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mother.”
    He nodded, looking away until he gained control, then he spoke in the tone that Noni came to think of as his Philadelphia voice, the voice of the alien place called “the Street,” the place that excluded her. “Well, my mama always said, ‘You fight Whitey, he’ll take you out. Jail you, shoot you, bomb you, drug you.’ That's how they got her.”
    Noni wanted to protest that all whites wouldn’t do those things, but she thought she might offend him. Instead she asked, “Don’t they think your mother’ll get better?”
    He shrugged again. “¿Qué se?” Then he shook himself, literally shook himself free of memory, and smiled ironically, holding out the candy. “Well, I’m not here empty-handed.”
    She took the tissue-wrapped bag. “Thank you.”
    For a while they both looked at the porch floor. He noticed that she wore boots and it occurred to him that maybe they added to her height. High white boots with white tights on her thin legs and a lime green miniskirt as short as summer shorts, and over it a bulky red sweater that had Christmas trees knitted across the front. To his surprise, she had cut her blonde hair short, like the girl in Rosemary's Baby , and she was wearing makeup, at least black eyeliner and black mascara.
    Finally, with a trace of his old flamboyance, he pointed at her head. “What happened to your hair? Get caught in a lawn mower?”
    She looked at him for a minute, and then suddenly relaxing, grinned back. “What happened to yours?” She felt happythat he’d challenged her in that aggravating manner. “Your hair's as big as…as…a beach ball.”
    He twisted the psychedelic peace symbol pinned on his headband. “A beachball? You think Philly's on the beach? You think I even know what a beachball is?”
    â€œIt's a big round rubber ball as big as your hair.”
    â€œYou ever see a black beach ball?” He crossed his arms and grinned at her with that irrepressible ebullience. “You ever hear a beachball say, ‘Shout it loud, I’m black and I’m proud!’? You ever hear that?”
    â€œNo.” Her smile widened.
    â€œWho are you suppose to be anyhow—Twiggy?”
    She mimicked his comic exaggeration, crossing her own arms as she said, “I am supposed to be me, myself, and I!”
    All at once they both burst into laughter in the old way, as they’d laughed on the sled the night they’d first met.
    It was at this moment that Noni's seventeen-year-old brother Wade, wearing his gray cadet's uniform from his military school, slammed out of the front door and, shoving his way between them, snarled, “I’m getting the hell out of Munster Lodge.”
    Wade Tilden looked like his mother; he had her milky skin dotted everywhere with red freckles and her strawberry blond hair—although his was almost shaved. He was tall with dangling arms and his tight gray jacket was covered with gold braid and brass buttons sticking out from his thin chest in flat straight rows. Ignoring Kaye completely, he added with a casual belligerence, “Noni, you don’t want to wake up dead, tell Mom I went to see 2001. They’re just looking for any excuse to treat me like a dumb baby.” Wade was pretending to be going to the local movie theater, when in fact he and his friends were driving his new Mustang to Charlotte three hours away to attend a rock concert.
    Alarmed, Noni pleaded with her brother. “Mom said you couldn’t go to Charlotte. Please, Wade, don’t upset her.”
    â€œIf she doesn’t get off my back, I’m joining the fuckin’ Army! Maybe I can get myself killed like perfect old Gordon. Maybe if I’m dead I can catch a break from those two!” Wade shouted this at the closed front door.
    Mrs. Tilden, having lost her older son Gordon to friendly fire in the Tet Offensive, lived in