Bud, Not Buddy tells the story of the orphaned Bud Caldwell, a young boy who has been living between foster homes and an orphanage since his mother passed away four years ago. While on the surface, Bud’s story is about his search for the man he thinks is his father, Herman E. Calloway, and his journey from Flint to Grand Rapids to find him, it is also a story of Bud’s search for a family to call his own. Having lost Momma at such an early age, Bud unconsciously looks for a person to do the impossible: to fill the void his mother left. Bud’s ambitious goal, unsurprisingly, comes with a few disappointments. He is forced to watch his “new pretend brother”—his friend and fellow orphan, Bugs—go off on a train to Chicago “before [they] could really get to know each other,” after their dreams of going West together go awry. Yet despite this and other disappointments, Bud finally finds his place among the members of Herman’s band towards the end. It is with tears, despite not crying for years because his “eyes don’t cry no more,” that Bud accepts his place among the band members of the Dusky Devastators/Nubian Knights, filling the four-year-old hole his mother left in him once and for all. Though Bud starts the journey looking for the man he believes is his father, he ultimately realizes that a community of people who love and care for him unconditionally is worth the same as any blood relative. Thus, Curtis shows that finding a home is not always about blood but is instead about finding a place of love and acceptance.
Deza Malone is one of the first people to fully reveal—even to Bud himself—the emphasis Bud places on family in the absence of a home. During their conversations together, she tells Bud that he’s “different” from the other “poor kids on the road all alone.” Unlike them, Bud “[carries his] family around inside of [him].” Bud agrees and says, “I guess I do. Inside my suitcase, too.” This moment reveals that Bud’s close relationship with his suitcase is connected to his yearning for a close relationship with his family. The absence of a family leads him to carry his suitcase, full of the mementos from his late mother, as a sign that he belonged and belongs with someone, who by blood, has an obligation to create a home for him. After Deza helps him to this realization, he becomes even more set on this limited definition of family and home. Later that night, Bud has the epiphany that “someone who doesn’t know who their family is, is like dust blowing around in a story [because] they don’t really belong any one place.” Bud weaves together the concept of blood, family, and a home to call his own in his mind until they form an unbreakable sequence in Bud’s head: if he can find his relative, he can have a family, and thus he can make a home for himself.
It isn’t until Bud gets to Grand Rapids that his ideas about families and homes begin to unravel; it is there he recognizes for the first time that he feels most at home not with Herman E. Calloway, the man Bud is supposedly related to, but with members of Herman’s band, despite not having blood ties with any of them. It is at his first dinner with the band, while enjoying the “best meal [he’d] ever had,” that Bud realizes that “of all the people he’d ever met these were the ones. This was where [he] was supposed to be.” Suddenly home is no longer a place built around shared blood and kinship, but rather a place filled with the people who make Bud feel welcome and accepted. Bud commemorates the moment with tears he hasn’t let fall in years: “I was smiling and laughing and busting my gut so much that I got carried away and some rusty old valve squeaked open in me then […] tears started jumping out of my eyes so hard […].” The tears mark a change of perspective, a new chapter in Bud’s life to share with a family he never predicted he would have. Bud’s change of perspective is confirmed when—while Miss Thomas, the band’s vocalist, consoles him on her lap—he hears “something [whisper] to [him] in a language that [he] didn’t have any trouble understanding.” The voice tells Bud to “Go ahead and cry [because he’s] home.” This final moment suggests that Bud has not only found a new family, but also that the new family is ready to accept and welcome him with open arms. He is part of their home now as much as they are part of his.
Though Bud continues to “[carry his] Momma inside [him] [because] there wasn’t anyone or anything that could take away from that or add to it either,” he accepts that there are different types of homes, some defined by blood ties, others defined by shared laughs, meals, and goals.
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Family and Home Quotes in Bud, Not Buddy
This was the third foster home I was going to and I’m used to packing up and leaving, but it still surprises me that there are always a few seconds, right after they tell you you’ve got to go, when my nose gets all runny and my throat gets all choky and my eyes get all sting-y. But the tears coming out doesn’t happen to me anymore, I don’t know when it first happened, but it seems like my eyes don’t cry no more.
