and soda fountain, where I can get friendly with teenagers my age.

“You should go there,” Ella insists. “It’s where everyone your age spends time.”

To please her, I go on over to Townsend’s Drug Store. Loud, snazzy pop music plays on the radio. I recognize a few tunes I like by Erskine Hawkins. Other songs remind me of the music my classmates at Mason used to play, but a lot of it feels too high and light to me now, after hearing the deep soulful tunes that guys play on the streets down in Roxbury.

Ella’s right: the place is full of people my own age. Boys and girls in dark and light hues, dressed in skirts and slacks, looking like they’ve just come out of school. Some carry books or satchels or have stacks of textbooks on the table beside them. They look and sound like Mason students. I guess I know these people, and I could fit in if I wanted to, but I find myself looking out the window.

They order French fries and milk shakes, banana splits and grilled burgers and sandwiches. The air’s full of laughter and the general hum of people chatting over one another, trying to get a word in edgewise.

With the dollar Ella gave me, I order a raspberry soda and fries. I perch on a red swivel stool at the counter, turning from time to time to see what’s going on around the room. The waiter stands inside the U-shaped counter, going from side to side taking orders, gliding to the register to ring people up. The fry guys manning the grill in the back move swiftly, every other second shouting, “Order up.” A waitress in a black-and-red-striped dress with a red smock takes the table orders. The place is hopping.

I keep to myself for the little while it takes for my food to come. I know it’s important to Ella that I try things out here, but there’s no one I especially want to talk to in this place. Even though everyone appears to be with friends, it seems like at the same time everyone’s putting on airs. Some of the tables are all white, and some are all black, but plenty are mixed. I’ve been in groups like that, with my so-called friends from Mason. I know that you can be black and get all up with white folks, feeling like you’re fitting in, trying to ignore the fact that when you step outside, you’re still a Negro. Still low. It makes me a little sick. Or maybe it’s just the sweetness of the soda — which I suck down quickly. Delicious. Munch my way through those fries pretty quickly, too. Then I make my way down the Hill.

Down to where people stay real. Down to where the guys on the corner laugh low and shout dirty jokes to one another, cracking up and slapping skin as they try to top each other. Down to where music drifts out the doors of bars, and people are looser and altogether more free.

Down the Hill is where I belong. The sights, the smells, the rhythm of the folks, the feeling in the air. I circle the blocks again and again, trying to take it all in. Yeah. Roxbury’s where the action is. And I’m here to stay.

Back in Lansing, I would have been talking to everyone I passed. Everyone says hello. Here you can just move. Still, there’s no reason not to make Roxbury my own. This place is gonna be home. The blood in my veins was meant to keep pulse with the rhythm of these streets. My heart beats faster, and my eyes move quickly from one face to the next.

There’s a cluster of young guys gathered around the hood of a car, down in front of the barbershop. They’re often there. I’ve passed them a couple of times now. They laugh and hoot and bump against each other while they’re bent over whatever they’re doing. Eight, maybe ten guys. Looks like they’re playing cards.

Circling to the rear of the car, I lean in and peer over the hood. Just to see. Down the long slope of the windshield, I see a heavyset guy pull three cards out of his breast pocket.

“Who’s up for a little Find the Lady?” he says. He’s wearing a fedora with the brim pulled low. He lays out the three cards faceup. Two jacks, one queen. “Money down. Place your bets.”

“All right,” says the guy to his right. He moves a toothpick between his teeth. “Fat Frankie’s swapping. Who’s up and who’s in?”

“Me,” says a tall, thin cat about my size. He throws a dollar on the hood.

Fat Frankie flips the three cards over and starts shuffling them over one another. He picks up the far right card with his right hand, the center card with his left. Drops the right card in the center, grabs the left card with the same hand. Drops the center card in the left slot and so on in a kind of rhythmic pattern that gets faster and faster until he finally stops. “Where’s the lady?” he says to the cat who bet. It seems that the game is about keeping track of the queen. But the guy loses his dollar.

Another guy goes. He loses. Fat Frankie’s shuffling gets faster and faster.

Another guy goes. Another dollar down. But I’ve been right about where the queen is every time.

I can do better than these clowns. I reach into my pocket for a dollar. A hand lands on my wrist. “No, my man. Don’t fall for that stick.”

“What?”

The hand and the voice belong to a short, dark cat with a long black briefcase. “It’s a hustle.”

“A what?”

“A game you can’t win.”

I grin. “Maybe
you
can’t. I’ve been right every time.”

He smiles back. Shrugs. “Minute you lay your money down, it’s gone. I guarantee you.”

“What’s it to you?”

Now he sort of frowns, sticking his lips out. “Eh. Just a bit of friendly advice.”

Fat Frankie’s been watching. He groans. “In or out, kid?” He starts the shuffle. “Where’s the queen? Find the lady and double your money.”

“In.” I slap my dollar onto the windshield. It slides down to the wipers.

“This kid’s green as a thistle,” the new guy says. “Have some shame.”

“Shorty, lay off,” Frankie says. “He’s here to play. Maybe he’s got what it takes. You got what it takes, kid?”

“Oh, yeah,” I answer, refusing to tear my eyes from the cards.
I’ve got her, I’ve got her, I’ve got her
. . . Fat Frankie suddenly stops sorting. The three cards stand like little sentinels, waiting.

I point to the one on the left. Frankie flips the card and the crowd cheers, “Ohhhh!” I’m looking at the smug, tiny face of the queen.

“See?” I gloat to the guy they call Shorty.

Shorty moves his briefcase to the other hand. Despite the case, he doesn’t really look like a businessman. He’s wearing tan slacks and a shirt halfway unbuttoned so you can see his underclothes. His flat newsboy hat tapers in the front, and underneath it his hair is straight and combed back toward his collar, like a white man’s. Plenty of cats in Roxbury have that look. I don’t know how they do it.

“Beginner’s luck,” Shorty mumbles. “Y’all take care now.” And he ambles off.

Fat Frankie peels a dollar off his impressive cash roll and tucks it in under the windshield wiper alongside mine. “Double down?” he asks me.

“I’m in.” I match my winnings with two more dollars down. I’m betting four.

“That’s my man. Give him some room!” The crowd shifts, putting me at the center of it. My toes are against the tire now; I’m leaning my palms on the side of the hood, watching close. The metal is sun-warm, and the guys around me jostle and hoot. My heart skips forward, elated by the rush. Frankie’s hands move fleetly, but I’ve got a good eye.