The bond develops between Twyla (the black girl) and Roberta (the white girl) as a result of how they are treated by the other orphans. Both of the girls' mothers are still alive, therefore they "[aren't] real orphans with beautiful dead parents in the sky." Both, particularly Twyla, whose mother "danced all night," retain the glimmer of hope that someone will come get them.
In addition, both Twyla and Roberta failed subjects in school. Roberta also has the kind habit of leaving "whole pieces of things on her plate" for Twyla, who is undernourished, to eat.
The bond develops out of loneliness, things shared in common, and their isolation from the other orphans and their teachers. This is particularly interesting in light of the prejudice that both girls have learned. Twyla's mother forewarned her that white people "smelled funny." Meanwhile, Roberta's mother expresses her disapproval of black people by "[looking] down at [Twyla] and then looked down at Mary too" before refusing Mary's handshake, then walking quickly to the back of the line in front of the chapel. This mistrust has been instilled in them, but it becomes irrelevant at the orphanage, where they have no other recourse for companionship. When Roberta later, during young adulthood, dismisses Twyla for her ignorance about Jimi Hendrix, as though trying to embarrass her, Twyla is able to use their shared memory of abandonment to remind her that they are the same.
Another shared memory that becomes muddled in both of their minds is that of the abuse of Maggie, "a sandy-colored," mute, bow-legged old woman who worked in the kitchen. Her vulnerability and childlike appearance, including the "chin-straps of her baby boy hat," made her a target of the older orphans. Roberta and Twyla imagine themselves as Maggie's abusers, though they never were. For Roberta, the old woman's mental instability reminds her of her mother's mental illness and her fear that she would face the same fate. For Twyla, Maggie's deaf-mute state reminds her of her mother, who danced all night, who heard nothing but party music, who "would [not] hear you if you cried in the night." Maggie's small, awkward body reminds the girls of their own vulnerability and of the fact that they, like Maggie, were not wanted by anyone. Maybe they could end up like her, too.
Roberta, due to her whiteness, is able to achieve an upper-class status that eludes Twyla. However, that sense of vulnerability, of not being wanted, revisits them through the memory of Maggie. In an attempt to free herself from it, and knowing the currency of her whiteness, Roberta tries to make herself less vulnerable through a rejection of Twyla. She first does this in the 1960s at the Howard Johnson's where Twyla works as a waitress. She does it again, probably in the 1970s, when protesting against busing. In a moment of peril, the narrator reaches for Roberta, who, at the orphanage, had been there to pull her up, "to kick and scratch" during a fight; but, in this instance, "no receiving hand was there."
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