1ONE winter morning in the long-ago, four-year-old days of my life I found myself standing before a fireplace, warming my hands over a mound of glowing coals, listening to the wind whistle past the house outside. All morning my mother had been scolding me, telling me to keep still, warning me that I must make no noise. And I was angry, fretful, and impatient. In the next room Granny lay ill and under the day and night care of a doctor and I knew that I would be punished if I did not obey. I crossed restlessly to the window and pushed back the long fluffy white curtains—which I had been forbidden to touch—and looked yearningly out into the empty street. I was dreaming of running and playing and shouting, but the vivid image of Granny’s old, white, wrinkled, grim face, framed by a halo of tumbling black hair, lying upon a huge feather pillow, made me afraid.

2The house was quiet. Behind me my brother—a year younger than I—was playing placidly upon the floor with a toy. A bird wheeled past the window and I greeted it with a glad shout.

3“You better hush,” my brother said.

4“You shut up,” I said.

5My mother stepped briskly into the room and closed the door behind her. She came to me and shook her finger in my face.

6“You stop that yelling, you hear?” she whispered. “You know Granny’s sick and you better keep quiet!”

7I hung my head and sulked. She left and I ached with boredom.

8“I told you so,” my brother gloated.

9“You shut up,” I told him again.

10I wandered listlessly about the room, trying to think of something to do, dreading the return of my mother, resentful of being neglected. The room held nothing of interest except the fire and finally I stood before the shimmering embers, fascinated by the quivering coals. An idea of a new kind of game grew and took root in my mind. Why not throw something into the fire and watch it burn? I looked about. There was only my picture book and my mother would beat me if I burned that. Then what? I hunted around until I saw the broom leaning in a closet. That’s it.... Who would bother about a few straws if I burned them? I pulled out the broom and tore out a batch of straws and tossed them into the fire and watched them smoke, turn black, blaze, and finally become white wisps of ghosts that vanished. Burning straws was a teasing kind of fun and I took more of them from the broom and cast them into the fire. My brother came to my side, his eyes drawn by the blazing straws.

11“Don’t do that,” he said.

12“How come?” I asked.

13“You’ll burn the whole broom,” he said.

14“You hush,” I said.

15“I’ll tell,” he said.

16“And I’ll hit you,” I said.

17My idea was growing, blooming. Now I was wondering just how the long fluffy white curtains would look if I lit a bunch of straws and held it under them. Would I try it? Sure. I pulled several straws from the broom and held them to the fire until they blazed; I rushed to the window and brought the flame in touch with the hems of the curtains. My brother shook his head.

18“Naw,” he said.

19He spoke too late. Red circles were eating into the white cloth; then a flare of flames shot out. Startled, I backed away. The fire soared to the ceiling and I trembled with fright. Soon a sheet of yellow lit the room. I was terrified; I wanted to scream but was afraid. I looked around for my brother; he was gone. One half of the room was now ablaze. Smoke was choking me and the fire was licking at my face, making me gasp.

20I made for the kitchen; smoke was surging there too. Soon my mother would smell that smoke and see the fire and come and beat me. I had done something wrong, something which I could not hide or deny. Yes, I would run away and never come back. I ran out of the kitchen and into the back yard. Where could I go? Yes, under the house! Nobody would find me there. I crawled under the house and crept into a dark hollow of a brick chimney and balled myself into a tight knot. My mother must not find me and whip me for what I had done. Anyway, it was all an accident; I had not really intended to set the house afire. I had just wanted to see how the curtains would look when they burned. And neither did it occur to me that I was hiding under a burning house.

21Presently footsteps pounded on the floor above me. Then I heard screams. Later the gongs of fire wagons and the clopping hoofs of horses came from the direction of the street. Yes, there was really a fire, a fire like the one I had seen one day burn a house down to the ground, leaving only a chimney standing black. I was stiff with terror. The thunder of sound above me shook the chimney to which I clung. The screams came louder. I saw the image of my grandmother lying helplessly upon her bed and there were yellow flames in her black hair. Was my mother afire? Would my brother burn? Perhaps everybody in the house would burn! Why had I not thought of those things before I fired the curtains? I yearned to become invisible, to stop living. The commotion above me increased and I began to cry. It seemed that I had been hiding for ages, and when the stomping and the screaming died down I felt lonely, cast forever out of life. Voices sounded near-by and I shivered.

22“Richard!” my mother was calling frantically.

