A white schoolteacher has Black freshman students in her class for the first and last time ever, Samuel and Samuel, who are twins. Their mother lives in a shack near the outskirts of town and has a relationship with a white man; she is also pregnant. The teacher believes the boys to be ignorant and white students have been told not to socialize with them because of who their mother is. The teacher reflects on a time when the twins' mother went to church and all of the white women walked out in protest.
The teacher and her students plan the annual party for the freshman class; Samuel and Samuel reveal that they can play the guitar and sing. The teacher pays the fee for the boys to enter the party, but they insist on paying her back. At the party, they do so all night and finally gain the acceptance of their peers. White students begin to be kind to them while in school, though their parents do not allow them to befriend the boys outside of school.
The boys come over to the teacher's house to help her with her garden, and around the same time, their mother gives birth to a baby girl who appears to be almost white. The teacher reads the boys a poem by William Blake about Blackness and the beauty of the natural world.
The boys try to sail over to a place like the one described in the poem and end up drowning. The teacher goes to their house to visit their grieving mother. She reads their mother the same poem she read to the boys, but realizes that there are no words that can take a mother's grief away fully.