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There’s a voice on the radio, in the middle of giving a special report. All the boys from the kitchen and the servers are clustered around, listening.

“. . . surprise aerial attack . . . uncertain at this hour how many lives were lost. . . .”

My heart speeds up. “What happened?” I ask.

“Shh . . .” They hush me, patting the air with their hands.

“. . . brave servicemen and sailors fought off the attack to the best of their ability. In the hours and days to come, we’ll learn exactly how much damage to our Pacific fleet. . . .”

Whatever the news, it sounds bad.

One of the cooks turns to me. “Japanese planes bombed the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii.”

“Bombed?” I echo.

He makes a sweeping motion with his hands. “Took the whole place out.”

“We’re under attack,” one of the waiters says. He touches his forehead, chest, and shoulders in the pattern of a cross. “God help us all.”

I look at him. Can’t help but think it:
God checked out a long time ago.

After my shift, I come home and find Shorty, half-out-of-his-mind drunk and wailing on his sax. The bottle on the table is the bourbon we like. Not the cheap one — the one we get when things are serious.

I want to ask Shorty,
What does it mean?
But I’m pretty sure I know.

“I guess you heard?” I say.

“We’re going to war,” he answers. “Drink up, homeboy. It’s a whole new world tomorrow.”

But it turns out, tomorrow and the next day aren’t all that different from the days that went before. For us, anyway.

The newspaper is splashed with headlines about the surprise attack and the announcement that President Roosevelt has asked Congress to declare war on Japan. The government puts out calls for men to enlist in the service. All over Roxbury, posters go up.

Old-timers on the street have things to say about it. Memories of the Great War, back before I was born. Not all of them served, but they can remember, and they love nothing better than to sit on the stoops and spout off about the old days. The few veterans among them worked as cooks or janitors or ship hands. The black infantry recruits, they inform me, tended not to survive. Black units were always the first ones sent to the front in battle, to draw enemy fire and protect the white soldiers coming up behind them. Been that way since the Civil War, the old-timers crow. So what else is new for the Negro?

Next come the patriotic ads on the radio, talking about how all Americans must fight for good old Uncle Sam. The old-timers grumble, but I like those ads and the posters. The soldiers look noble and brave, willing to go out in the world and fight. With their broad, muscled bodies and determined expressions, it’s clear that they are men, and everyone treats them that way. It must be nice.

“You thinking about joining the service?” I ask Shorty.

Shorty laughs outright. “They’re not talking to us.”

“They’re talking to everybody.”

“They think they are.” Shorty looks at me sideways. “Shoot. When am I gonna be done schooling you, homeboy?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Yeah,” Shorty says, half to himself. “I’ve been schooling you on the ways of the street. Negro ways. We ain’t touched the white world yet.”

I know the white world just fine. The white world killed my father. The white world calls Mom crazy. The white world tore us limb from limb and came back to feast on the chitterlings.

“They always take,” I say, to show I know something.

Shorty laughs. “That is so, Red.” Then he launches into a speech about the war ads, how they’re trying to talk black folks into going to fight for the so-called freedom we don’t even have on our own shores.

“Black folks died at Pearl Harbor,” he goes on. “Bootblacks and janitors and cooks in the kitchen. But we ain’t allowed to serve outright, alongside whitey. They just keep us around to build everything and then to clean up after him. Ain’t that always the way?”

“I heard they were taking black soldiers,” I say.

“Yeah, they call it soldiering,” Shorty insists. “But then they arm you with a whisk, send you to beat the crap out of some eggs. Or they put you on the front lines as their shield. Don’t believe what they tell you.” He slugs my arm. “You got nothing to worry about, anyway. You’re too young to go to war.”

“Only for now,” I say. I certainly feel old enough. I’ll be seventeen soon. Eighteen isn’t so far off.

“If either of our numbers come up, we’ll find a way out,” Shorty says. He sounds pretty confident, and he hasn’t led me wrong yet.

I probably shouldn’t be worried about the draft anyway. It’s over a year away, and what would the army want with a conk-headed hustler like me in the first place? I’m not worth much to anyone, least of all to Uncle Sam.

Boston, spring 1942

Sophia picks me up from the Parker House after my shift. It’s nearing midnight. “Let’s go somewhere around here,” I say. We never hang out downtown, and maybe it’s a good night for a change of scenery. I know Sophia loves being downtown, because this is where she comes on the nights when she’s not with me. No reason I can’t come with her. Maybe I’ll end up seeing more of her in the long run.

But Sophia looks at me askance. “Really?”

I slide across the bench seat and kiss her. “There’s a place a few blocks away I heard the busboys talking about. Sounds happening.”

“Have you been smoking?” she says. She pets my chest, and I think we could have our date right here and it’d be all right.

I stroke her back. “Just a little.”

“We should go to Roxbury,” she says. “The usual places.”

“No, baby,” I whisper. “Let’s do something special.” We’re at war, after all. We could get bombed. I could get drafted someday, and I need her to know she’s the only thing that matters to me. The only thing I’ll fight for.

“Maybe a walk,” she says quietly. “Down by the water. I know a place.”

“Lead the way.”

It’s newly spring, so strolling along the harbor seems like a good idea, but the night air soon catches up with us. My lips grow cold. I put my arm around Sophia and hold her against me to keep her warm, but she seems fine. She’s looking around at everything over and over. Enjoying the view, I suppose.

“I think that’s enough,” she says. “Let’s go.”

“Are you cold? We should go inside,” I tell her. “Let’s find a place.”

She takes my hand. “In Roxbury.”

“Let’s stay downtown,” I insist. I’m hungry for something new and different. Exciting. “You love it downtown. I’ve heard you say it.” I lean in and catch her lips with mine. They’re surprisingly warm. But she jerks away.

