Momma sometimes cried in her sleep and she was always wiping disinfectant onto the seat of the toilet they shared with the Hendersons and the Catletts. Sometimes at night after he said his prayers he would whisper her name over and over in the dark. Roe-Ellen Robinson . . . Roe-Ellen Robinson . . .

When he was little and she heard him whispering her name she would let him come into bed with her. She would put her arms around him and hug and squeeze till he shouted, and she would scratch his back and sing him songs—

Oh, the river is deep and wide, hallelujah!

Milk and honey on the other side . . .

—and tell him what a good life they would have when they got to the land of milk and honey, and he would lay his head on her big soft breasts and go to sleep happy, happy, happy.

He went to the neighborhood school, an old red-brick building with windows that were broken faster than the city could replace the glass, a concrete play-yard outside and a peculiar miasma inside, composed mostly of the smell of coal-gas and the scent of bodies unaccustomed to private baths and hot water. When he had started the first grade his mother had told him to be sure and learn to read because his father had been a reading man, always with his nose in a book. So Spurgeon learned and grew to like it. When he got into the higher grades, fourth and fifth and sixth, it was harder to read in school because there was generally some kind of disturbance, but by this time he had found his way to the public library and he took books home all the time.

He ran with two kids in particular, Tommy White, who was very black, and Fats McKenna, who was light yellow and very skinny, which was why he was called Fats. At first the thing he liked about them was their names, but after a while they became his friends. They all liked a girl named Fay Hartnett who could sing like Satchmo and lipfart like a funky trumpet. Mostly they just hacked around the neighborhood of West 171st Street, played stickball, praised the Gi’nts and criticized the Yankees and their lousy white teachers. Once in a while they pinched something, two of them keeping a shopkeeper’s attention while the third swiped, usually something to eat. On three Saturday nights they had rolled drunks, Tommy and Spurgeon each holding an arm behind the man’s back while Fats, who thought he looked like Sugar Ray, did the physical part.

They had watched closely the changes occurring in Fay Hartnett’s body, and one night on the roof of Fats’ building she showed them how to do something some older boys had showed her how to do. They bragged about it to the four winds and a couple of nights later she performed the same service for them and a large group of their friends and acquaintances. Two months later she dropped out of school and from time to time they would see her on the street and snigger because her stomach was blowing up as if she had swallowed a basketball and somebody was pumping it full of air. Spurgeon felt neither guilt nor responsibility; the first time he had been second and the second time he had been seventh or eighth—way back in line. And who knew how many other parties there had been, to which he hadn’t been invited. But sometimes he missed hearing her sing like Louie.