23I saw her legs and the hem of her dress moving swiftly about the back yard. Her wails were full of an agony whose intensity told me that my punishment would be measured by its depth. Then I saw her taut face peering under the edge of the house. She had found me! I held my breath and waited to hear her command me to come to her. Her face went away; no, she had not seen me huddled in the dark nook of the chimney. I tucked my head into my arms and my teeth chattered.

24“Richard!”

25The distress I sensed in her voice was as sharp and painful as the lash of a whip on my flesh.

26“Richard! The house is on fire. Oh, find my child!”

27Yes, the house was afire, but I was determined not to leave my place of safety. Finally I saw another face peering under the edge of the house; it was my father’s. His eyes must have become accustomed to the shadows, for he was now pointing at me.

28“There he is!”

29“Naw!” I screamed.

30“Come here, boy!”

31“Naw!”

32“The house is on fire!”

33“Leave me ’lone!”

34He crawled to me and caught hold of one of my legs. I hugged the edge of the brick chimney with all of my strength. My father yanked my leg and I clawed at the chimney harder.

35“Come outta there, you little fool!”

36“Turn me loose!”

37I could not withstand the tugging at my leg and my fingers relaxed. It was over. I would be beaten. I did not care any more. I knew what was coming. He dragged me into the back yard and the instant his hand left me I jumped to my feet and broke into a wild run, trying to elude the people who surrounded me, heading for the street. I was caught before I had gone ten paces.

38From that moment on things became tangled for me. Out of the weeping and the shouting and the wild talk, I learned that no one had died in the fire. My brother, it seemed, had finally overcome enough of his panic to warn my mother, but not before more than half the house had been destroyed. Using the mattress as a stretcher, Grandpa and an uncle had lifted Granny from her bed and had rushed her to the safety of a neighbor’s house. My long absence and silence had made everyone think, for a while, that I had perished in the blaze.

39“You almost scared us to death,” my mother muttered as she stripped the leaves from a tree limb to prepare it for my back.

40I was lashed so hard and long that I lost consciousness. I was beaten out of my senses and later I found myself in bed, screaming, determined to run away, tussling with my mother and father who were trying to keep me still. I was lost in a fog of fear. A doctor was called—I was afterwards told—and he ordered that I be kept abed, that I be kept quiet, that my very life depended upon it. My body seemed on fire and I could not sleep. Packs of ice were put on my forehead to keep down the fever. Whenever I tried to sleep I would see huge wobbly white bags, like the full udders of cows, suspended from the ceiling above me. Later, as I grew worse, I could see the bags in the daytime with my eyes open and I was gripped by the fear that they were going to fall and drench me with some horrible liquid. Day and night I begged my mother and father to take the bags away, pointing to them, shaking with terror because no one saw them but me. Exhaustion would make me drift toward sleep and then I would scream until I was wide awake again; I was afraid to sleep. Time finally bore me away from the dangerous bags and I got well. But for a long time I was chastened whenever I remembered that my mother had come close to killing me.

41Each event spoke with a cryptic tongue. And the moments of living slowly revealed their coded meanings. There was the wonder I felt when I first saw a brace of mountainlike, spotted, black-and-white horses clopping down a dusty road through clouds of powdered clay.

42There was the delight I caught in seeing long straight rows of red and green vegetables stretching away in the sun to the bright horizon.

43There was the faint, cool kiss of sensuality when dew came on to my cheeks and shins as I ran down the wet green garden paths in the early morning.

44There was the vague sense of the infinite as I looked down upon the yellow, dreaming waters of the Mississippi River from the verdant bluffs of Natchez.

45There were the echoes of nostalgia I heard in the crying strings of wild geese winging south against a bleak, autumn sky.

46There was the tantalizing melancholy in the tingling scent of burning hickory wood.

47There was the teasing and impossible desire to imitate the petty pride of sparrows wallowing and flouncing in the red dust of country roads.

48There was the yearning for identification loosed in me by the sight of a solitary ant carrying a burden upon a mysterious journey.

49There was the disdain that filled me as I tortured a delicate, blue-pink crawfish that huddled fearfully in the mudsill of a rusty tin can.

50There was the aching glory in masses of clouds burning gold and purple from an invisible sun.

51There was the liquid alarm I saw in the blood-red glare of the sun’s afterglow mirrored in the squared panes of whitewashed frame houses.

52There was the languor I felt when I heard green leaves rustling with a rainlike sound.

53There was the incomprehensible secret embodied in a whitish toadstool hiding in the dark shade of a rotting log.

