We Cast a Shadow

The narrator attends the City District Court for Rule Day, a day set aside for judges to hear pleas and complaints from lawyers. Dinah is also there, representing Crooked Crown. As they wait for the judge, Dinah and the narrator discuss his failure to impress Eckstein at PHH. Dinah advises him to get involved in the Black community to make a better impression on Eckstein. The narrator remembers that Supercargo has been trying to recruit him to a civil rights activism group for years. The judge finally arrives, and Dinah’s case is called. As she begins her argument, the narrator zones out—an effect of the several Geishas he had over breakfast. Suddenly, Dinah is shaking him awake for his turn on the stand. Disoriented, he makes his way up to the podium, hallucinating butterfly wings on the back of the opposing lawyer.

The narrator and Jo Jo drive to the Musée du Nubia du Africq, a museum housing a collection of “core samples of blackness from various eras and areas of the City’s history” (118). The museum was founded before most of the City’s Black population was pushed out into the Tiko and the backwoods. The narrator wants to connect with the museum’s owners, the Blind Equality Group, or BEG, to get back into Octavia’s good graces. The BEG aspires to create a colorblind society in which everyone gets along, even if this means ignoring history.

At the museum, Supercargo, who works the gift shop, welcomes them in. He brings them into a back room, which is familiar to the narrator from his childhood, since Sir used to take him to similar rooms to attend meetings for various civil-rights organizations. He spots Riley, who darkly warns the narrator that he shouldn’t be here but switches demeanor as Jan and Marie Galton-van Riebeeck, two of BEG’s white benefactors, walk over. Several people get up to speak in turn, including Supercargo, who mentions the efficacy of the recent protests at PHH before calling the narrator to the microphone. Motivated by his desire to impress Octavia and Eckstein, the narrator delivers an impassioned speech about the evils of demelanization surgery and the value of loving oneself. When he finishes, everyone in the room, except for Riley, erupts into thunderous applause. 

In addition to his facial birthmark, Nigel has countless others all over his body, a fact the narrator has previously declined to mention. He keeps a diary chronicling all of the incidents of prejudice that he and his son experience, reminding himself that he is rational and that “the big white machine’s carcinogenic pheromones and countless rows of razor-sharp teeth” (128) are not a figment of his imagination.

Back at the house, Nigel is up in his room, sketching in a notepad. For years he’s been working on a comic series in which a heroic version of himself fights a villainized version of the narrator. The narrator isn’t bothered by this; it’s more important to him to be his son’s protector than his friend. He asks Nigel to take off his shirt and produces a tube of extra-strength skin bleaching cream. As he applies the cream to a tearful Nigel, he defends his actions via a lengthy inner monologue about the unfairness of a world in which “a dark-skinned child can expect a life of diminished light” (134). All over the world, Black people are evicted, forced into ghettos, and shot by police. Black men now make 30 cents to the white man’s dollar and can’t vote without “a voucher from an upstanding citizen” (135). The narrator hopes that preventing birthmarks’ spread will ensure that Nigel is perceived not as a Black man, but “simply a man” (135). As he tries to apply cream around his son’s eye, Nigel pushes him away. The narrator knows that his self-appointed control of his son’s life will get harder as his son approaches teenage years.

Thinking of his own father, the narrator remembers a family reunion he attended shortly before Sir’s arrest. At the reunion, his grandfather, Mr. Ben, tells the narrator that while white people aren’t inherently evil, they are inherently dangerous to Black people because of their power. He describes them as “radioactive” and says that they “can’t help but hurt you” (139). He advises the narrator to draw on their guilt and shame to get ahead in life because “self-respect [would] be [his] end” (139). Mama and Sir later try to remind the narrator of the value of pride and self-love, but the narrator isn’t really listening.

A few days after his speech at the BEG meeting, the narrator heads downtown to meet with Riley and Jan Galton-van Riebeeck, the director of BEG’s strategic initiatives. As Jan shows the narrator some of BEG’s pamphlets, which espouse the conviction that race “is nothing more than idea, like city-states or heaven” (142), the narrator flashes back to a childhood memory of Sir and Mama talking about the concept of race:

The talk was suddenly interrupted by the sound of gunfire. After the sound cleared, the narrator went to the window and saw the Anti-Violence Task Force Police leaving one of the Tiko’s buildings, having just killed whoever was inside. A Tiko resident named Ms. Wendy Woods ran after the police, shouting that what they have done isn’t right. An officer’s helmet light fixed on her and turned red.

The narrator is jostled out of his recollection by Riley, who knows the narrator’s work with BEG is just “resumé padding.” Riley has changed since his days working at Seasons and now believes that “some things are more important than a bigger paycheck” (145). Jan suggests a “trial by ordeal” (145). This requirement was put in place after an incident called the Teleprompter Massacre, in which a Black school was shot up by a gang of white supremacists that included two Black members. The former mayor and leader of BEG, Jacqueline Suhla, was jailed, and the activist hotspots of the City bombed out. Now, new members of BEG must pass a trial that involves spreading BEG’s message on the street “without getting beaten, arrested or shot” (146). Riley gives the narrator 100 BEG pamphlets to be handed out within the hour on a nearby street corner. People are dismissive and wary when he tries to talk to them as equals, but he soon finds that offering to get down on his knees and grovel works exceedingly well. After just 10 minutes of begging, he has handed out all of the pamphlets. 

After the success of his trial by ordeal, the narrator heads to the clinic of Dr. Nzinga, the doctor who pioneered demelanization. In the waiting room, he meets a man from the museum BEG meeting, a Black streetcar driver with dyed blue eyes. He tells the narrator that the city is funding a nose job which will hopefully help him win a promotion. A woman resembling Dinah enters the waiting room but doesn’t respond to the narrator calling Dinah’s name.

The narrator explains that demelanization was first popularized by Crown. The procedure wiped out Crown’s Black features and took her from mid-level success as a background singer to solo stardom. The narrator is called into a consultation room and examined by a dark-skinned woman. Although he initially assumes she is a nurse, she reveals herself to be Dr. Nzinga. He tells her about Nigel’s birthmarks, and she assures him that they can be removed through surgery. However, the procedure is so expensive that the only way he’ll feasibly afford it is through a bonus. He’s been owed one from Seasons for years but is unsure when he’ll receive it.