Black BoyChapter 4

•Richard again faces hunger when he moves back to Jackson.

•His main meals are flour and lard mush for breakfast, followed by a plate of greens cooked in lard for dinner.

• He learns to temper his hunger, if only briefly, by drinking so much water that his stomach feels tight and full.

• Aunt Addie joins Granny in the fight to save Richard’s soul, and tempers again flare.

• Richard unwillingly enters the religious school where Addie teaches.

• The tension between Richard and Addie escalates when she wrongly accuses Richard of eating walnuts in class.

• The guilty student was actually the one sitting directly in front of Richard, but Richard does not want to rat on his classmate.

• While trying to defend himself, Richard accidentally calls her “Aunt Addie” rather than “Miss Wilson,” making her more furious.

• Addie beats Richard in front of the class, and he becomes furious that the guilty student has not come forward.

• Addie tells Richard that she is not yet through with him, but he resolves that she will not beat him again.

• At home that evening, Richard tells Addie who the real culprit was, but she then decides to beat him again because he did not tell her this truth earlier in class.

• When she tries to do so, Richard grows frenzied and fends her off with a knife.

• He successfully defends himself, but Granny, Grandpa, and Ella all take Addie’s side.

• They are more convinced than ever that something is seriously wrong with Richard.

• He then recalls that the only time he ever saw Addie laugh at school was when he was injured in a game of pop-the-whip that Addie had suggested the children play.

• Religion attracts Richard emotionally, but on an intellectual level he is unable to believe in God.

• Granny forces Richard to attend certain all-night prayer meetings, but the twelve-year-old Richard’s hormones make him more interested in the church elder’s wife than in the elder’s words.

• A religious revival is coming through town, and Richard’s family kindly urges him to attend, deciding that this is their last chance to reform him.

• Richard knows their true motives, however, and is unmoved.

• Granny recruits the neighborhood boys to try to convince Richard to go to God, but he knows she is behind it.

• Richard is unable to explain to his peers his inability to believe in God.

• He has faith in the “common realities of life,” not in any concept of cosmic order.

• During a sermon one day at church, Richard whispers to Granny that he would believe in God if he saw an angel.

• Granny hears him incorrectly and thinks that he has said that he has seen an angel.

• She elatedly informs the church elder and the rest of the congregation.

• Richard, already mortified at Granny’s misunderstanding, makes things worse by embarrassing her, correcting her error in front of everyone present at the church.

• Granny is furious.

• To appease Granny’s anger, Richard promises to pray every day, but he is unable to do so.

• The act of prayer even makes him laugh.

• To kill time during his daily prayer hour, he decides to write a story about an Indian maiden who drowns herself.

• In his excitement to share the story with someone, Richard reads it aloud to the young woman who lives next door.

• She seems astonished that anyone would write a story simply out of the desire to write, but Richard takes satisfaction from her puzzled bewilderment.