It’s at six that grown folks don’t think you’re a cute little kid anymore, they talk to you and expect that you understand everything they mean. And you’d best understand too, if you aren’t looking for some real trouble, ‘cause it’s around six that grown folks stop giving you little swats and taps and jump clean up to giving you slugs that’ll knock you right down and have you seeing stars in the middle of the day. The first foster home I was in taught me that real quick.
After while the stings and fish-guard bite quit hurting so much. I started getting madder and madder. I was mad at the Amoses, but most of all I was mad at me for believing there really was a vampire in the shed and for getting trapped like this where there wasn’t anybody who cared what happened to me.
I can’t all the way blame Todd for giving me trouble, though. If I had a regular home with a mother and father, I wouldn’t be too happy about other kids living in my house either. Being unhappy about it is one thing but torturing the kids who are there even though they don’t want to be is another. It was my job to make sure other kids who didn’t know where their mothers and fathers were didn’t have to put up with Todd.
I knew a nervous-looking, stung up kid with blood dripping from a fish-head bite and carrying a old raggedy suitcase didn’t look like he belonged around here.
She’d tell me, “Especially don’t you ever let anyone call you Buddy, I may have some problems but being stupid isn’t one of them. I would’ve added that dy onto the end of your name if I intended for it to be there […] Your name is Bud, period.
“A bud is a flower-to-be. A flower in waiting. Waiting for just the right warmth and care to open up. It’s a little fist of love waiting to unfold and be seen by the world. And that’s you.”
It’s funny how now that I’m ten years old and just about a man I can see how Momma was so wrong. She was wrong because she probably should’ve told me the things she thought I was too young to hear, because now that she’s gone I’ll never know what they were. Even if I was too young back then I could’ve rememorized them and used them when I did need help, like right now.
“I’m sorry, Bud, I didn’t mean to scare you, but everybody knows how you like to sleep with that knife open so I figured I’d best grab holt of you so’s you wouldn’t wake up slicing nobody.”
I spit a big glob in my hand and said, “We’re brother forever, Bugs!”
We slapped our hands together as hard as we could and got our slobs mixed up real good, then waved them in the air so they’d dry. Now it was official, I finally had a brother!
“My mother said the same thing, that families should be there for each other all the time. She always used to tell me that no matter where I went or what I did that she’d be there for me, even if she wasn’t somewhere that I could see her […] She would tell me every night before I went to sleep that no matter what happened I could sleep knowing that there had never been a little boy, anywhere, anytime, who was loved more than she loved me. She told me that as long as I remembered that I’d be OK.”
Someone who doesn’t know who their family is, is like dust blowing around in a storm, they don’t really belong any one place […] I might not know who my family was, but I knew they were out there somewhere, and it seemed to make a whole lot more sense to think that they were somewhere around Flint instead of out west.
The train and my new pretend brother got farther and farther away, chugging to Chicago. Man. I’d found some family and he was gone before we could really get to know each other.
I was smiling and laughing and busting my gut so much that I got carried away and some rusty old valve squeaked open in me then…woop, zoop, sloop…tears started jumping out of my eyes so hard that I had to cover my face with the big red and white napkin that was on the table.
I wasn’t sure if it was her lips or her hand, but something whispered to me in a language that I didn’t have any trouble understanding, it said, “Go ahead and cry, Bud, you’re home.”
I said, “Yes, ma’am, my spirit’s a lot stronger than it looks too, most folks are really surprised by that.”
“That’s great, Bud. Something tells me you were a godsend to us, you keep that in mind all of the time, OK?”
“We’ve been hoping for eleven years that she’d send word or come home, and she finally has. Looks to me like she sent us the best word we’ve had in years.”
Miss Thomas smiled at me and I knew she was trying to say I was the word that my momma had sent to them.
The picture looked like it belonged. It’s strange the way things turn out, here I’d been carrying Momma around for all this time and I’d finally put her somewhere where she wanted to be, back in her own bedroom, back amongst all her horses.