54There was the experience of feeling death without dying that came from watching a chicken leap about blindly after its neck had been snapped by a quick twist of my father’s wrist.

55There was the great joke that I felt God had played on cats and dogs by making them lap their milk and water with their tongues.

56There was the thirst I had when I watched clear, sweet juice trickle from sugar cane being crushed.

57There was the hot panic that welled up in my throat and swept through my blood when I first saw the lazy, limp coils of a blue-skinned snake sleeping in the sun.

58There was the speechless astonishment of seeing a hog stabbed through the heart, dipped into boiling water, scraped, split open, gutted, and strung up gaping and bloody.

59There was the love I had for the mute regality of tall, moss-clad oaks.

60There was the hint of cosmic cruelty that I felt when I saw the curved timbers of a wooden shack that had been warped in the summer sun.

61There was the saliva that formed in my mouth whenever I smelt clay dust potted with fresh rain.

62There was the cloudy notion of hunger when I breathed the odor of new-cut, bleeding grass.

63And there was the quiet terror that suffused my senses when vast hazes of gold washed earthward from star-heavy skies on silent nights....

64One day my mother told me that we were going to Memphis on a boat, the Kate Adams, and my eagerness thereafter made the days seem endless. Each night I went to bed hoping that the next morning would be the day of departure.

65“How big is the boat?” I asked my mother.

66“As big as a mountain,” she said.

67“Has it got a whistle?”

68“Yes.”

69“Does the whistle blow?”

70“Yes.”

71“When?”

72“When the captain wants it to blow.”

73“Why do they call it the Kate Adams?”

74“Because that’s the boat’s name.”

75“What color is the boat?”

76“White.”

77“How long will we be on the boat?”

78“All day and all night.”

79“Will we sleep on the boat?”

80“Yes, when we get sleepy, we’ll sleep. Now, hush.”

81For days I had dreamed about a huge white boat floating on a vast body of water, but when my mother took me down to the levee on the day of leaving, I saw a tiny, dirty boat that was not at all like the boat I had imagined. I was disappointed and when time came to go on board I cried and my mother thought that I did not want to go with her to Memphis, and I could not tell her what the trouble was. Solace came when I wandered about the boat and gazed at Negroes throwing dice, drinking whisky, playing cards, lolling on boxes, eating, talking, and singing. My father took me down into the engine room and the throbbing machines enthralled me for hours.

82In Memphis we lived in a one-story brick tenement. The stone buildings and the concrete pavements looked bleak and hostile to me. The absence of green, growing things made the city seem dead. Living space for the four of us—my mother, my brother, my father, and me—was a kitchen and a bedroom. In the front and rear were paved areas in which my brother and I could play, but for days I was afraid to go into the strange city streets alone.

83It was in this tenement that the personality of my father first came fully into the orbit of my concern. He worked as a night porter in a Beale Street drugstore and he became important and forbidding to me only when I learned that I could not make noise when he was asleep in the daytime. He was the lawgiver in our family and I never laughed in his presence. I used to lurk timidly in the kitchen doorway and watch his huge body sitting slumped at the table. I stared at him with awe as he gulped his beer from a tin bucket, as he ate long and heavily, sighed, belched, closed his eyes to nod on a stuffed belly. He was quite fat and his bloated stomach always lapped over his belt. He was always a stranger to me, always somehow alien and remote.

84One morning my brother and I, while playing in the rear of our flat, found a stray kitten that set up a loud, persistent meowing. We fed it some scraps of food and gave it water, but it still meowed. My father, clad in his underwear, stumbled sleepily to the back door and demanded that we keep quiet. We told him that it was the kitten that was making the noise and he ordered us to drive it away. We tried to make the kitten leave, but it would not budge. My father took a hand.

85“Scat!” he shouted.

86The scrawny kitten lingered, brushing itself against our legs, and meowing plaintively.

87“Kill that damn thing!” my father exploded. “Do anything, but get it away from here!”

88He went inside, grumbling. I resented his shouting and it irked me that I could never make him feel my resentment. How could I hit back at him? Oh, yes.... He had said to kill the kitten and I would kill it! I knew that he had not really meant for me to kill the kitten, but my deep hate of him urged me toward a literal acceptance of his word.

89“He said for us to kill the kitten,” I told my brother.

90“He didn’t mean it,” my brother said.

91“He did, and I’m going to kill ’im.”

92“Then he will howl,” my brother said.

93“He can’t howl if he’s dead,” I said.

94“He didn’t really say kill ’im,” my brother protested.

