The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963

On Sunday in Birmingham, Kenny wakes to see Joey going with neighbors to church and Sunday school. He tells her she looks “real pretty.” Kenny goes outside in the shade, telling Momma he’d rather be back in the cold in Flint. He and Byron did not tell that Kenny almost drowned in the whirlpool; Kenny still feels weak and shaky over the incident. He closes his eyes, feeling drowsy, but a strange, loud vibration wakes him. Byron asks what the bang was. Dad thinks it was a sonic boom. Kenny drifts off again but wakes when Momma screams. In the house, Byron tells Kenny, “A guy just came by and said somebody dropped a bomb on Joey’s church” (183). Byron takes off running after Momma and Dad. From the porch, Kenny sees that “a river of scared brown bodies was being jerked in the same direction that By had gone” (184), so Kenny goes, too.

Kenny sees Byron, Momma, and Dad when he arrives at the frenzied aftermath of the church bombing, but they do not see him. He sees a man covered in blood carrying a little girl. Kenny goes into the mess of rubble where the front of the church had been. He sees people trying to lift pieces of the building. Dust clouds obscure his vision. He sees a shiny black girl’s shoe and tries to pull it. He thinks the Wool Pooh is holding on as he struggles with the shoe. When it comes free, he sees a frilly white sock. He does not want the Wool Pooh to get him again, so he leaves the church. He sees the little girl the man carried out “set down” next to another little girl, one in a red dress and one in a blue dress. Adults gather around the girls; their “hands fluttered down toward the little girls, then, before they touched anything, fluttered back up, over and over. Their hands looked like a little flock of brown sparrows that were too nervous to land” (186).

Kenny walks back to Grandma Sands’s house. He makes his bed and sits on it. He looks at the shoe he carried away from the church with him. It is ripped down the back; he thinks this happened in the struggle with the Wool Pooh. Joey comes in and asks him how he changed his clothing so quickly. Kenny thinks she is an apparition and that the Wool Pooh is taking her “around for her last visits” (187). Finally he looks up to see Joey has both of her shoes; this convinces him she is alive. She asks him repeatedly why he is acting so odd and what happened. Joey says she went to the church porch because of the heat inside and saw Kenny laughing and waving from across the street. She chased him but did not catch up.

Joey does not understand that the boy she saw was not Kenny and wonders again why Kenny had on different clothes when she saw him. She grows upset and goes to Grandma Sands, who is just waking up: “What are all them sirens doing? Lord, has the whole world gone mad today? Where’s your momma and daddy?” (190). Joey cries, but Kenny leaves quickly to go find Momma, Dad, and Byron to tell them Joey is alive.

The family leaves Birmingham the night of the bombing. They agree not to tell Joey anything. Once they are back home and a few weeks have passed, Kenny understands from eavesdropping that his parents are worried about him. He hides behind the living room couch frequently, and they do not know he is there. Grandma Sands tells Momma and Dad by phone that the Birmingham police think two men drove by and threw a bomb into the front of the church or else someone planted a bomb with a timer “set to go off during Sunday School” (191). A friend of Mr. Robert’s believes he saw Kenny in the church after the bomb went off, but Momma and Dad do not know for sure because Kenny will not talk about it.

Kenny hides behind the couch because that’s the World-Famous Watson Pet Hospital. If one of the Watson dogs or cats is hurt or sick, they retreat there to try to get better. Sometimes they do, but sometimes they die. Kenny waits for the same “magic” that helps some of the pets to help him, but he does not feel better.

Momma tries to get Kenny to play with Rufus and Cody, but Kenny has no interest. He gives away his dinosaurs to them. Kenny does not want to play basketball with By and his friends either, and he especially does not want to play with Joey, who annoys him with her whining and tattling: “I started hating her guts” (196).

Eventually Byron discovers Kenny’s hiding place and begins hanging out on the couch, asking Kenny to watch TV with him or come outside to play. Kenny resists, so Byron begins sleeping on the couch. He persuades Kenny to watch at least one show, change his clothes, and eat breakfast. Byron lets Kenny go back to hiding then. Byron says he won’t give up Kenny’s hiding place, but Kenny thinks Byron does because Momma and Dad stop discussing the bombing; now they say they are proud of Kenny. One day Byron insists on taking Kenny to the bathroom to show him that he, Byron, grew one long chin hair. Kenny looks in the mirror and, instead of the mustache he hopes to see, realizes he looks sad and still has a lazy eye. He cries and cries. Byron stays with him. Kenny asks how anyone could do such a terrible thing, and By says that Momma and Dad explained it as a sickness, but that he doesn’t understand that.

By tries to tell Kenny that no one will hurt them now, but Kenny finally admits it is guilt that he feels: He was in the church, and instead of fighting the Wool Pooh for Joey the way Byron fought it for him, he gave up and let the Wool Pooh have her. Byron tells Kenny that he is being dumb for even thinking that and that it is time to stop waiting for the fake magic of the pet hospital to work its powers. Kenny should realize instead that Joey was safe because she thought she saw Kenny: “If you hadn’t been born who would have took her away from that bomb? No one” (201). Byron also credits Kenny with being the only one of the four of them brave enough to go look for Joey in the church and tells him they will never be able to explain the hate and unfairness in the world; they can only “keep on steppin’” (203). Byron tells Kenny he has to check out of the hospital this very day.

Kenny realizes Byron is right about many things, but he thinks By is wrong about the reality of the Wool Pooh and magic powers, genies, and angels not existing. Kenny thinks the danger of the Wool Pooh is very real and that magic exists in the love that family members show one another. Kenny feels much better then and leaves the bathroom wondering how to get half his dinosaurs back from Rufus.

In a brief narrative at the close of the story, the author explains that the novel is set in the time of the civil rights movement in America. In 1963, discrimination was especially rampant in the South, where discriminatory measures like segregation were legal. Civil rights leaders, workers, and volunteers fought for change and sought to bring federal legislation that would end discriminatory practices: “Often the tension exploded into gunshots, fires, and bombings directed against the people who so bravely fought for change” (208). The author provides information about the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on September 15, 1963, the bombing to which he alludes in the novel; he discusses the four young girls killed in the blast and the two boys killed in the unrest afterwards. The author also praises the brave acts of those who fought for civil rights and who fight for change today.