Down These Mean Streets

Brew has been staying with Piri at Piri’s parents’ place. Around the breakfast table, Brew tells Piri what his mother taught him about getting along with white people: “A—accept. B—behave. C—care” (134). On the way to signing up for the Merchant Marine, they take a packed train. Piri is pressed up against a white woman. He becomes sexually aroused, and, to his surprise, the woman enjoys the experience. Later, back at his parents’ place, Piri imagines an elaborate conversation the woman on the train later has with one of her friends, wherein the woman says, “I was never so ashamed of myself” (141). Piri calls this his “mental production of ‘Beauty and Black’s Best’” (141).

Piri tells his brother, Jose, that he is planning on going down south “to see what a moyeto’s worth and the paddy’s weight on him” (143). Jose is adamant that Piri is not a moyeto: “We’re Puerto Ricans, and that makes us different from black people” (143). Jose goes on to explain to Piri that he and Piri’s other brother, James, have always had to explain to others why Piri’s skin is so dark. Piri asks rhetorically if his brothers had to make excuses for him and then punches Jose and they fight.