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“I think you do, and I’m sorry you do. Anyway, if he didn’t get what he wanted, I wasn’t going to have a job there anymore.”

Never in my life, child or man, have I been hotheaded. I think I have more of my mother’s genes than my father’s, probably because he was too incomplete a person to have enough to give. But that night in my room, I got very angry, very fast, and I said, “I hate Harmon. If I was bigger, I’d go hurt him.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“I darn sure would.”

“Hush yourself, sweetie.”

“I’d shoot him dead.”

“Don’t say such a thing.”

“I’d cut his damn throat and shoot him dead.”

She came to me and stood looking down, and I figured she must be deciding on my punishment for talking such trash. The Bledsoes didn’t tolerate street talk or jive talk, or trash talk. Grandpa Teddy often said, “In the beginning was the word. Before all else, the word. So we speak as if words matter, because they do.” Anyway, my mom stood there, frowning down at me, but then her expression changed and all the hard edges sort of melted from her face. She dropped to her knees and put her arms around me and held me tight.

I felt awkward and embarrassed that I had been talking tough when we both knew that if skinny little me went gunning for Harmon Jessup, he’d blow me off my feet just by laughing in my face. I felt embarrassed for her, too, because she didn’t have anyone better than me to watch over her.

She looked me in the eye and said, “What would the sisters think of all this talk about cutting throats and shooting?”

Because Grandma worked in Monsignor McCarthy’s office, I was fortunate to be able to attend Saint Scholastica School for a third the usual tuition, and the nuns who ran it were tough ladies. If anyone could teach Harmon a lesson he’d never forget, it was Sister Agnes or Sister Catherine.

I said, “You won’t tell them, will you?”

“Well, I really should. And I should tell your grandpa.”

Grandpa’s father had been a barber, and Grandpa’s mother had been a beautician, and they had run their house according to a long set of rules. When their children occasionally decided that those rules were really nothing more than suggestions, my great-grandfather demonstrated a second use for the strap of leather that he used to strop his straight razors. Grandpa Teddy didn’t resort to corporal punishment, as his father did, but his look of extreme disappointment stung bad enough.

“I won’t tell them,” my mother said, “because you’re such a good kid. You’ve built up a lot of credit at the First Bank of Mom.”

After she kissed my forehead and got up, we went into her room to continue packing. The apartment came furnished, and it included a bedroom vanity with a three-part mirror. She trusted me to take everything out of the many little drawers and put all of it in this small square carrier that she called a train case, while she packed her clothes in two large suitcases and three shopping bags.

She wasn’t finished explaining why we had to move. I realized many years later that she always felt she had to justify herself to me. She never did need to do that, because I always knew her heart, how good it was, and I loved her so much that sometimes it hurt when I’d lie awake at night worrying about her.

Anyway, she said, “Honey, don’t you ever get to thinking that one kind of people is better than another kind. Harmon Jessup is rich compared to me, but he’s poor compared to William Murkett.”

In addition to owning the glitzy nightclub where she’d been offered five nights a week, Murkett had several other enterprises.

“Harmon is black,” she continued, “Murkett is white. Harmon had nearly no school. Murkett went to some upper-crust university. Harmon is a dirty old tomcat and proud of it. Murkett, he’s married with kids of his own and he’s got a good reputation. But under all those differences, there’s no difference. They’re the same. Each of them is just half a man. Don’t you ever be just half a man, Jonah.”

“No, ma’am. I won’t be.”

“You be true to people.”

“I will.”

“You’ll be tempted.”

“I won’t.”

“You will. Everyone is.”

“You aren’t,” I said.

“I was. I am.”

She finished packing, and I said, “I guess then you don’t have a job, that’s why we’re going to Grandpa’s.”