Summary
The night of the concert, police arrived to investigate a neighbor’s complaint that they could smell pot smoke. The music cuts and the police search people’s pockets. Francis shouts at a young cop when he sees him handle Jelly roughly. The cops don’t find anything and leave.
Michael explains that Francis had a reputation for being “pushed” into reacting. Michael recalls one night when he and Francis were in a bus stop shelter and a local tough tried to intimidate Michael by showing his knife. Francis held the blade until the other gave it up, as if impervious to the cutting of his hand. Francis earned a reputation for being crazy after this incident.
Aisha and Michael go with Francis and Jelly and their crew to Jelly’s DJ audition for the conductor. They stand waiting their turn for some time, then finally Jelly takes the stage. Michael is awed by the complex layering and mixing of musical genres that somehow go together despite the genres’ remoteness from each other: disco, country western, punk, Hendrix, Etta James, Congolese rumba. Eventually, the promoter stops Jelly, who is in a trance, and thanks him. Francis asks if they want to hear another set, but they send them away. It seems Francis expects more.
As they’re leaving, Francis complains about how the turntables and stage weren’t set up well by the organizers, and that they weren’t given enough time to prove themselves. It occurs to the group that the promoters didn’t take their contact info. Francis tries to go back in to talk to the promoter again, but the bouncers won’t let him through. They laugh at him and insult him and Michael, prompting Francis to punch one of them in the face, breaking the bouncer’s nose.
A brief brawl ensues, leading Jelly and Michael to also land some punches and get hit. Francis refuses to go to the hospital afterward; he asks that Jelly take him and Michael home. At home, their mother assures Francis she’ll attend to his facial wounds. Francis apologizes for “everything.” While their mother and Michael are in the bathroom getting first-aid supplies, Francis leaves.
In the present-day narrative, Aisha wakes Michael. She tells him that his mother was wandering across the avenue when an accident happened. Jelly is with her. He gets up so fast he is dizzy and runs outside, where cars are stopped and neighbors are gathered.
Jelly is holding Ruth’s head and whispering to her as she lays on the ground in her wet nightdress, her leg bruised. Mrs. Henry says she saw the car strike Michael’s mother. A man says she just stepped onto the road and he couldn’t stop in time.
Michael shouts at Jelly not to touch her as he dabs at her mouth with a tissue. Michael rides in the ambulance with his mother. Aisha says she and Jelly will meet him at the hospital. Michael shouts at her to stay away from them. In the hospital waiting room, Michael is disoriented, unable to make sense of the questions the nurses ask him about his mother. A doctor eventually comes out and says her broken leg has been set and her hip appears to be okay.
Analysis
In Chapter Five, Chariandy returns to the themes of discrimination and protectiveness. Interrupting the buildup of positive energy of the DJ show at Desirea’s, the police shut down the show to investigate a complaint and search the event-goers for drugs they don’t find. During the search, Francis’s protectiveness over Jelly is revealed when he shouts at the police for handling Jelly roughly—a gesture that foreshadows the book’s climactic scene.
Michael digresses to comment on Francis’s tendency to react strongly in instances where people are trying to intimidate those who are less powerful. Francis earned himself a reputation for being “crazy” after he held the bare blade of a knife that someone was brandishing at Michael. Despite the blade cutting into his hand, Francis holds on until the guy gives up the weapon. In this scene, Francis reveals an immense capacity to endure harm if it means protecting someone he cares about. Rather than fight the guy off or use the knife against him, Francis chooses to absorb the violence himself as a means of protecting Michael.
Returning to his memory of the DJ audition, Michael recounts the gulf between what he, Francis, and their friends experience when Jelly spins his eclectic records and what the concert promoters experience. The brilliant performance ends with a lackluster thank-you and confusion over the fact that Jelly isn’t given a place on the bill immediately.
Incensed by the slight and by the bouncers’ condescension, Francis’s anger and protectiveness emerge as he gets into a physical fight with the literal gatekeepers of the event. Although Francis lands a punch that breaks a bouncer’s nose, he comes out of the brawl in what is likely a concussed state. He refuses to seek medical attention, not wanting to tell the hospital—and, by extension, a police force he knows is prejudiced against people like him—about the assault.
Chariandy returns to the present, mirroring Francis’s injury with Ruth stepping into traffic and suffering a fracture in her leg. The fact he has failed to protect his mother provokes Michael to refuse any more support or involvement from Aisha and Jelly, who have only been trying to help. With his angry outburst and insistence they stay away, Michael shows his tendency to isolate himself in grief to avoid having to discuss difficult emotions. Once again, Michael tries to protect himself and his mother from pain, even when it is as immediate and undeniable as a car accident.
