Where the Neighborhood Ends
High School: Grades 9–12
Story
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As Lane started toward his room, his mother put a hand on his shoulder. "No matter who calls, Lane, you should use proper English. You have to show you have a good education and good manners in order to get respect."
"Yes 'um." Lane immediately regretted his cheeky reply. "I mean: yes, Mother Dear." He gave her a clown's smile and returned to his psychology homework. He had registered for psychology because he liked the idea of reading another person's mind. Besides, the fact that only seniors were allowed to take the course gave it a certain mystique. He was a senior this year. In eight months he'd graduate with the class of 1957. That is, he'd graduate if he passed this course. Psychology, he'd discovered, was not the science of mind reading. Rather, it was the study of people—the effort to understand their perspectives, motives, and actions.
"Man, there are some people I'd really like to figure out," Lane mumbled to himself as he returned to his textbook. He studied until he heard his father's key in the front door. Then, turning on the radio, Lane laid out his clothes for the next day. He draped a collared shirt and pressed trousers over a chair, careful to preserve the creases. Next he packed his gym bag. As he slipped his cotton shirt from a clothes hanger and began to fold it, he recalled his mother's gentle scolding earlier that evening.
Lane sat down in his chair again. He pictured himself in a white lab coat, scribbling notes on a clipboard while listening to his mother talk. She had an obsession with the word proper. Proper English. Proper manners. A proper hat and proper gloves. A proper house and a proper car.
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"But why?" Lane imagined asking her. "Why does being proper matter so much to you? And why do you try to make me proper, too?" Suddenly he knew. His mother had given him the answer that very evening: she wanted respect. She wanted their white neighbors to accept her.
A flash of anger jolted Lane from his chair. Good grades and neckties hadn't won him respect or acceptance. In his classmates' eyes, he was just a Negro. "No more ironed gym clothes for me!" he whispered fiercely as he crushed his tee shirt into a ball and tossed it into his bag. Then, on a rebellious impulse, he crammed in an old pair of khaki pants, too.
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