Sitting at the head of the cot, a Bible in one hand, Ballet's mother kept shaking him into wakefulness. In the soft flush of dawn bursting in on the veranda, Mirrie's restless gum-moist eyes fell on her son's shining black shoulders. He was sprawled on the canvas, a symbol of primordial force, groaning, half-awake.
"Hey, wha' is to become o' dis boy, ni?" she kept on talking to the emerging flow of light, "Why yo' don't go to bed at night, ni? Stayin' out evah night in de week. Spanishtown, Spanishtown, Spanishtown, evah night—tek heed, ni, tek heed, yo' heah—when yo' run into trouble don' come an' say Ah didn't tell yo'."
To Ballet this was the song of eternity. From the day Mirrie discovered through some vilely unfaithful source the moments there were for youths such as he, in the crimson shades of el barrio, the psalms of rage and despair were chanted to him.
His thin, meal-yellow singlet stiffened, ready to crack. He continued snoring. Frowsy body fuses, night sod, throttled the air on the dingy narrow porch on which they both contrived to sleep.
She shook him again. "Get up—yo' hear de korchee blowin' fo' half pas' six. Time to go to wuk, boy."
Ballet slowly rose—the lower portions of him arching upwards.
The dome of the equator swirled high above Colon—warmth, sticky sweat, heat, malaria, flies—here one slept coverless. Mechanically uttering words of prayer drilled into him by Mirrie, he raised himself up on the stain-blotched cot, salaamed, while Mirrie piously turned her face to the sun.
When he had finished, Ballet, still half asleep, angled his way into his shirt, dragged on his blue pants, took down the skillet from the ledge and went to the cesspool to bathe his face.
"Yo' know, mahmie," he said to Mirrie as he returned, wiping his eyes with the edge of his shirt sleeve, "I don't feel lik' goin' to work dis mornin'—"