95“He did!” I said. “And you heard him!”

96My brother ran away in fright. I found a piece of rope, made a noose, slipped it about the kitten’s neck, pulled it over a nail, then jerked the animal clear of the ground. It gasped, slobbered, spun, doubled, clawed the air frantically; finally its mouth gaped and its pink-white tongue shot out stiffly. I tied the rope to a nail and went to find my brother. He was crouching behind a corner of the building.

97“I killed ’im,” I whispered.

98“You did bad,” my brother said.

99“Now Papa can sleep,” I said, deeply satisfied.

100“He didn’t mean for you to kill ’im,” my brother said.

101“Then why did he tell me to do it?” I demanded.

102My brother could not answer; he stared fearfully at the dangling kitten.

103“That kitten’s going to get you,” he warned me.

104“That kitten can’t even breathe now,” I said.

105“I’m going to tell,” my brother said, running into the house.

106I waited, resolving to defend myself with my father’s rash words, anticipating my enjoyment in repeating them to him even though I knew that he had spoken them in anger. My mother hurried toward me, drying her hands upon her apron. She stopped and paled when she saw the kitten suspended from the rope.

107“What in God’s name have you done?” she asked.

108“The kitten was making noise and Papa said to kill it,” I explained.

109“You little fool!” she said. “Your father’s going to beat you for this!”

110“But he told me to kill it,” I said.

111“You shut your mouth!”

112She grabbed my hand and dragged me to my father’s bedside and told him what I had done.

113“You know better than that!” my father stormed.

114“You told me to kill ’im,” I said.

115“I told you to drive him away,” he said.

116“You told me to kill ’im,” I countered positively.

117“You get out of my eyes before I smack you down!” my father bellowed in disgust, then turned over in bed.

118I had had my first triumph over my father. I had made him believe that I had taken his words literally. He could not punish me now without risking his authority. I was happy because I had at last found a way to throw my criticism of him into his face. I had made him feel that, if he whipped me for killing the kitten, I would never give serious weight to his words again. I had made him know that I felt he was cruel and I had done it without his punishing me.

119But my mother, being more imaginative, retaliated with an assault upon my sensibilities that crushed me with the moral horror involved in taking a life. All that afternoon she directed toward me calculated words that spawned in my mind a horde of invisible demons bent upon exacting vengeance for what I had done. As evening drew near, anxiety filled me and I was afraid to go into an empty room alone.

120“You owe a debt you can never pay,” my mother said.

121“I’m sorry,” I mumbled.

122“Being sorry can’t make that kitten live again,” she said.

123Then, just before I was to go to bed, she uttered a paralyzing injunction: she ordered me to go out into the dark, dig a grave, and bury the kitten.

124“No!” I screamed, feeling that if I went out of doors some evil spirit would whisk me away.

125“Get out there and bury that poor kitten,” she ordered.

126“I’m scared!”

127“And wasn’t that kitten scared when you put that rope around its neck?” she asked.

128“But it was only a kitten,” I explained.

129“But it was alive,” she said. “Can you make it live again?”

130“But Papa said to kill it,” I said, trying to shift the moral blame upon my father.

131My mother whacked me across my mouth with the flat palm of her hand.

132“You stop that lying! You knew what he meant!”

133“I didn’t!” I bawled.

134She shoved a tiny spade into my hands.

135“Go out there and dig a hole and bury that kitten!”

136I stumbled out into the black night, sobbing, my legs wobbly from fear. Though I knew that I had killed the kitten, my mother’s words had made it live again in my mind. What would that kitten do to me when I touched it? Would it claw at my eyes? As I groped toward the dead kitten, my mother lingered behind me, unseen in the dark, her disembodied voice egging me on.

137“Mama, come and stand by me,” I begged.

138“You didn’t stand by that kitten, so why should I stand by you?” she asked tauntingly from the menacing darkness.

139“I can’t touch it,” I whimpered, feeling that the kitten was staring at me with reproachful eyes.

140“Untie it!” she ordered.

141Shuddering, I fumbled at the rope and the kitten dropped to the pavement with a thud that echoed in my mind for many days and nights. Then, obeying my mother’s floating voice, I hunted for a spot of earth, dug a shallow hole, and buried the stiff kitten; as I handled its cold body my skin prickled. When I had completed the burial, I sighed and started back to the flat, but my mother caught hold of my hand and led me again to the kitten’s grave.

142“Shut your eyes and repeat after me,” she said.

