The Color of Water: Chapter 18 Summary & Analysis

In June of 1974 Ruth announces the family is moving to Delaware. Three years after the death of her second husband, her house is in disrepair and she’s unable to maintain it financially. James is excited to leave; his old friends are bad news, and he’ll probably have to complete an additional year of school if he stays in New York. Meanwhile, his sisters love the city and want to stay. Ruth waffles back and forth, but eventually commits to moving. At the end of the summer, the family loads up a U-Haul and drives to Wilmington, chosen because Ruth has an old friend who lives in the state.

James and his family are shocked by the suburbs. Unlike in New York, where they could take public transportation anywhere, they need a car to navigate the town. The town itself is shockingly segregated, with white families living in the suburbs and attending well-funded schools, and black families living in the city at understaffed, underfunded schools.

One evening, while the family is driving, they’re pulled over by state troopers. David, who was driving, had made an illegal U-turn, and although that’s generally only cause for a ticket or citation, he’s taken to night court. In court Ruth panics, and yells across the room to David not to plead guilty. From this moment on Ruth decides she hates Delaware and is moving. She loads her daughters on the Amtrak going north, but two hours later James has convinced her to stay.

James understands that Ruth is “spinning in crazy circles only because she was trying to survive,” and she always starts running when she’s in a tight spot. For the past thirty years she’s been married, but now she has to run a family entirely alone. Eventually, Ruth is jolted out of her spiral of panic and guilt by prayer, and by her commitment to her children’s education. Unhappy with the public schools, she gets her driver’s license and attempts to enroll James in a private or Catholic school. His years of missing school mean he can’t pass their entrance exams, however, so James is forced to go to the all-black Pierre S. Du Pont High School.

Luckily, James and his sisters like Du Pont high school. James finds the schoolwork easy and commits himself to music instead of drinking and doing drugs. He is even selected to travel to Europe with the American Youth Jazz Band. Although James cannot pay for it, Mr. and Mrs. Dawson, a rich white couple from Pennsylvania, sponsor him. Their one request is that he, and other students they sponsor, work at their estate on weekends during the summer. James is aware of what a turnaround he has had in life—from sitting on the Corner in Louisville to acting as a butler for rich white people in the Pennsylvania suburbs. Although the men and women he serves (among them the governor of Delaware) are nothing like him or his family, James “had no anger toward them”; instead, his “anger at the world had been replaced by burning ambition.”

James is a terrible butler, but he gets along with Mrs. Dawson, who is the first white person to talk to him about music, art, and literature. James also works in the grounds and gardens of the estate, but he’s bad at that too, and eventually Mrs. Dawson fires him. He’s upset that she tells him “You, boy, have to learn to work,” but is grateful to be fired.

Years later, as a college student, James receives a letter from Mrs. Dawson that Mr. Dawson has died of cancer. Later on that day another black student comments that “whiteys” are “all rich. They got no problems,” and while James agrees, he feels conflicted.

James considers graduating from high school and immediately trying to start a music career, but more than anything wants to leave Delaware, which he knows will be easier if he goes to college. He applies and is admitted to Oberlin, and in September 1975 packs his bags and drives to the Greyhound station. Even as he is getting out, James is aware that Ruth is stuck in the state. She has few friends, and cannot get along with anyone, black or white. As his bus begins to drive away he thinks of all the times Ruth has put him on a bus—to camp, to elementary school, to Kentucky—to try and guarantee him a better life. He knows how much it hurts her to send her children away, but he also knows she believes it is the best way to make sure they are successful. Although Ruth never cries in front of her children, as the bus turns the corner James can see Ruth sobbing against the wall of the bus station.