But although Phyllisia visits Edith at her home, learning the truth about Edith's poverty and absences from school, Phyllisia can never bring herself to invite Edith back. It is the streetwise Edith who protects her when she is bullied at school, and when they are caught up in a street riot during the long hot summer. The girls do form a tentative friendship, really out of necessity on Phyllisia's part. Nor did they try to be friendly as Edith did - whenever she happened to come to school.
But at least they did not have to sit right across the aisle from me. Of course there were many children in this class that were untidy and whom I did not like. Edith always came to school with her clothes unpressed, her stockings bagging about her legs with hig holes, which she tried to hide by pulling them into her shoes but which kept slipping up, on each heel, to expose a round, brown circle of dry skin the size of a quarter. Edith is the one girl who is prepared to befriend Phyllisia: I did not like her. It's difficult to see exactly what Phyllisia has against Edith. Phyllisia is fourteen and would like a little freedom, but it is all very different from The Island where she lived before. Her sister, Ruby, is sixteen and pre-occupied with herself. Her father is loud-mouthed and overbearing. In fact they soon start to bully her because she's different.
Phyllisia needs one when she first comes from the West Indies to live in New York.
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