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while behind him a group of black people, mostly men, shouted some slogan. The younger men had bushy afros and were punching their fists overhead. The announcer said a black kid suspected of snatching a purse had been shot to death by a white policeman. A shaky scene of paramedics serving the body into an ambulance was followed by the pastor of the First African Primitive Baptist Church calling for a march through the city.
    Peter crawled over and switched channels to
Green Acres.
Arnold the pig grunted at Mr. Ziffel. The television laughed.
    Our front door opened, my mother arriving from the daycare center. “Peter, honey,” she said, “lock up Mama’s bike. She’s got to fix your daddy’s supper.” Her keys hung in the lock, dangling a huge chain of beaded tassels which didn’t prevent her from constantly losing them. She was the only mother I’d heard of who rode a bicycle.
    From the kitchen, metal rang on metal, the familiar illusion that Mama was angry. If she was really angry, though, pots would be clanging off the walls. She had a demonic temper. She was a bad cook too. Most of her household attention went to the phone and the bathroom mirror.
    Peter tramped into the kitchen to adore my mother and to set the table. Gretchen rocked downstairs with a prolonged clicking of toenails and stationed herself under the table. The phone rang—the illegal phone Daddy had wired into the kitchen— and Mama answered with a hello so sugary it sounded like a cartoon character. She began talking, laughing about a Statistics test. I relaxed, figuring she’d tie up the phone now with one of her admirers from school.
    They visited on weekends. Mama would drop
American Pie
on the stereo and burn a cone of incense and they’d sit around. Professors’ daughters who smelled like marijuana. A young man with girl’s eyes and a piercing laugh. Men who got serious with Daddy about politics. A woman who drove a motorcycle. They’d sip martinis and grasshoppers and fog the room with cigarettes.
    Mama passed the doorway with her ear pressed to the receiver, her shoulder raised to hold it, a cabbage in one hand and an onion in the other. I hated onions as much as it’s possible to hate a vegetable.
    Shortly, the Volkswagen putt-putted out front and my dad arrived. The mailbox creaked open as he checked to see if we’d missed something, then he creaked it shut to keep lizards and roaches out. His shoes whisked the mat. The screen door groaned open, keys jingled, Gretchen shot out from under the table barking for Daddy, for supper, jumping against the door, rattling it, tags clinking, and the lock snapped around and the door swung in.
    “Gretchen! Get down! Here now.” He pointed his toe to keep the dog off his clothes. His jacket was folded over his arm.
    Daddy brought the stink of dead chickens inside. He was an accountant for a poultry distributor and had to tally thousands of dead birds each day.
    “Howdy,” he said, and he flipped on the lamp so the TV wouldn’t ruin our eyes. He went to the kitchen, kissed my mother’s cheek.
    “Hello, lamb,” she said, turning, winding herself in the phone cord, then laughing into the mouthpiece, “Oh no, not you! Bob just walked in. Mmm hmm.” A fork clicked on a pot. The refrigerator peeled open, sucked shut, and a beer can cracked.
    Daddy stepped into the doorway. “Everybody do okay in school today?” He cranked his tie loose and sipped some Old Milwaukee. “What’d you learn today, Peter?”
    “About mammals,” Peter said from behind him, near Mama.
    “Great. John?”
    John smiled painfully and looked around for clues. “Uhh …”
    “Did you work on your reading?”
    “Yeah. We read
Cat in the Hat
and stuff.”
    “Fantastic.” Daddy sipped more beer. “What about you, Francis? Or are you too grown up now to learn anything?”
    He was making me out to be a teenager again. “We drew a bulletin board all day. I didn’t learn anything,” I said obligingly.
    My mother