“Don’t kiss me,” she whispers. “Not here.”

Not here.
In the echo of it, I hear everything she’s said tonight. I hear the hesitation. She’s not having a good time. She’s afraid.

“Hey!” The cry comes from over my shoulder. “Let go of her!”

I spin around. Three beefy white guys are running along the harbor toward us. Two tall, one shorter. All big enough to do some damage. My heart pounds.

Instinctively I back away. From them and from her.

Sophia steps in front of me. “No. It’s OK,” she cries, holding up her hands.

The three men stop, circling us. They look like they might have been working on a boat all day and just stopped off to grab some brews. Strong guys.

“Are you with this nigger?” the shorter one asks.

“Yes,” she says, tossing her hair to the side. “It’s OK. We’re just friends.” It hits me all at once, the curse of “nigger” and the blessing of being claimed by Sophia.

“Looked awfully
friendly
just now,” one of the tall ones says. He’s not quite my height, but he’s over six feet.

“I don’t know what you think you saw,” Sophia says. I know that voice, flirtatious and coy. The one she uses to get men to do what she wants. “But my
friend
is just walking me home.”

One of the men grabs her anyway. Two fists around her biceps. Sophia screams. “You should know what happens to bitches who keep company with niggers.”

I lurch forward to save her. I don’t see the hand coming. Story of my life. The side of my face suddenly burns, and I see bright light. I stumble against the railing. I try to rise, to fight back, but the next thing I feel is Sophia’s hands on my chest. “Are you OK?” she cries. “Did they hurt you?”

“Did they hurt
you
?” I ask, blinking up at her.

Behind her the three guys are walking off, talking and laughing. As if nothing happened.

“No. It could have been so much worse,” she says. Her face is tear streaked, so I reach up to wipe it clean. Her cheeks are a sticky mess, actually. It’s more than tears. They’ve spit on her.

“Shit,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

She kneels on the concrete and fusses in her purse, extracting some tissues. “It’s my fault,” she says. “You didn’t know. I did.”

She thinks I don’t know some people don’t like a black man with a white woman? “I’m not stupid,” I snap.

Sophia sighs. “I mean, you think all of Boston is like Roxbury,” she says. “Well, it’s not.”

I get up and pull her to her feet. Papa used to say,
When you make them angry, that’s when you know you’ve got to keep on.
I put my arm around her as we walk back toward the car, but she shrugs me off. “You need ice on your face,” she says. “It’ll help with the pain.”

“Yeah,” I say.
Ice. That’s what I need.

My cheek stings, and the ache of it vibrates beyond the handprint. A thin layer of pain across every inch of my body, as if I can feel the very color of my skin.

I close my eyes and see images of things, clear as day, much clearer than a dream. All kinds of memories.

There are so many rules for how to be a black person, things you cannot say and places you cannot go. In Lansing there was a signpost on every road leading in from the outskirts of town:
NO NEGROES AFTER DARK
. I’ve never seen such a sign in Boston. Maybe here you’re just supposed to know.

I guess I do know. It’s just that all the mixing of people in Roxbury and on the Hill made me forget. Made me think the rules didn’t apply in Boston. Or that I was above them.

Papa never liked those rules, either. Went out of his way to prove them wrong. I remember when I was really small, we used to live in a different house, one that was inside the city limits, even though blacks were not allowed. I don’t remember much else about the house, but I remember the night it caught fire.

Smoke everywhere. In the air, by the door, at the windows — in our very bed, it seemed. Hot and dark and choking. Someone’s hands on me, dragging me up, then down. Stumbling over floorboards and furniture. Scooped up into strong arms. The first breath of the cool, fresh night.

We watched the house burn from the back of the yard. Papa said members from the Black Legion — a Ku Klux Klan splinter group — came in the night, stood right outside our windows, and set the place on fire. They were angry at us for living on prime land that was supposed to be reserved for whites. But Papa had bought it fair and square.

The house burned down to the ground.

We survived. Papa got us out: all of us kids and Mom. Papa knew how to fix things, even the really bad things. But once he was gone, it seemed like nothing could ever be made right.

Who’s going to protect me now? I already know; the answer is no one.

Through the night I keep my eyes open, but it doesn’t help. The wood walls creak in ways they never did before. The shadows on the wall now have fingers, like ghosts.

I try not to think about missing him. Try not to wonder what he’d think of me now, a high-school dropout with a conk on my head and a white girl in my heart. What would he think of me for trying to blend into a place I don’t belong? Would he say I was building my house where I wanted, the law for Negroes be damned? Isn’t this what he wanted — for me to turn my back on injustice by flouting the laws created for us blacks, no matter what might happen?

Up, up, you mighty race.

Why didn’t he tell me the truth back then? There’s always someone trying to bring us down.

Boston to Harlem, summer 1942

One good thing about the war, at least for all of us down in Roxbury, was that a whole bunch of white guys decided to hurry up and enlist, which meant that they all left jobs open, and some of those slots started going to us Negroes. Jobs we probably wouldn’t have had a shot at before. Compared to how it was growing up, when jobs were like unicorns, now it seems like opportunity’s always knocking.

I land a new job, working on passenger trains. It’s still a dishwashing slave, but it pays better, and I’m always moving. I work the Yankee Clipper route, from Boston to New York.

There was a time when I wouldn’t have thought I’d ever want to leave Roxbury, for even a little while. But things are different now.

“Why don’t we cool it for a while?” Sophia tells me. She says she’s not upset about what happened downtown, but I feel her pulling away from me anyway. I dial her up and she’ll talk to me, but when it comes to going out, it’s all, “Not tonight, Red.” We’re down to maybe once a week now. Dancing at the Roseland. Necking in the car.