Compare and contrast how Trevor, his mother, and Abel reacted to the incident at the mulberry tree.

While growing up in the Eden Park neighborhood, Trevor is bullied one day by a group of colored boys. They find him playing near a mulberry tree, and they taunt him while throwing mulberries at him. Trevor goes home in tears and covered in berry juice, which leads to his mother joking that he finally looks Black. The mulberries symbolize Trevor's inability to fit in and belong to any single racial grouping. Even though he physically most resembles a colored person, the other colored kids reject him because he speaks and behaves in ways they associate with being Black. When he is covered with mulberry juice, staining his skin, Trevor is almost able to "pass" as belonging clearly to one group where he could find a sense of identity, but underneath the juice, he is still someone other. Whatever his physical appearance might suggest, on the inside, Trevor feels fundamentally different from everyone he encounters. Mother finds the incident funny only because the red stains on Trevor are not blood but berries.