My Pleasure Reading. Summary (pages 140-220)

Christmas, was unable to sleep, focuses his anger on Miss Burden. He felt he could forgive the fact that she'd lied to him about her age.

In the morning, Christmas went to a clearing, where he shaved and read a magazine.
Later he passed through the predominantly black part of town, then the white neighborhood.

The action then shifted to when Joe Christmas was five years old. Living in an orphanage, he went into the dietician’s room to steal some of her toothpaste. Suddenly, the dietician entered the room with a young male doctor, and Joe hided behind a curtain. The dietician and the man began to make love, and Joe, sick from eating too much toothpaste,vomited loudly and was discovered. The angry dietician shouted at him roughly.

After the incident, the dietician became paranoid that the boy would tell the director of the facility what he'd saw. She tried to buy him with a dollar to keep quiet, but he was too young to understand what had happened and did not accept the money. The dietician then came to the orphanage janitor, who confirmed her suggestions that the child was biracial. However, he refused to help the dietician brought that fact to matron, as it would result in the boy’s removal to an orphanage for black children.
Later, the janitor appeared at the dietician’s door, asking her what she planed to do with the boy. When he realized her intentions, the janitor disappeared with the child. The child was returned to the orphanage and, with the dietician’s intervention, was quickly adopted by a devoutly religious farmer, Mr. McEachern.