143I closed my eyes tightly, my hand clinging to hers.

144“Dear God, our Father, forgive me, for I knew not what I was doing....”

145“Dear God, our Father, forgive me, for I knew not what I was doing,” I repeated.

146“And spare my poor life, even though I did not spare the life of the kitten....”

147“And spare my poor life, even though I did not spare the life of the kitten,” I repeated.

148“And while I sleep tonight, do not snatch the breath of life from me....”

149I opened my mouth but no words came. My mind was frozen with horror. I pictured myself gasping for breath and dying in my sleep. I broke away from my mother and ran into the night, crying, shaking with dread.

150“No,” I sobbed.

151My mother called to me many times, but I would not go to her.

152“Well, I suppose you’ve learned your lesson,” she said at last.

153Contrite, I went to bed, hoping that I would never see another kitten.

154Hunger stole upon me so slowly that at first I was not aware of what hunger really meant. Hunger had always been more or less at my elbow when I played, but now I began to wake up at night to find hunger standing at my bedside, staring at me gauntly. The hunger I had known before this had been no grim, hostile stranger; it had been a normal hunger that had made me beg constantly for bread, and when I ate a crust or two I was satisfied. But this new hunger baffled me, scared me, made me angry and insistent. Whenever I begged for food now my mother would pour me a cup of tea which would still the clamor in my stomach for a moment or two; but a little later I would feel hunger nudging my ribs, twisting my empty guts until they ached. I would grow dizzy and my vision would dim. I became less active in my play, and for the first time in my life I had to pause and think of what was happening to me.

155“Mama, I’m hungry,” I complained one afternoon.

156“Jump up and catch a kungry,” she said, trying to make me laugh and forget.

157“What’s a kungry?”

158“It’s what little boys eat when they get hungry,” she said.

159“What does it taste like?”

160“I don’t know.”

161“Then why do you tell me to catch one?”

162“Because you said that you were hungry,” she said, smiling.

163I sensed that she was teasing me and it made me angry.

164“But I’m hungry. I want to eat.”

165“You’ll have to wait.”

166“But I want to eat now.”

167“But there’s nothing to eat,” she told me.

168“Why?”

169“Just because there’s none,” she explained.

170“But I want to eat,” I said, beginning to cry.

171“You’ll just have to wait,” she said again.

172“But why?”

173“For God to send some food.”

174“When is He going to send it?”

175“I don’t know.”

176“But I’m hungry!”

177She was ironing and she paused and looked at me with tears in her eyes.

178“Where’s your father?” she asked me.

179I stared in bewilderment. Yes, it was true that my father had not come home to sleep for many days now and I could make as much noise as I wanted. Though I had not known why he was absent, I had been glad that he was not there to shout his restrictions at me. But it had never occurred to me that his absence would mean that there would be no food.

180“I don’t know,” I said.

181“Who brings food into the house?” my mother asked me.

182“Papa,” I said. “He always brought food.”

183“Well, your father isn’t here now,” she said.

184“Where is he?”

185“I don’t know,” she said.

186“But I’m hungry,” I whimpered, stomping my feet.

187“You’ll have to wait until I get a job and buy food,” she said.

188As the days slid past the image of my father became associated with my pangs of hunger, and whenever I felt hunger I thought of him with a deep biological bitterness.

189My mother finally went to work as a cook and left me and my brother alone in the flat each day with a loaf of bread and a pot of tea. When she returned at evening she would be tired and dispirited and would cry a lot. Sometimes, when she was in despair, she would call us to her and talk to us for hours, telling us that we now had no father, that our lives would be different from those of other children, that we must learn as soon as possible to take care of ourselves, to dress ourselves, to prepare our own food; that we must take upon ourselves the responsibility of the flat while she worked. Half frightened, we would promise solemnly. We did not understand what had happened between our father and our mother and the most that these long talks did to us was to make us feel a vague dread. Whenever we asked why father had left, she would tell us that we were too young to know.

190One evening my mother told me that thereafter I would have to do the shopping for food. She took me to the corner store to show me the way. I was proud; I felt like a grownup. The next afternoon I looped the basket over my arm and went down the pavement toward the store. When I reached the corner, a gang of boys grabbed me, knocked me down, snatched the basket, took the money, and sent me running home in panic. That evening I told my mother what had happened, but she made no comment; she sat down at once, wrote another note, gave me more money, and sent me out to the grocery again. I crept down the steps and saw the same gang of boys playing down the street. I ran back into the house.

191“What’s the matter?” my mother asked.

