Paperboy

When Victor gets home, he finds Mam with an injured lip and bruises on her face. In shock, Victor follows her throughout the house, but Mam says, “I just had me an accident” (111). Victor asks whether Ara T. attacked her, but Mam refuses to answer. Victor leaves, thinking that this must be more than an accident. Mam and Victor eat dinner together, and then Victor leaves to go on his Friday collection run. Victor arrives at Mrs. Worthington’s house, and she opens the door looking fully made up and smelling of whiskey. Mrs. Worthington invites Victor inside while she gets the money she owes him. Victor feels uncomfortable within her home, which worsens once Mrs. Worthington gives him lemonade, keeps calling him “sweetie,” and asks a number of personal questions. Eventually, Mrs. Worthington falls asleep on the couch. On his way over to Rat’s house, Victor realizes that Mrs. Worthington never gave him the money for the newspaper subscription. Victor decides to pay for Mrs. Worthington’s subscription with his own money.

The next day, Victor sees Ara. T during his route and realizes that this means that his stash is unguarded. Victor heads over to Ara T.’s stash to see if he can retrieve his stolen knife. Ara T.’s shed is filled with junk, and Victor is unable to find the knife within it. When he tries to leave, he hears Ara T.’s cart rattling toward the shed. Not wanting to be caught, Victor tries to flee but slams into Ara T. on his way out and knocks him over. Victor runs all the way home, but he can’t stop thinking about Ara T. for the rest of the night.

In the morning, Victor comes to the conclusion that he should just buy a new knife. Mam is still recovering from her injuries, and the two of them make breakfast together. During breakfast, Mam asks where Victor’s newspaper bag is, and Victor realizes that he left the bag in the alley by Ara T.’s shed. Victor makes an excuse and leaves to get the bags, but when he gets to the alley, he finds them gone. Victor realizes that he needs to ask Rat’s mother for some new bags, and the thought that Ara T. now has more than one thing of his gets “stuck in [his] mind” (137).

It’s Sunday, so Victor doesn’t need to go on his paper route. Instead, he reads a book on the baseball player Babe Ruth on his back porch, but when he encounters the word “unknown,” he thinks of his discovery of his birth certificate and wonders who his birth father might be. That night, Victor accompanies Mam to her choir practice. On the way over, Victor asks Mam why she has to ride at the back of the bus when she’s alone but is allowed to ride at the front when he’s with her. Mam explains that she follows the rules, but the rules don’t make sense. Victor becomes angry when he thinks about the troubles that Mam has had to face just because of her skin color.

Victor’s parents left extra money for the week, so Victor and Mam go to the zoo together. Mam is allowed to go to the zoo to accompany Victor but isn’t allowed to go on her own due to Jim Crow laws, which Victor thinks is ridiculous. Victor and Mam go to look at the monkeys, and Victor notices that Mam knows all of the other Black women walking around the zoo, taking care of white children, but also that none of them ask about Mam’s injuries. When Mam intervenes to stop a boy from feeding a giraffe paper, the boy calls her a racial slur. Victor apologizes to Mam on behalf of the boy, but Mam tells him that the slur doesn’t mean anything to her. However, Victor can tell that she’s upset. On the way out of the zoo, Victor wants to take a picture of Mam, but she tells him to go on his own since the zoo won’t allow Black caretakers to take pictures with the white children they look after. Victor decides to stand his ground and tells a sob story to the photographer, playing up his stutter. The photographer allows the two of them to take a photo together, and then Victor and Mam head home.

On Thursday afternoon, Victor’s baseball coach calls off practice due to the hot weather. Victor thinks about seeing Mr. Spiro and Mrs. Worthington and worries about Ara T. before he leaves for his paper route. The newspaper truck driver distributes the papers to the kids, and Victor finds that he’s missing a bundle that a bigger, older boy named Willie took. Willie refuses to give the bundle back, and he pushes Victor to the ground before biking away. Victor picks up a rock to throw at Willie, but before he can, Willie hits a curb and falls off his bike. He gets back up and runs off, and Victor puts down the rock, deciding not to throw it after all. Victor then finds a newspaper rack and puts all of his money into it so that he can replace the papers that Willie stole. Victor finishes his route, deciding that he won’t let Willie bully him anymore.

It’s Friday, and today is the final day of Victor’s route before he hands it back to Rat. At the delivery truck, Victor confronts Willie but is surprised when Willie says, “Take it easy, man. Everything’s copacetic” (162). Victor is proud of how he has improved since beginning the paper route, including standing up to Willie and throwing the papers onto front steps accurately. On his collection route that night, Victor asks a boy who he always sees watching TV what he likes to watch. The boy doesn’t respond, and then Victor sees his mother communicating with him in sign language. Victor decides that he and the boy could be friends because they wouldn’t need to speak with each other, and therefore he wouldn’t need to worry about his stutter.