The Color of Water

by James McBride

They believed that money without knowledge was worthless, that education tempered with religion was the way to climb out of poverty in America, and over the years they were proven right.

You know it’s so easy to hurt a child.

I belong to the world of one God, one people.

“You have to choose between what the world expects of you and what you want for yourself,” my sister Jack told me several times.

She wipes her memory instantly and with purpose; it’s a way of preserving herself.