No Telephone to Heaven

Chapter 3 details the migration of Clare’s immediate family—including her father, Boy, her mother, Kitty, and her sister, Jennie—from Jamaica to the United States. After the death of Kitty’s adoptive mother, Miss Mattie, Boy decides that the family has no reason to remain in Jamaica and flies them to Miami in search of a better life. The year is 1960, and racial tensions are high in the United States.

From Miami, the Savage family drives northward to New York City, stopping at a motel in Georgia. When Boy goes to the white motel manager, he is met with suspicion and confusion. The manager—a proud member of the KKK—repeatedly asks the light “apricot”-skinned but distinctively accented Boy if he is “colored” (55). Boy recalls the “128 categories” of different racial distinctions he was forced to memorize as a school boy and decides to reject this mindset: “No matter that at least one of the […] categories applied to him—no matter. He was streamlining himself for America” (57). Boy convinces the motel manager that he is white, initiating his commitment to “passing” in the United States.

Kitty is uncomfortable with the racial tension she experiences in America and claims that in Jamaica, there was not “so much hate” (60).