Coming of age meant a lot to moody in the specific areas of race. She was beginning to understand that the world that she lived in wasn't all friends and fun. She thought it was ok to talk to whites and sit with them. Like the time at the movies when all the blacks have to sit on the top balcony and the whites sit down below. She had friends that she played with that were going to the white area of the movie theater and when she started to go there her mom grabbed her by the hand and told her its not the place for dark skinned people. That was only one part of the racial differences. She then saw racial differences between blacks and yellow skinned people. One example was with her dad that decided to abandon her mom and the rest of the family for a yellow skinned female whose husband died in an accident on the farms they worked at. Then again when her and her family moved to a new town after her mom divorced her dad and her mom's new boyfriend was yellow and the rest of his family was yellow. The yellow people didn't like her mom just because she was black and was going out with a yellow skinned male. The darker skinned you were the more solo life you lived was what she was beginning to understand at very high costs to her and her mom.
She also realized a difference between the colors of races by the amount of money each race has. The whites were always the most rich and had everything that could be imagined. Like when she moved after her mom divorced her dad the white kids had roller skates to play with as she only had her siblings to play with and make up games for her and her brother and sister to play. Her and her siblings would sit on apple crates and watch the white kids roll around on their skates. The yellow people weren't as rich as the whites were but they had a little more money then moody and her family did. They owned their own house while moody and her family had to rent a shack type house from the whites and work on their farms or do their house work.