Surprise! I don't abandon my stories. I just put them off for a very, very, very long time.

James Kinchloe

Kinch sometimes thinks back to that summer day when he was seven years old and feels a deep sadness.

He had probably always known that the colour of his skin upset some people. There had always been faces that sneered, that turned away or lost all expression when he came near.

'Blindness' is what his father called it, which didn't make sense. If everyone was blind, they wouldn't even know he looked different from them. James just thought of them as 'bad people'.

Mrs. Kelly was one of the good people.

She was old and she smelled like the chest of winter linens before his Mom took them out and aired them in the sun, but when he passed her on the way home from school she always had a smile for him. On the days his Mom was busy with their church choir and he had time dawdle he would stop and tell her everything that he'd learned at school.

Sometimes when you talked to adults their eyes would stop listening, even though they nodded and pretended they were paying attention. Mrs. Kelly wasn't like that. She really meant it when she asked questions. Everyone liked Mrs. Kelly.

Most people did, at least.

Once James had heard the policeman that walked their street call her a 'dirty Bog-trotter'. It sounded funny, but there was something about the way the man had said it, that made James afraid to repeat the word out loud.

"And how did you do on that spelling test you had last week, Jimmy?"

James grinned as he swung back and forth on the decorative iron fence that lined the walk up to Mrs. Kelly's apartment block. "I got all of the words right, except for 'friend'."

"That is a tricky word," she agreed.

Then James remembered the different jobs they had learned about that morning. He was so excited to tell her what he had decided.

"I'm going to fly an airplane when I grow up!"

Mrs. Kelly's face was covered in a hundred-thousand-hundred little lines, and James waited for them to shift into the proud smile he loved.

Her eyes softened. "Oh. That's not a job for your kind, Jimmy. That's a white man's job. It takes a lot of smarts to fly a plane. Maybe you can work in a factory and help make airplanes."

James swallowed hard. His throat felt sore and suddenly there was weight in his chest that hadn't been there a minute ago. "I need to- I- I'm going home, now."

He ran home, past the trucks, the music and the people that he usually loved to watch on the busy streets of Detroit.

Finally, the burnished iron stairs came into view, and James ran up the steps, yanking his back door open in relief.

Sniffling, he wiped his nose on his sleeve before setting his schoolbooks down on the polished wood end-table and walking into the kitchen. On the table was an apple and a covered plate of crackers, but he ignored them as he clambered up onto the vinyl chair.

Tears began to roll down his cheeks as Mrs. Kelly's words echoed around in his head again.

Why would she say that? He'd thought she was one of the good people. James liked her, and Mrs. Kelly liked him.

She thought he was stupid. That his head didn't work as well as a white boy's.

Why?

Couldn't she see him properly? Hadn't she been paying attention?

He wanted to stop her from thinking like that.

Make her understand.

Dropping his head into his arms, James let the tears soak into his shirt-sleeves. The light from the kitchen window made his shirt glow against his pressed-closed eyes.

He had been so happy and excited earlier. Why did this happen?

James turned his head to the side and let his gaze wander through the open door into the small sitting room. From this angle the book case of his Dad's favourite books was distinct. But there was a bookcase visible from every angle of the sitting room. His Mom said they had too many books, and they made the apartment look messy, but she could never keep the small smile off the edge of her mouth, and continued to come home from church rummage sales with new books in her handbag.

Sliding off the kitchen chair, James rubbed his eyes dry with the back of his hand and slipped into the sitting room. There was a cushioned footstool at the base of his Dad's bookshelf. It was his. James' spot to sit with his parents as they drank their after-supper coffee.

He dropped down to the stool and put his elbows on his knees, supporting his chin as he stared at the books.

When James had a question about anything he knew there were two ways to find the answer. If he asked his mother, her smooth brow would press together into a set of double lines, and she would slowly explain as much as she could. His Dad didn't answer questions. If you asked him a question, he gave you a book. "Read me this story, James," he'd say. Mostly James didn't understand what he read. But sometimes he did, and it made him feel good, to know that there were answers, and he just had to know where to look for them.

Now he sat looking at all the books, wondering if it was possible that there was an answer to the questions that made his chest ache right now.

A door shut in the hallway, and his father stepped quietly into the room. James turned to look at his father, aware of the tears still silently flowing down his cheeks. "Why – why are you home, Dad?"

Wilbur Kinchloe came up behind his armchair and pushed it forward until it was directly in front of the footstool. He sat down and gave his son a soft smile. "There was a power outage at the factory so I got off an hour earlier. What's the matter, James?"

He told his Dad about Mrs. Kelly.

His Dad got down onto the floor, and pulled James into his lap. It was a long time before James could talk without hiccupping back tears.

"It's not fair. I thought she was a good person, and now I don't know- I don't know if maybe nobody is a good person, Dad!" His Dad pulled him closer. It was a little tight, but James didn't mind. He wanted to bury himself in his Dad's dark skin. "Why does she think I'm not smart enough? Why would she say something so mean?"

They were sitting right up against the book case, but his Dad didn't reach for a book. "There are bad people in the world, James. But sometimes regular people end up hurting someone because they're blind, not because they're trying to be bad."

"I don't understand." His Dad pulled out a handkerchief and helped him blow his nose. "Doesn't 'blind' mean their eyes don't work right?"

"Yes. But sometimes it means when they look at something, they don't see it the way it really is."

James reached out to place a hand on his Dad's cheek, one finger tracing the edges of his curly black moustache. It moved up and down as he spoke.

"There is truth in this world, James, but not everyone can see it. Some get a little closer than others. Some people only take a couple steps forward before they stop looking."

"But why?"

His Dad shook his head. "I don't know. Maybe the truth tells them something they don't want to hear. But James, there is always someone out there that can see. Someone, somewhere. It might not seem like it, and maybe they're far away from here, but you're not alone. You remember that."

James nodded.

He still remembers.