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apartment, his hand on the doorknob, looking down and away from his wife and three children, a sheepish look on his face and an overnight bag in his hand. Then he opens the door and tiptoes out quietly into that good night forever.

4.
    T HROUGH THE MILKY DARKNESS I crawled, imagining I was swimming my way through the ocean. Over the seats I went, from lap to lap. The laps were boats.
    “How’s the little revolutionary tonight?” a voice whispered in my ear.
    I couldn’t see the face with the voice.
    “I’m good,” I whispered back.
    Then passing headlights illuminated everything briefly, red, yellow, blue, blinking, blinking, and I could see the inside of the Greyhound bus, the narrow aisle, the bags overhead, and the comrade smiling down at me. Then it all went back to black. I moved on, my six-year-old body swerving as the bus swerved, the sound of the motor humming beneath me, making me drowsy. “What’s the little revolutionary doing?” the voices asked. “Where’s the little revolutionary going?”
    When I awoke, it was morning and all had been transformed. The noise, the dirt, the large buildings of New York City were gone. Everything had become very wide and very flat. The sidewalks looked like they had been scrubbed in anticipation of our arrival, and when I stepped from the bus my mother bent down to untie my shoes so I could walk barefoot. There were no clouds in the sky, and the sunshinebeat down. The air smelled fresh. I was now on the campus of Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, where the Socialist Workers Party held its annual national convention. For one week every August, a thousand comrades from all over the country, and some from overseas, even, gathered here to elect committees, discuss strategy, attend political classes, and raise funds.
    Under the trees I went running.
    “Where are you, Saïd?” my mother called. “Come help me with the luggage.”
    And the two of us stood over our suitcases, trying to right them, trying to pull them, until a comrade said, “It’s okay, Martha, I’ll get those for you.” And my mother and I walked gratefully behind him to the dormitory we had been assigned to live in for the week. A small, clean, square room, with two beds and a wooden desk that faced out over the wide grassy lawn. “Look at me, Ma!” I said, leaping from one bed to the other. “Look at me, I’m Superman!” From the window I could see the crab apple trees that the year before I had climbed and gorged so much from that I had diarrhea for two days. On top of our dresser a stack of towels and an orange bar of soap had been generously provided for us. “The soap smells good, Ma!”
    After we had unpacked, my mother took a nap while I went out to explore the dormitory. Through the hallways I scampered, and up and down the staircases, marveling at the alternating sensations of carpeting and linoleum on my bare feet, while feeling as if I had once again become the proprietorof an enormous hotel in which everything belonged to me. I darted in and out of the lounges, where the comrades had gathered to smoke and discuss, and through the lobby, where the giant banners were being hung about the Vietnam War and the Fourth International and the Equal Rights Amendment.
    “There goes the little revolutionary!” they yelled as I passed.
    Just one flight below my dorm room was the cafeteria, and later that afternoon my mother and I walked down the stairs for lunch, greeting the other comrades who had just arrived from Chicago and Detroit and Los Angeles, with hundreds more still on their way. “Martha,” the comrades said, “I haven’t seen you since …” “Saïd,” they said, “look how tall you’re getting!”
    In the cafeteria I was permitted to eat and drink without fear of reprisal. No accusation was ever leveled by my mother when I returned to the table with yet another tray piled with plates of French fries and pizza and cake and cookies. It was the chocolate milk that I loved the