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I look over my shoulder, toward the road. My real family is supposed to be meeting us here. All my brothers and sisters. I thought there’d be enough time to say good-bye.

A glance at my watch says the bus is early. Eight whole minutes until it’s scheduled to leave. A few passengers disembark as the Lansing folks line up. The driver rolls his shoulders and lights up a cigarette, breathing a gray cloud out through his nostrils like fog in the cool morning air. He’s in no apparent hurry.

A large black car comes rolling up. I recognize it from the driveway of the home where my youngest siblings — Yvonne, Wesley, and Robert — stay. The doors pop open, and half my family comes pouring out. I’m glad to see the crowd includes my closest brothers, Philbert and Reginald, even though they live in a different home. Wilfred and Hilda, the oldest of us all, still live at our old house. I don’t see them yet.

Reginald’s familiar voice cries out, “There he is!” My siblings descend, and the distant stillness around me becomes a warm, chattering flurry.

“We made it.”

“Are you ready?”

“Are you excited?”

“We’re going to miss you, Malcolm.”

They cluster around me, sort of hugging, sort of jostling. All speaking at once. I laugh out loud because it feels so normal, compared to the solitude I endure at the Swerlins’.

“Do you have to go, Malcolm?” My nine-year-old sister, Yvonne, wraps her arms around my waist. “Don’t you want to come over for breakfast?”

I pat the top of her head. I’ll miss those breakfasts, true enough. Getting together once a week with all my brothers and sisters? Yeah, that’s the one thing I’ll miss about Lansing. I’m used to missing everyone, though. Now that we all live in separate foster homes, that breakfast is the only time of the week all eight of us can be together. Yvonne’s foster family is real decent about hosting all of us so often.

“It’s gonna be pancakes,” Yvonne whispers. As if that would inspire me to stay.

Behind her, my brother Philbert snorts loudly. “Yeah, and there might be enough to go around for once, without this bonehead hogging the butter and syrup.”

“Stop it,” Hilda snaps. As she arrives alongside us, our older sister smacks Philbert lightly on the back of the head.

“Ow!” Philbert staggers around the lot, pretending a serious head injury.

“Who’s the bonehead now?” I quip. Philbert’s moaning only grows louder.

Hilda glances around the parking lot as if looking for something to throw at the two of us. “I should have known you all couldn’t be serious long enough to say good-bye.” Her voice catches.

“Serious is overrated.” I grin to cover the twinge of sorrow in my chest right then. Sorrow mixed with a strange glad feeling that, for a minute, things are back to almost normal. The way it’s supposed to be, with all of us together, laughing and teasing one another and whatnot.

Wilfred’s here now, too, shaking hands with Mr. Swerlin, looking very adult and official. All the Little children, present and accounted for. Won’t be this way again for a while.

I turn back to Philbert, who’s always good for a joke to keep the mood light, but he’s stopped his staggering theatrics. He stands quietly beside me now, out of character for him. I slug him in the arm — not that hard — just to wake him up. He slugs me back. Hard. Then he turns away.

“All aboard,” the bus driver calls. He returns to the entry well and starts tearing passengers’ tickets.

I pry Yvonne’s arms from around my waist, to make room for hugs from Reginald, Wesley, and Robert. Philbert stands off to the side with his head low, looking at everything but me.

I move away from the younger ones, toward him. “That hurt, you know.” I rub my arm.

Philbert doesn’t react.

“What’s your problem?” I ask him.

He crosses his arms tight. He’s trying not to look at me, but I recognize his expression.

This isn’t how Philbert looks when he’s mad. It’s how he looks when he’s sad, but mad about it. Which is not the same. Like at Papa’s funeral. Or when they took Mom away. But this is different. It isn’t so awful. This is just . . . me. Leaving.

I don’t know how to explain why I have to go. Why the giant weight on my chest suddenly lifts when I think about moving to Boston. When our half-sister Ella invited me to visit, it gave me the first glimpse of happiness, of hopefulness, I’ve felt since Mom went away. But a visit isn’t enough for what I need — I’m going there to stay. All I seem to be able to do around here is get myself in trouble. I’ve been expelled from school and shipped out to the Swerlins’ all alone, causing my brothers and sisters to worry. In Boston, Hilda says, at least I’ll be with family.

