- When they wake up in the morning, Victor asks Mam what she thinks the three words on the dollar bill pieces mean, but she doesn't know either.
- He decides that when he gets the last word, he'll tape the dollar bill together and never spend it. He'll keep it close to him instead.
- Over breakfast, Mam asks where Victor's newspaper bags have gone and he feels guilty. They've been missing ever since he snuck into Ara T's shed, though of course he can't tell Mam that.
- Instead he tells her that someone must have taken them. Mam gives him a hard look to show that she knows somethingis up.
- He goes outside later that day and reads a book about Babe Ruth. He also thinks about the word "unknown" written on his birth certificate. He can't help it—that piece of information has been clanging around in his head for days.
- On Sunday, Victor goes with Mam to her church choir practice. He looks at her injured face and feels badly that she doesn't get to go anywhere on her own; she's always stuck taking care of him. And the one time she takes some vacation days, she returns with a busted up lip.
- On the bus ride home, he tries to grill her for information about who hurt her, but she won't say anything. Then he asks her why she has to sit in the back of the bus. She says that's just what the rules are; black people sit at the back and white people sit at the front.
- Victor has a hard time going to sleep that night while he thinks about all the injustices that Mam faces, including someone hitting her and having to play by the rules of racism.