“I look at my mama and I love my mama. She’s wearing that black coat and that black hat and she’s looking sad. I love my mama and I want put my arm round her and tell her. But I’m not supposed to do that. She say that’s weakness and that’s crybaby stuff, and she don’t want no crybaby round her. She don’t want you to be scared either.” 

At the beginning of the story, James asserts his self-image as a strong young man capable of caring for his mother in the absence of his father. He has learned that caring means suppressing his feelings, even those of tenderness. James’s stoicism contrasts with little John Lee’s hollering from the dentist’s chair. The smaller boy has not yet learned the lesson James did around his age—that is, to suppress his pain or face his mother’s condemnation.

“Auntie wanted to tell Mama, but I told her, ‘Uh-uh.’ ’Cause I knowed we didn’t have any money, and it just was go’n make her mad again.” 

Auntie wanted to notify Octavia about James’s bad tooth, worried about how much pain it caused him. James’s willingness to endure the pain to avoid his mother spending money she cannot spare is a sign of both his awareness of his family’s condition and his burgeoning sense of responsibility.

“I’m getting tired of this old syrup. Syrup, syrup, syrup. I’m go’n take with the sugar diabetes. I want me some bacon sometime.” 

Ty complains about having only syrup to eat with his bread for breakfast. Rightly, he worries about both diabetes, a persistently chronic health problem within Black American communities, and malnourishment. Daily intakes of syrup are also the likely cause of James’s bad tooth. Here, Gaines subtly reveals the ugly cycle that poverty creates: poor access to good food creates health problems that the impoverished often can’t afford to treat.