"I know."
"And if a person talks to you like you're lost, you can hand them the card before you hand them an explanation."
He nodded. She had not said if a white person. She did not need to build the sentence out to its full length for him to hear the part she was protecting him from having to say. They had a way of leaving certain nouns in the space between sentences, where they could be used later if necessary and did not have to sit on the table next to the cereal.
"Mrs. Keene says don't spend the piece in the warm-up."
"Mrs. Keene," Denise said, with the tone she reserved for people who had proved themselves, "has kept you honest. You keep her honest by eating."
He ate four more bites. She held the shirt up. The collar was a clean line. She looked at him over it, and for a moment the day was not a test. It was only her son in a kitchen, with a cowlick she had already lost to sleep.
"You love it," she said. "That's the part nobody on a clipboard invented. You remember that if the room gets strange."
"Okay."