Excerpt from Colored Television by Danzy Senna, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

ming, as they cruised down the street, searching for the turn.

"Why are we going to look at a new house again?" Ruby said from the back seat.

"Yeah, why are we looking?" Finn said. "We already have a house." "I don't want to move again," Ruby said. "I like it on the mountain." "I know, sweetie," Jane said. "But that house belongs to Brett. That's

why we're here. We're trying to find our forever home." "Who's Brett again?"

"My friend," she said. "The owner of our house."

Lenny sighed. He hadn't thought it wise to confuse the kids more by looking at an open house they could not afford. He thought they should spend the time looking for a rental in Burbank. He'd shown Jane a few he had found online. They were hideous. Jane argued that if they moved to a rental in Burbank they would only be yanking the kids up again in a few months when she sold her novel and got her promotion and raise. They would never want to settle down in Burbank.

So Lenny had agreed to come along, and he'd agreed to wear the yellow polo shirt she'd bought him last week.

"I feel like a fool," he said now, irritable behind the steering wheel. "This shirt."

"You look great," Jane said. And he did. They all looked perfect. "Dignified and articulate," she added.

Lenny snorted a laugh. "That's the most racist thing you've ever said to me."

"Okay. Eloquent and Du Boisian. Is that better?"

"Now you're scaring me." But he was smiling a little bit.

"Did you know that on the Finn planet," Finn said, "we speak our own language?"

"There's no such place as the Finn planet," Ruby muttered, rolling her eyes.

"It's called Satama. Kuka is the word for hello. Can you say kukajawani, Mama?"

"Kukajawani," Jane said. "Kukajawani."

"The longer We lives here, the less he remembers about the Finn planet," Finn said. "Soon it'll be all gone."

"Mom, will you tell him to stop talking about the Finn planet?" The therapist at the clinic had explained to her and Finn that a conversation was like a tree. It grew in branches that flowed out from the trunk. Which meant you couldn't just enter a conversation talking about something random or you would break away from the tree.

"Remember," Jane said now, imitating the therapist's sanguine tone of voice. "A conversation is like a tree"—she looked up—"This is the street," she said. "The house should be right up ahead."

"Is that it?" Lenny said, nodding ahead to a cluster of neighbors standing on a lawn.

"No," Jane said, peering out. "That's just a lemonade stand." "Ooh, can we get some?" Ruby said.

Lenny slowed down as they passed the lemonade stand, which was staffed by two little boys about Ruby's age. Both the boys were Black. Their mothers—at least the women Jane assumed to be their mothers— were also Black, one with a short natural, the other with long, straight hair. They were talking to a white hippie couple with a Labradoodle puppy. The hippie mother was a blonde beach babe type, and beside her was a handsome, shirtless dad wearing board shorts. Their towheaded child in a princess dress, short-haired, genderless, ran in circles waving a wand while the two families laughed together.

"Look, it's your new best friends," Lenny said, as they rolled past, reading her mind.

Across the street from the lemonade stand and the gathering of neighbors was the house they'd come to see. There was a realtor's sign out front. It looked even better to Jane than it had in the photos on the website. It was a rich shade of Craftsman brown, and the porch was a wraparound, with wicker furniture and lush potted plants. The agent was standing on the porch, adjusting pillows on a chair, when they walked up. Jane thought he looked pleased by the sight of them. Maybe because Lenny was a Black man wearing a yellow polo shirt. Jane had noticed over the years that everybody loved a Black man in a yellow polo. She watched the agent take in Finn, whom she had dressed in Max's slacks and red T-shirt and Converse sneakers. She'd found a new product for his hair that held the curls in place, so Black women wouldn't give her the side-eye at the park anymore. Jane had done Ruby's hair in tight braids on either side of her face, using plenty of conditioner to smooth the frizz away, and she wore a new outfit Jane had charged at the mall, white leggings and pink T-shirt over a light-green undershirt, sparkly pink sneakers—a little girl from a Hanna Andersson catalog.

Excerpted from Colored Television by Danzy Senna. Copyright © 2024 by Danzy Senna. Excerpted by permission of Riverhead Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.