His pale mother had faded blue eyes, and wore white dresses which covered her neck and arms, and on which the sewing machine, as if in fear the material would undulate, swell, or fly off like a parachute, had criss-crossed a thousand stitches, tight and overlapping, controlling every inch in a stifling design called "shirring."

The father believed in unremitting work, and no idleness or dreaming. He clocked the universe, constantly pulling out his watch like a judge at a running match. His mother was beset with fear. Every pleasure was dangerous. Swimming led to drowning, fireworks could blow your finger off, hunting fireflies could anger a rattlesnake, associating with native children would turn you into a "savage."

Larry ran to the Negro huts for warmth of voices, warmth of gestures, and warmth of food. He liked the half-nakedness, the soft laughter. Home here seemed like a nest, with joyous flesh proximity. Caresses were lavish. There was a hum of content, a hiss of doves. Violence came and went like tropical storms, leaving no traces. (At home a quarrel led to weeks of silence and resentment.) It was Larry's first closeness to human beings. He threw off his too tight clothes. The Negro mother was his nurse. She smiled upon his fairness. Her flowered cotton dress smelled of spices, and she moved as easily as cotton tree seeds. When she was happy her body undulated with laughter. Their laundry, swollen like sail boats, was more vivid than a rainbow.

Yet she betrayed him.

He had played with the naked dark children. After swimming in all the forbidden lagoons and rivers, they had openly admired each other, half mocking, half tender. In his own home Larry had wanted to repeat these games with his younger brother. But it was not a swimming adventure as it was out in the country, among plants and grass and reeds. It was in the bathroom. Larry thought all discoveries of bodies could be made as merrily as by the riverside. His younger brother was so delicate, his hair so fragile, his skin like a girl's. With delight they contrasted skin tones, breadth of chest, length of legs, strength of legs. But this scientific erotic exploration was watched by the nurse through the transom window, and the same thing she laughed at in nature, she now reported like a policeman on the frontier of some forbidden land.