where he sold the niggers liquor and ridiculed them for getting
drunk and bragged that he could sell them horseshit and they
would drink it. He had friends who were friends of Nixon and
friends who were friends of the Klan. Now Camden is a ghost
town with black ghosts on those streets where we played our
real childhood games. I had a divine childhood, even with the
woman dying, and father away day and night working, and
death coming suddenly, and my brother and me separated over
and over, orphans in different places for years at a time: I ran
in those streets and played hide-and-seek and Red Rover Red
Rover and jumped rope and played fish and washed my doll’s
hair with the other girls outside on the steps and sat behind
cars near telephone poles and on strange days played witch: it
was divine until I was torn away from it: and I walked down
Catholic streets and black streets without anyone knowing and
I loved Joe and Nat and Michael: then the vultures moved in
when I had gone away, but I heard their plans and I know
what they did: and the wonderful neighbors on the block where
I lived hated blacks: and I said hire the white one at seven
years old: and the vultures picked the bones of the city and left
it plundered. Oh, Nat, where are you? Did you weep or laugh
or understand?
25
Neither weep nor laugh but understand.
Spinoza
*
We were very tiny, in the third grade— how small are seven-
and eight-year-olds? — the little girls from my block. We were
on a big street not too far from the school, one you had to
walk down. It was a rich street, completely different from ours.
There was no brick. There were big windows in the fronts of
the houses and each one had a different front, some rounded
or curved. There were fences around the few very nice steps up
to the door, ornamentation on the outside, around the
windows or on the facade, wide sidewalks, huge trees lining
the street so it was always shady even in the early afternoon
when we went home from school. We were small and happy,
carrying our books home, chattering away. A bunch of black
girls approached us, surrounded us. They were twice as tall as
we were, real big, from junior high school. They surrounded
us and began teasing and calling us names. They demanded
Diane’s scarf. We were silent, very afraid. She was beginning
to give them the scarf when I said no, don’t. There was one
minute of stunned silence, then raucous laughter: wha you say
girl? Don’t, don’t give it to them. Now why not girl we gonna
take it anyway. Because stealing is wrong, I said sincerely. They
surrounded me and began beating me, punching me, kicking
