The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963 underlines the importance of having other people to turn to for emotional support. Because he doesn’t have many friends at school, Kenny knows how nice it would be to have supportive people in his life. He often gets made fun of, so he’s overjoyed when a new kid in school, Rufus, turns out to be even easier to pick on than him. Though at first he hopes Rufus will attract all of the negative attention, he soon becomes close friends with Rufus. Unlike LJ Jones, who used to steal Kenny’s toys, Rufus is kind and approachable, making Kenny feel like he can relax and have fun with his new friend. Unfortunately, Kenny doesn’t even have this kind of companionship with his older brother, Byron, who always plays mean-spirited tricks on him. And yet, their relationship is complicated by the fact that Byron actually does care about Kenny—he just doesn’t always let his love show. He frequently plays the role of the protective older brother, even saving Kenny’s life at one point by jumping into a whirlpool and dragging him out. Even though it might not seem like it, then, the truth is that Kenny really does have people in his life who look out for him, whether it’s his new friend or his tough older brother. He also has his loving mother and father, as well as his sweet little sister, Joetta. By calling attention to the fact that Kenny’s loved ones stand by him, the novel implies that it’s not necessary to be popular or have a lot of friends—instead, a close group of kindhearted people can be more than enough to help a person through life.
People often take friendship for granted, but Kenny’s experience of temporarily losing Rufus as a playmate demonstrates how lonely it can feel to not have any friends. He’s extremely happy when he and Rufus first become friends, even though he originally thought it would be a bad idea—he worried that bullies would pick on them because they both get teased. But the benefits of friendship end up outweighing all else, and Kenny discovers how rewarding it is to have a friend who genuinely wants to spend time with him. Their friendship contrasts with the other relationships in Kenny’s life, like the strained friendship he had with LJ Jones, who didn’t appreciate Kenny and just wanted to play with (and steal!) his toys. Rufus, on the other hand, legitimately enjoys Kenny’s companionship and likes him as a person, which is why Kenny finds it so devastating when Rufus stops talking to him for a short period. Rufus isolates himself after Kenny laughs at a joke Larry Dunn makes about Rufus’s family. Of course, Kenny doesn’t mean to laugh, but the way Larry Dunn makes the joke catches him off guard and makes him chuckle, causing Rufus to ignore him for several days. Suddenly, everything in Kenny’s life feels like it has gotten worse. Without Rufus, Kenny feels a sense of joylessness, realizing that Rufus and Cody (Rufus’s little brother) are “the only two kids in the whole school” with whom he feels comfortable. His misery during this period highlights just how important friendship really is, making it clear that meaningful companionship can greatly improve a person’s quality of life.
Although Kenny places quite a bit of importance on his friendship with Rufus, he doesn’t necessarily think much about the support and companionship he receives from his own brother. Because Byron constantly picks on him, Kenny doesn’t see him as someone who provides much in the way of emotional support or camaraderie. However, the dynamic of their relationship slowly shifts over the course of the novel, as Byron becomes increasingly attuned to Kenny’s feelings. It’s never made clear what, exactly, inspires Byron to be more attentive to Kenny, though it’s possible that his behavior changes simply because his blossoming sense of responsibility helps him recognize the important role he occupies as Kenny’s older brother. To that end, he makes a point of protecting Kenny from harm, like when he dives into a whirlpool to save him from drowning. After pulling Kenny onto dry land, Byron doesn’t hold back from letting his emotions show: he cries, says Kenny’s name over and over, and presses his mouth to the top of his head. In this moment, it becomes clear that Byron cares deeply for his little brother and—despite his tendency to bully him—is eager to show him support when he really needs it.
In fact, Kenny’s entire family shows him love and support, even if they can’t always help him overcome his problems. When Kenny feels sad and disturbed after witnessing the effects of a church bombing, nobody in the family knows how to cheer him up—but this doesn’t mean they aren’t there for him. To the contrary, his parents spend long hours talking about how to make him feel better and trying to get him to stay active. However, their efforts to cheer him up are unsuccessful. Nobody but Byron is able to make him feel better, perhaps because Byron speaks directly to him about what’s bothering him. He offers understanding and support, but he also doesn’t shy away from speaking frankly with Kenny, telling him that he can’t spend his entire life dwelling on his sadness. In this way, Byron helps his little brother see that life is scary and hard, but he does so in a way that gently encourages Kenny to be brave and resilient, thus inspiring Kenny to stop hiding behind the couch every day. And once Kenny decides to return to his normal life, he’s happy to see that everyone (including the rest of his family and Rufus) is ready to greet him with open arms—a clear sign of how gratifying and important it is to have a strong network of support and companionship, even if that network is small.
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Family, Friendship, and Support Quotes in The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963
All of my family sat real close together on the couch under a blanket. Dad said this would generate a little heat but he didn’t have to tell us this, it seemed like the cold automatically made us want to get together and huddle up.
I could have done a lot of stuff to him. If it had been me with my lips stuck on something like this he’d have tortured me for a couple of days before he got help. Not me, though, I nearly broke my neck trying to get into the house to rescue Byron.
I couldn’t believe it. I think Byron was proud of me!
When everybody saw Byron wasn’t going to do anything to me for being smart they all decided that they better not do anything either. I still got called Egghead or Poindexter or Professor some of the time but that wasn’t bad compared to what could have happened.
Finally Byron gave me some good advice. He noticed that when I talked to people I squinched my lazy eye kind of shut or that I’d put my hand on my face to cover it. I only did this ’cause it got hard to talk to someone when they were staring at your eye instead of listening to what you had to say.
