Call Me by My Name Read Online Free

other words, the ones who served the whites.
    I was getting ready to head home when Tater poked his head out from the screen door, then bounded off the porch and came running toward me.
    â€œHey, Rodney,” he said. “My auntie wants to know if you’d like to have supper with us.”
    â€œNo, thank you, Tater.”
    â€œShe’s frying pork chops.”
    â€œThat’s okay.”
    â€œDid you hear me, man? I said pork chops. You’re going to take a pass on pork chops? What is wrong with you, brother?”
    I left him and started pedaling as fast as I could down Railroad Avenue. I wasn’t far along when I heard him call out, “Okay, be that way then,” and finally, “Bye to you too.”
    Railroad ended and became Parkview Drive, and now the houses got bigger and some were brick. I shouldn’t have raced off, but the prospect of dinner with him and his aunt had made me nervous. Pops could barely tolerate seeing Tater and me play ball together, and I knew how he’d act if he ever learned that I’d gone so far as to share food with him, too.
    As I rode home, I kept wondering about the differences between the world where Tater lived and the one I came from. Four years ago Pops had been able to tell a black pecan from a white one, and that was only a starting point. I’d also heard him call dogs that belonged to black people “black dogs,” even though their fur was white or brown or some other color. A dog could be purebred with papers, but if it belonged to a Negro, it was a black dog and nowhere near the equal of the lowest mutt that belonged to a white person. Cars were “black cars” when black people owned them, and it didn’t matter if their paint jobs were actually white or green or some other. There were black stores, too, and black clothes and black music and black food. And to Pops the color always meant not as good. Even when applied to a human being like Tater.
    I got home and could smell Mama’s cooking out in the carport. It was fried pork chops, and I figured there must’ve been a sale today at the A&P for the white shoppers as well as the black ones. Angie was setting the table as I came through the door, and Mama was at the sink mashing some potatoes. It got hot inside whenever they used the stove, which was a big Chambers installed in the 1940s when the house was built. Pops was sitting over by the window unit, reading the paper and trying to keep cool. He had the Astros game on the radio, and he was already dressed for work, his hair swept straight back and showing comb marks. He hadn’t put on his boots yet, and you could see his white ribbed socks folded over at the ankle.
    Maybe because I still had the story about Tater’s parents in my head, but I glanced over at Pops’s Chiang Kai-shek rifle hanging on a rack on the wall. He’d taken it off a dead enemy soldier and displayed it now as a trophy for all to see. Right below it and covered with a frilly dress half-made was Mama’s sewing machine.
    â€œRodney, where you been, son?” Pops said, and lowered the volume on the radio.
    I propped my bat with my mitt hanging from the barrel against where the pie safe met the wall.
    â€œPractice, and then I followed Tater Henry home.”
    â€œYou followed him home? Why would you do that?”
    â€œJust curious, I guess.”
    â€œI don’t understand,” he said. “What could there possibly be about a colored boy that makes anybody curious?”
    It was the kind of question that really was a statement, so I figured he didn’t require an answer. I sat in my chair.
    Angie’s freckles came out whenever she got too much sun, and they were out now on her cheeks and the crown of her nose. Even though the house smelled of fried food, I could smell chlorine when she sat next to me.
    Pops came over and joined us at the table. “Rodney,” he said, meaning he’d selected