New York - The Novel

depending who they were, one could usually predict where they lived. The black kids lived west of Park, the Puerto Ricans from Park to Pleasant, and the Italians, whose families had usually been in Harlem longest, from east of Pleasant. There were Jewish kids in that school too, and several of the teachers were Jewish.
    Juan was very fortunate in his school, because if one chose to take advantage of it, the teaching there was good, and Juan was happy enough. He found that most of the work came to him easily, especially mathematics, for which he seemed to have a natural talent.
    It didn’t take him long to make friends, and one of the kids he spent time with was a Jewish boy named Michael. And it was Michael who said to him one day, “When I get out of here, my parents hope I can get to Stuyvesant.” Juan didn’t know what Stuyvesant was, so Michael explained to him that the three best high schools in the city for the public-school kids were Hunter, Bronx Science and Stuyvesant down in the Financial District. The schools were free, Michael said, but the exams for entry were tough, and competition was high.
    When Juan told his mother about Michael’s plans for high school, he didn’t think such information applied to him. So he was astonished, and rather embarrassed when, the very next day, Maria called at the school and asked one of the Jewish teachers how her son could get to such a place too.
    The teacher had looked rather surprised, but a week later, he had taken Juan to one side and asked him a lot of questions about how he liked it atschool, what subjects he enjoyed most, and what he hoped for in his future life. And since Juan wanted to please his mother, who worked so hard for him, he said that he really wanted to go to Stuyvesant.
    The teacher had looked rather doubtful. At the time Juan had supposed that this was because his grades weren’t high enough, but later he realized that the teacher had been worried because Stuyvesant wasn’t known for taking black Puerto Ricans. “To have any hope,” the teacher told him, “you’ll have to get grades at least as good as your friend Michael.”
    After that, Juan worked as hard as he could, and his grades were as good as Michael’s. He sensed also that some of the teachers were paying him a little extra attention, and sometimes they would be tough on him, or give him more work to do, but he figured they were trying to help him, so he didn’t complain. And in due course, when they took the exam, both he and Michael were accepted into Stuyvesant. He was excited, naturally, but when his mother got the news, she broke down and wept.
    So Juan Campos had gone to Stuyvesant. Luckily his cousin Carlos decided to treat this strange circumstance as a kind of victory for the gang. Their mascot was going to get an education and maybe become a lawyer, or something like that, and learn how to beat the white people at their own dirty game. During their years at Stuyvesant, he and Michael would take the subway together every morning and evening. During the vacations, he worked at any job he could find, delivering food for pizza parlors or restaurants mostly, down in Carnegie Hill, where the tips were good, to help pay for his keep at home.
    But in his last year at school, Juan’s life had changed.
    “I suppose,” he told Gorham years later, “I was really a child until then.”
    He’d come home one evening to find that his mother had had a fall and hurt her leg. The next day she hadn’t been able to go to work. For several days she’d been laid up, and Juan had looked after her each evening when he’d got back from school. She didn’t want to see a doctor, but finally the pain and swelling in her ankle got so bad that she agreed. And then the truth had come out.
    “I think she had a good idea she was sick all along and she didn’t want to know about it.” When the doctor told Juan that his mother’s ankle would be okay in a month, but that she had a bad heart, Juan’s path had been clear.
    There were scholarships available for Stuyvesant pupils to go to the IvyLeague schools, but it was obvious that wouldn’t work. The City College up at West 137th Street, however, was free and the education was good. He could attend it from home, and look after his mother as well. For the next years, he’d studied at City College by day and worked nights and vacations to help support her. When Maria hadn’t even been able to do the few light jobs she’d still