“Look —” I begin, trying to explain.

Philbert flinches to the side, real dramatic. “Hey,” he cries, rubbing his arm in the spot where I punched him a minute ago.

I narrow my eyes at him. He grins. “Your punch just landed.”

Philbert is forever teasing me about how slow I am in a fistfight. He, on the other hand, is a really good boxer. My arm still smarts for real.

“No,” I say, “that was a new one. I moved so fast, you didn’t even see me. Just call me Lightning Little.”

Philbert straightens his shoulders, leaning into the banter. “Oh, I’ve got a better name for you. . . .” But whatever affectionate insult he offers is lost in the cloth of my suit as I circle him into my arms.

It’s easier, I guess, to laugh and joke and pretend that tomorrow won’t be any different from any of the days before. Easier than trying to talk about how strange it is to be part of a family and still be all alone.

“All aboard. Last call,” the driver shouts.

Mr. Swerlin claps me on the shoulder. “Here you go, now,” he says. He picks up my suitcase and carries it to the open cargo compartment in the base of the bus. Mrs. Swerlin hands me a paper sack of sandwiches for the road. “Thank you,” I tell them.

Hilda fusses with the collar on my jacket, smoothing and tucking and pressing it. Such a Mom-like thing to do. She throws her arms around me. “Oh, Malcolm.”

From her purse, she extracts a folded paper map and hands it to me. “You’ll want to see where you’re going,” she says. “Won’t you?”

“It’s from all of us,” Wilfred adds.

“Right. Thanks.” I tuck the map into my jacket pocket. It’s too dark to read anything anyway.

I get in line behind the others. There’s no one my age in line. Older folks mostly. People with the weary look I know well enough.

“You alone?” the driver says, taking the paper ticket from my outstretched hand.

“Yes, sir.”

“You sixteen?”

“Yes, sir,” I lie, stretching to my full height. Trying to look a year older.

He tears the ticket and hands it back. “Go on to the back, you hear?”

“Yes, sir.”

For the first time in forever, my feet are coming up off Michigan soil. Walking up those stairs is like walking into the mouth of the beast, and yet it doesn’t scare me. Not even a little.

I should be scared, probably. In fact, as I sit by the window, looking down at the faces of my siblings and my foster parents, what starts to scare me a little is how afraid I’m
not
. They wave up at me all at once, as if someone in the crowd said, “One, two, three.” I lift my hand as if the whole thing has been choreographed. The youngest ones jump up and down, waving with their whole bodies in answer. My family. I can’t tear my eyes away. They look small, already distant.

The door swings shut, creaking hard enough to send a chill over me. It sounds so final, that kind of closing.

The bus shimmies and shakes and finally lurches forward. For a second, I get a little sad about it. Not the leaving — just the way it seems like the world is always changing, right underneath my feet.

Lansing, 1937

We used to be so happy. Even after Papa died, when things got hard, nothing was so bad because we were together. But then things got harder, and the government social workers started coming by our house. Started pulling us apart, because there was never enough money. For food. For clothes. For the day-to-day necessities.

By the time I was twelve, things got so bad, we’d be nervous every day when we came home. Often as not, there’d be a black car out front. The welfare man calling.

As Philbert and I crossed the porch, we could see Mom through the window, sitting with him in the living room. As if he were a guest, not an intruder. This time, there was a woman, too, someone I hadn’t seen before. They often sent someone new. As if they wanted us to know there was a whole chain of people with power over us. And they were all watching.

Philbert opened the door. We stepped inside, and the three adults turned to look at us.

Wilfred wasn’t there. He was still at work and wouldn’t be home until well after we’d gone to bed. As the oldest, he had to take a job, to help keep food on the table. Hilda had the rest of our siblings herded into a corner, as far from the adults as possible.

Mom sat all tightened up, her body stiff from holding back her fury. Those people always made her angry and tense.

“Hi, Mom,” we murmured.

“Boys,” she said. “You remember Mr. Franklin. And this is Miss Castle, from Social Services.”

“Where have you been?” Mr. Franklin said. “School’s been out for hours.”

Philbert opened his mouth, but no sound came out. We’d been down at Doone’s Market, swiping fruit from the barrels out front.