“Look, man,” he told me, “if you don’t want people to look at your messed-up eye you just gotta do this.” Byron made me stand still and look straight ahead, then he stood on my side and told me to look at him. I turned my head to look. “Naw, man, keep your head straight and look at me sideways.”
Then he said something that made me get all funny and nervous inside, he said, “How come your eyes ain’t lookin’ in the same way?” I looked to see if maybe this was the start of some teasing but he looked like he really wanted to know. He wasn’t staring at me either, he was kind of looking down and kicking at the dirt with his raggedy shoes.
The other thing wrong with him was his clothes. It didn’t take people too long before they counted how many pairs of pants and shirts Rufus and Cody had. That was easy to do because Rufus only had two shirts and two pairs of pants and Cody only had three shirts and two pairs of pants. They also had one pair of blue jeans that they switched off on; some days Rufus wore them and some days Cody rolled the legs up and put them on.
I couldn’t believe how sad I got. It’s funny how things could change so much and you wouldn’t notice. All of a sudden I started remembering how much I hated riding the bus, all of a sudden I started remembering how lunchtime under the swing set alone wasn’t very much fun, all of a sudden I started remembering that before Rufus came to Flint my only friend was the world’s biggest dinosaur thief, LJ Jones, all of a sudden I remembered that Rufus and Cody were the only two kids in the whole school (other than Byron and Joey) that I didn’t automatically look at sideways.
“But you notice that not everybody gets froze like that, it’s just them folks from down South who got that thin, down-home blood who freeze so quick. And you know Momma ain’t from Flint, she grew up in Alabama and that means half of y’all’s blood is real thin, so Momma’s worried that one morning it’s gonna be cold enough to freeze you all.
“That’s where them fake garbage trucks come in. Every morning they go round picking the froze folks off the street, and they need them big doors because someone who got froze don’t bend in the middle and they wouldn’t fit in no regular ambulance.”
Byron jerked Larry’s arms over his head three times. Larry Dunn was really tough! Not only because he wasn’t crying when By was going to mess him up, but also because when Byron jerked his arms over his head like that we all could see that Larry’s skinny little windbreaker was ripped under both arms and Larry just had on a T-shirt underneath it.
It was hard to do, but I kind of felt sorry for Byron, though not too sorry because I knew he deserved whatever happened, first because he had a chance to escape and didn’t take it and second because he was being a bad influence on me. Nazi Parachutes Attack America and Get Shot Down over the Flint River by Captain Byron Watson and His Flamethrower of Death looked like a real cool movie for me to make too. If Momma just gave Byron some stupid punishment, then maybe it would be worth it for me to flush some Nazis down the drain myself. But if you got set on fire for doing it the movie wasn’t worth making.
I tried to look real intelligent and I guess it worked ’cause finally Dad said, “Kenny, we’ve put a lot of thought into this. I know you’ve seen on the news what’s happening in some parts of the South, right?” We’d seen the pictures of a bunch of really mad white people with twisted-up faces screaming and giving dirty finger signs to some little Negro kids who were trying to go to school. I’d seen the pictures but I didn’t really know how these white people could hate some kids so much.
“I’ve seen it.” I didn’t have to tell Dad I didn’t understand.
“Well, a lot of times that’s going to be the way of the world for you kids. Byron is getting old enough to have to understand that his time for playing is running out fast, he’s got to realize the world doesn’t have a lot of jokes waiting for him. He’s got to be ready.”
“Well, that’s what being a grown-up is like. At first it’s scary but then before you realize, with a lot of practice, you have it under control. Hopefully you’ll have lots of time to practice being grown-up before you actually have to do it.”
“Man, they got crackers and rednecks up here that ain’t never seen no Negroes before. If they caught your ass out here like this they’d hang you now, then eat you later.”
Byron dropped me on the ground right on top of all the water and junk that I’d thrown up. I knew he was going to make a stupid joke about me landing face-first in all that mess but he didn’t, he just wrapped his arms around my shoulders real tight and put his mouth right on top of my head! Byron was shaking like he was getting electrocuted and crying like a baby and kissing the top of my head over and over!
Grandma Sands called a couple of times and told them that the police thought two white men drove by in a car and threw it in during services, or that they’d already hidden it in the church with a clock set to go off during Sunday school. However it got in the church it had killed four little girls, blinded a couple more and sent a bunch of other people to the hospital. I couldn’t stop wondering if those two little girls I saw on the lawn were okay.
From my secret hiding place in the living room I could listen to Momma and Dad and it seemed like they spent most of the time trying to figure out how they could explain to us what happened. Some of the time they were mad, some of the time they were calm and some of the time they just sat on the couch and cried.
He waited a long time before he answered, “I don’t know, Kenny. Momma and Dad say they can’t help themselves, they did it because they’re sick, but I don’t know. I ain’t never heard of no sickness that makes you kill little girls just because you don’t want them in your school. I don’t think they’re sick at all, I think they just let hate eat them up and turn them into monsters. But it’s O.K. now, they can’t hurt you here. It’s all right.”
He was also very wrong about there not being anything like magic powers or genies or angels. Maybe those weren’t the things that could make a run-over dog walk without wobbling but they were out there.
Maybe they were in the way your father smiled at you even after you’d messed something up real bad. Maybe they were in the way you understood that your mother wasn’t trying to make you the laughing “sock” of the whole school when she’d call you over in front of a bunch of your friends and use spit on her finger to wipe the sleep out of your eyes. Maybe it was magic powers that let you know she was just being Momma. Maybe they were the reason that you really didn’t care when the kids would say, “Yuck! You let your momma slob on you?” and you had to say, “Shut up. That’s my momma, we got the same germs.”
