Jump and Other Stories

A White man goes for a run early in the morning. He focuses on his breathing. He makes his way through his neighborhood and reaches the edges of impoverished Black neighborhoods. A fence has been erected around a squatter encampment to keep it out of sight, and the man runs around the perimeter. He heads home, but men burst out of the fenced enclosure. They’re chasing someone, and the man flees to avoid the scuffle. In the commotion, he gets lost, sprinting through the squatter encampment. He sees intense poverty—decaying cars, naked children. He grows frantic, but a Black woman beckons him inside her hut. She tells him the men will kill anyone; they’re sent by the police to deal with the squatters. The man has heard differently, but he doesn’t feel he has the authority or perspective to question her: “He could not say to this woman, That’s not what I read” (234). The woman worries her elderly husband, or her son, a political activist, will be killed any day. She makes the White man tea, and he discovers seven people live in the small hut. The family’s behavior remains stiff and distrustful because he is White.