Chapters 9 and 10 Summary and Analysis

In the brief chapter nine, the author describes his family's move back to New York, and Jean's latest money-making idea—selling fruit on the street corner. An encounter with a corrupt policeman is a particularly noteworthy event in an otherwise unexciting summer. The fruit stand fails quickly, and the author describes how he then filled his time by first imagining what it would be like to jump off the fire escape and then hanging his head, shoulders and arms over the edge of the roof for hours at a time. This, he writes, gave him a sense of weightlessness and freedom.

Chapter ten narrates a school day in the author's young life—his barely conscious getting out of the house, his noting the signs of ongoing unease between his mother and Jean, his early morning job shelving...