Langston "Bitsy" Pittman is born a Mulatto, undersized and glaringly biracial. When he is five years old, Bitsy's black mother enrolls him in the Second Street Christian School, the only student there of African descent. His white father abandons the family shortly afterwards, and Bitsy's mother dies of a massive heart attack a few years later. The boy turns bitter, blaming his mother's death on a God who could have saved her but failed to do so. Bitsy renounces his faith, quits school, and eventually turns to a life of crime. One night, many years later, Bitsy sets out to burglarize a liquor store but discovers that the police have staked it out. Furious, he stumbles upon his former school and breaks in. In a bizarre twist of circumstances, he finds himself trapped inside the building as the new day dawns. Bitsy is forced to flee to the attic, and through vents in the floor, watches as the school day unfolds in the classrooms below.