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He was clutching the small animal so tightly I thought he himself might put an end to its miserable life.

“Yes, if no one wanted it, they'd do away with it.”

“But Mom, isn't that place called a place for the protection of animals?”

“Yes.”

“Well.” He thought for a few minutes. “Wow! What sort of person would have a job like that? Going around killing animals all the time.”

I saw my opening. “Of course, some people have jobs that order them to go around killing human beings.”

The earlier shock was nothing to the sensation that caught and held him. He nearly squeezed the breath out of the kitten. “What? Who? Who kills human beings?”

“Oh, soldiers, sailors. Pilots who use machine guns and bombs. You know. That's mainly what they're hired for.”

He leaned back in the car, stroking the kitten. Silent, thinking.

I never mentioned killing again and he never asked for another weapon.

Leonard Sillman's Broadway hit New Faces of 1953 came West in 1954. San Francisco, already the home of irreverent comedians, political folk singers, expensively dressed female impersonators, beat poets and popular cabaret singers, took the witty revue to its heart. Don Curry and I attended an early matinée. When Eartha Kitt sang “Monotonous” in her throaty vibrato and threw her sleek body on a sleek chaise longue, the audiences loved her. Alice Ghostly, with “Boston Beguine,” created a picture of a hilarious seduction scene in a seedy hotel lobby where “even the palms seemed to be potted.” Paul Lynde, as a missionary newly returned from a three-day tour of the African continent, and Robert Clary, as the cup-sized Frenchman rolling his saucer eyes, turned farce into a force that was irresistible. Ronnie Graham shared the writing and performed in skits with June Carrol.

I left the theater nearly numb. The quality of talent and quantity of energy had drained me of responses.

My family made plans to come to the Onion for an early show. Mother was coming with Aunt Lottie, and they were bringing a few old-time gamblers from the Fillmore district who never left the Negro neighborhood except to buy expensive suits from white tailors. Ivonne was bringing her daughter, Joyce, and Clyde. I reserved front-row seats and then spent a nervous thirty minutes waiting for them to arrive.

The adults had a loud, happy reunion in the front row. A stranger could easily have deduced that they had not seen each other in months or more probably years.

Mother's friends examined Clyde and complimented him on growing so fast. He beamed and threw back his already wide shoulders. Lottie praised Joyce for “turning into a fine young lady” and the conservatively dressed men who generally dealt the poker at the legally illegal gambling houses smiled at everyone and politely ordered drinks for the party. Ketty Lester, a great beauty who hailed from a small Arkansas town thirty miles north of my home, always opened the show. She sang good songs and sang them well. Phyllis Diller followed her and spread her aura of madness over the stage and onto the audience, and then I closed the round's entertainment. The older people were transfixed by Ketty's singing. She sang “Little Girl from Little Rock” and the Black people who all had Southern roots acted as if the song had been written expressly for Ketty to sing to them. From the rear of the club, I watched as they smiled and nodded to one another and didn't have to be in hearing distance to know they were exchanging “That's right” and “Sure is” and “Ain't that the truth?”

There was only a minute between the last notes of her encore and Phyllis Diller's introduction. Curiosity kept me standing against the back wall, for I wanted to see how my family would take to the frumpy comedienne. Black people rarely forgave whites for being ragged, unkempt and uncaring. There was a saying which explained the disapproval: “You been white all your life. Ain't got no further along than this? What ails you?”

When Phyllis came out