Their faces were blank and relieved as they left. Despite my warning, their noise level began slowly but rose to a tidal wave as soon as they hit the hallway Young Mr. Bryson was one of the last to leave. He glanced toward me as he left the room, and a fleeting expression—anger? kinship? appraisal?—crossed his face. He looked as though he wanted to ask me another question but then decided not to linger. I finished organizing my papers with a peculiar feeling of unease. His eyes seemed to be on me long after he had left the room.

There Goes the Neighborhood

THE DAY THAT Kofi Bryson got the letter admitting him to Mt. Herndon, their mother met him and his brother, Rashid, after school, something she rarely did—she usually trusted Kofi to walk Rashid safely home. As long as either boy could remember, they had been told they were in this world to do their best and to protect each other. She stood in the middle of the sidewalk, clutching the heavy, cream-colored envelope to her chest. When she spotted the boys, she began waving it wildly, like a banner. They ran to her quickly. “Dag, Ma, what is it?” said Kofi, already developing a thirteen-year-old’s fatigue with his parents. “You out here waving that thing around like a crazy woman.”

“It’s your letter from Mt. Herndon. I couldn’t stand waiting. It’s thick. Feels like it got some other papers in it. That’s good, isn’t it?” Her words came out in a rush.

Kofi nodded slowly a young man in a dream. Rashid could still remember his dark fingers sliding under the edge of the envelope, all three of them shifting from foot to foot, then Kofi reading the first sentence, “We are pleased to inform you of your acceptance …”

His voice trailed off as their mother’s rose in a shout: “Kofi, Kofi, I knew you could do it!”

Kofi stood stock still, reading the page over and over, his hands tightening on the edges of the paper until it began to wrinkle. “They gave me money, too,” he said after a long time. He didn’t seem to know what to do after saying this.

“Give your brother a hug,” Rashid was instructed. “He just got into one of the best schools in the country. He’s on his way.”

Rashid didn’t really need the instruction. He might have been only eleven then, but he knew how important this was. It was his victory, too. Other kids leaving the school looked at them standing together, their mother weeping joyously, and walked warily around them. Their mother kept her arms around both of them the whole way home, humming some old song and pausing to kiss the tops of both of their heads at corners, the kind of affection she never displayed. The boys were too excited to be embarrassed.