Summary

"Be."

Later that same summer, when the psychiatrist’s techniques for avoiding arguments with his mother seemed to not be working, the author was taken by his mother to stay with Grandmama. He describes the different things she used to do (“side hustles”) (49) to make money, which included doing the washing for a family of what she called “po’” whites (50). One week, the author says, when she went to pick up that week’s washing, he went with her, and talked with one of the boys in the family who, as part of their conversation, showed him the washer and dryer in the garage and also a scale, where the author weighed himself and found that he weighed 218 pounds (he was 12 years old).

The author then describes accompanying Grandmama to her Baptist church, where the preaching felt artificial and...