SCOFIELD TOUCHED MY ARM. “HERE we is,” he said.
We had come to a huge tenement building.
“Where are we?” I said.
“This is the place where most of us live,” he said. “Come on.”
So that was it, the meaning of the kerosene. I couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe they had the nerve. All the windows seemed empty. They’d blacked it out themselves. I saw now only by flash or flame.
“Where will you live?” I said, looking up, up.
“You call this living?” Scofield said. “It’s the only way to get rid of it, man…”

—from Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, first published 1952

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