“There are fifteen black people in the class and seven white people. And there’s me. There’s another girl who sits in the back. Her name is Carmen LaGuardia, and she has hair like mine, my same color skin, and she counts as black, I don’t understand how, but she seems to know.” 

When 11-year-old Rachel first starts school in Portland, she is unaware of the implications of her mixed-race appearance; her hair and skin color, for example, are similar to Carmen’s, but her blue eyes set her apart from the other Black girls. Not fully Black and not fully White, Rachel is confused as to where she fits in.

“When he finally reached the courtyard, he saw that his bird was not a bird at all. His bird was a boy and a girl and a mother and a child.” 

When Jamie leaves his apartment to see if he can find the large bird he thinks he saw fly past his window, he realizes that he has seen people falling: Nella and her children. Jamie’s interest in birds foreshadows his interest in Rachel, whom he first mistakes for a bird.

“Jamie thought of the great egret, of his life list, of his father James. He thought of how much he wanted a new history to his name, and he said, ‘My name’s Brick. I’m eleven. B-r-i-c-k.’”

Jamie changes his name in order to reinvent himself. His father, for whom he is named, is absent, and his mother is distracted by her drug habit; Jamie is a young boy who wants to make an impression on the world, so he calls himself Brick, an object that has weight and strength.