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PARTISAN REVIEW
boy, he hadn't ever turned hard or evil or disrespectful, the way kids
can, so quick, so quick, especially in Harlem. I didn't want to believe
that I'd ever see my brother going down, coming to nothing,
all
that
light in his face gone out, in the condition I'd already seen so many
others. Yet it had happened and here I was, talking .about algebra to
a lot of boys who might, every one of them for all I knew, be popping
off needles every time they went to the head. Maybe it did more for
them than algebra could.
I was sure that the first time Sonny had ever had horse, he
couldn't have been much older than these boys were now. These boys,
now, were living as we'd been living then, they were growing up with
a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling of
their actual possibilities. They were filled with rage. All they really
knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which was now
closing in on them, and the darkness of the movies, which had blinded
them to that other darkness, and in which they now, vindictively,
dreamed, at once more together than they were at any other time,
and more alone.
When the last bell rang, the last class ended, I let out my breath.
It seemed I'd been holding it for .all that time. My clothes were wet
-I may have looked as though I'd been sitting in a steam bath, all
dressed up, all afternoon. I sat alone in the classroom a long time.
I listened to the boys outside, downstairs, shouting and cursing and
laughing. Their laughter struck me for perhaps the first time. It was
not the joyous laughter which- God knows why-one associates with
children. It was mocking and insular, its intent was to denigrate. It
was disenchanted, and in this, also, lay the authority of their curses.
Perhaps I was listening to them because I was thinking about my
brother and in them I heard my brother. And myself.
One boy was whistling a tune, at once very complicated and very
simple, it seemed to be pouring out of
him
as though he were a bird,
and it sounded very cool and moving through all that harsh, bright
air, only just holding its own through all those other sounds.
I stood up and walked over to the window and looked down into
the courtyard. It was the beginning of the spring and the sap was
rising in the boys. A teacher passed through them every now and
again, quickly, as though he or she couldn't wait to get out of that
courtyard, to get those boys out of their sight and off their minds. I
