Why don’t I head for her place where she’s preparing a feast for me? The candles are waiting on the table, shedding thick white tears. She invited me over for some delicious venison. She’d never done that before. Unable to conceal my joy, I told her, “I have some boring stuff to do this afternoon, but I won’t be late for deer!” And though I checked my watch time and again as I aimlessly wandered the streets, before I knew it I’d headed in the opposite direction from her house and found myself here in Kollwitz Strasse. I can’t remember why I came here.

Streams of people seem to be pouring out of the pavement cracks at the south end of Kollwitz Strasse. All have children in tow, both men and women. Though some are couples, most don’t have a partner with them, so one parent must be shopping while the other is busy elsewhere. A whole crowd of parents and children is swallowed up into the open doors to a large organic food store. I follow them in and see that most are gathered around the bakery counter near the entrance. Some are picking out bread while others drink coffee or tea, and still others eye the cakes lined up in the glass case.

Just then, I felt someone touch my hand from behind. I turned around to see the ghost-child. Looking up at me, he took me by the hand and pulled me toward the back of the shop. Being a ghost, his hand wasn’t exactly warm, but not so cold that I wanted to let go.

“There’s something you should buy for me,” the ghost announced confidently, as if this were well within his rights.

“You want me to buy you something even though you’re dead?” I thought of asking as a joke but then, considering how cruel “even though you’re dead” would sound to someone who really was dead, decided not to. After all, this child might have been so poor no one had ever bought him anything while he was alive, which might be why he’d come back as a ghost.

“What do you want?”

“Negro’s kisses.”

That had definitely been the name of a cheap sweet a long time ago, but the name had been changed because “Negro” was now a racist word. Egg whites whipped into a cream ball about the size of a child’s fist, covered with a thin layer of chocolate. Unable to remember the new name, I said, “Negro is a word you use when you’re looking down on someone with black skin, so why don’t we just stop using it, okay?” It was no use telling this sort of thing to a dead boy, but with a child standing in front of me, I always want to explain about words.

“Why would you want somebody you look down on to kiss you?” he asked—quite the comeback.

Without thinking, almost automatically I answered, “Lots of people who look down on women want kisses from them, don’t they?” This bit of knowledge would do him no good at all. “Here they are—chocolate kisses.” I carefully pronounced the new name. On the back of the box it said that the chocolate was from Bolivia, grown on a farm where the laborers were never forced to work more than thirty-five hours a week but were still paid enough to support a family of eight, and that the eggs were from free-range chickens who hadn’t ingested any antibiotics or chemically enhanced grain. But seeing how the phrase “family of eight” on the back echoed the “box of eight” on the front, I wondered if racism wasn’t peeping out like a bad joke from somewhere I never would have expected to find it.