“We were setting traps, down by the creek,” I answered. It wasn’t even a total lie. We’d walked down there earlier and set some. Maybe we’d even have a rabbit or a muskrat to sell in the morning. We couldn’t eat these things ourselves — Mom’s West Indian culture viewed them as unclean — but we could turn a buck off of them.

Mr. Franklin looked at our empty hands. “And you didn’t catch anything?”

“We were
setting
the traps, I said. Not checking them.” I crossed my arms over my chest.
He thinks I’m stupid. He thinks he’s better than us.

The government man stood up. He pulled me aside, away from my brothers and sisters, away from Mom, to the corner by the window. He always tried this and often on me. Maybe because I was the loud one, the tall one, the one who seemed like the leader, even though I was only twelve. Philbert and Hilda were older.

“What are you doing, sir?” I asked. He had his hand on my arm. I hated him touching me, but I knew better than to pull away.

“I just wanted to get your thoughts,” he said, releasing me. “Your mother doesn’t seem well.”

“She’s fine, sir.” I looked at her, sitting erect on the edge of the living-room sofa, her bottom lip tight. She would be fine as soon as these people went away.

But they played this game sometimes, telling us that they’d take us away from Mom if we didn’t act right. If things weren’t perfect. If we ever admitted that we were hungry.

“Malcolm,” Mr. Franklin said, like he knew me. He spoke quietly, beside my face. “If you have any concerns, you can share them with me.”

He stood close. Too close. Breathing his nasty breath on me. I could smell his lunch. Maybe a sandwich. One with thick slices of bread and actual meat. I willed my stomach not to growl. I was grateful for the fruit I’d swiped earlier. Stealing might be wrong, but if it helped our family stay together . . . I wasn’t so hungry that he needed to know about it. Mom could take care of us just fine.

I stood by the window, watching the lingering cloud of dust dredged up by the car tires as the government people drove off.

“OK,” Mom said. She brushed off the knees of her skirt as she stood. “Back to work.” My siblings un-bunched from the corner of the room and came toward her. Mom pulled a volume of poetry from our bookshelf and began to read the verses out loud. There was a determined quality to her voice, like she wasn’t going to let those people break us, and before long, her words pushed to every corner of the house, sweeping the intruders’ stench right out of our home. Finally she closed the book and set it aside.

“Keep studying,” Mom said. “I expect stories from everyone over dinner.”

My siblings knelt around the coffee table, studying Mom’s encyclopedias and history books. I leaned against the window frame. Inside the house, it might have felt like old times, but outside I could see everything that was wrong. The churned-up dust settled back against the road, some of it mingling with the large dirt rectangle that had once housed Mom’s vegetable garden. Next to it, the chicken coop stood empty, as it had for years. Papa would have torn it down by now. Then again, if Papa were still here, it wouldn’t have been empty at all.

“You, too, Malcolm,” Mom chided me gently. I came away from the window to join my brothers and sisters in studying. My hands found a favorite volume of philosophy. I flipped to a familiar chapter, but I found it hard to focus on reading. Mr. Franklin’s words had shaken me more than usual this time. Wasn’t so easy to put him out of sight, out of mind.

Mom didn’t seem worried. She went about her business, sitting at the table writing an article for her periodical, a furrow of fierce concentration on her face. She sighed occasionally as she wrote, and rubbed her fingers along the side of her face. She softly whispered, reading her drafted words aloud from time to time, or slipped into a light, cheerful hum as she worked.

I closed my eyes and let the sound of her voice wash over me, but the heartbeat of worry in my chest wouldn’t subside. How could Mom keep on doing her Garvey work? Couldn’t she see this is why they were after us?

The house was otherwise quiet, apart from the simmer of boiling greens on the stove. Dandelion stew, which we ate at our most desperate. With the Great Depression on, food was often scarce. No matter how hard Mom and Wilfred were willing to work, jobs were scarce, too.

Hilda tended the pot of greens from time to time, as if there were anything she could do to make it better. I wanted to tell her,
It’s steamed weeds — just let it be.
But some things become worse when spoken aloud.

The sound of simmering and the scratch of Mom’s pen and the light scrape of book pages turning took over. Reginald and Wesley headed out to see if they could find something to add to our supper, and when they came thumping in a short while later, their fresh noise nudged us all out of our quiet reflections.