192“It’s those same boys,” I said. “They’ll beat me.”

193“You’ve got to get over that,” she said. “Now, go on.”

194“I’m scared,” I said.

195“Go on and don’t pay any attention to them,” she said.

196I went out of the door and walked briskly down the sidewalk, praying that the gang would not molest me. But when I came abreast of them someone shouted.

197“There he is!”

198They came toward me and I broke into a wild run toward home. They overtook me and flung me to the pavement. I yelled, pleaded, kicked, but they wrenched the money out of my hand. They yanked me to my feet, gave me a few slaps, and sent me home sobbing. My mother met me at the door.

199“They b-beat m-me,” I gasped. “They t-t-took the m-money.”

200I started up the steps, seeking the shelter of the house.

201“Don’t you come in here,” my mother warned me.

202I froze in my tracks and stared at her.

203“But they’re coming after me,” I said.

204“You just stay right where you are,” she said in a deadly tone. “I’m going to teach you this night to stand up and fight for yourself.”

205She went into the house and I waited, terrified, wondering what she was about. Presently she returned with more money and another note; she also had a long heavy stick.

206“Take this money, this note, and this stick,” she said. “Go to the store and buy those groceries. If those boys bother you, then fight.”

207I was baffled. My mother was telling me to fight, a thing that she had never done before.

208“But I’m scared,” I said.

209“Don’t you come into this house until you’ve gotten those groceries,” she said.

210“They’ll beat me; they’ll beat me,” I said.

211“Then stay in the streets; don’t come back here!”

212I ran up the steps and tried to force my way past her into the house. A stinging slap came on my jaw. I stood on the sidewalk, crying.

213“Please, let me wait until tomorrow,” I begged.

214“No,” she said. “Go now! If you come back into this house without those groceries, I’ll whip you!”

215She slammed the door and I heard the key turn in the lock. I shook with fright. I was alone upon the dark, hostile streets and gangs were after me. I had the choice of being beaten at home or away from home. I clutched the stick, crying, trying to reason. If I were beaten at home, there was absolutely nothing that I could do about it; but if I were beaten in the streets, I had a chance to fight and defend myself. I walked slowly down the sidewalk, coming closer to the gang of boys, holding the stick tightly. I was so full of fear that I could scarcely breathe. I was almost upon them now.

216“There he is again!” the cry went up.

217They surrounded me quickly and began to grab for my hand.

218“I’ll kill you!” I threatened.

219They closed in. In blind fear I let the stick fly, feeling it crack against a boy’s skull. I swung again, lamming another skull, then another. Realizing that they would retaliate if I let up for but a second, I fought to lay them low, to knock them cold, to kill them so that they could not strike back at me. I flayed with tears in my eyes, teeth clenched, stark fear making me throw every ounce of my strength behind each blow. I hit again and again, dropping the money and the grocery list. The boys scattered, yelling, nursing their heads, staring at me in utter disbelief. They had never seen such frenzy. I stood panting, egging them on, taunting them to come on and fight. When they refused, I ran after them and they tore out for their homes, screaming. The parents of the boys rushed into the streets and threatened me, and for the first time in my life I shouted at grownups, telling them that I would give them the same if they bothered me. I finally found my grocery list and the money and went to the store. On my way back I kept my stick poised for instant use, but there was not a single boy in sight. That night I won the right to the streets of Memphis.

220Of a summer morning, when my mother had gone to work, I would follow a crowd of black children—abandoned for the day by their working parents—to the bottom of a sloping hill whose top held a long row of ramshackle, wooden outdoor privies whose opened rear ends provided a raw and startling view. We would crouch at the foot of the slope and look up—a distance of twenty-five feet or more—at the secret and fantastic anatomies of black, brown, yellow, and ivory men and women. For hours we would laugh, point, whisper, joke, and identify our neighbors by the signs of their physiological oddities, commenting upon the difficulty or projectile force of their excretions. Finally some grownup would see us and drive us away with disgusted shouts. Occasionally children of two and three years of age would emerge from behind the hill with their faces smeared and their breath reeking. At last a white policeman was stationed behind the privies to keep the children away and our course in human anatomy was postponed.

221To keep us out of mischief, my mother often took my brother and me with her to her cooking job. Standing hungrily and silently in a corner of the kitchen, we would watch her go from the stove to the sink, from the cabinet to the table. I always loved to stand in the white folks’ kitchen when my mother cooked, for it meant that I got occasional scraps of bread and meat; but many times I regretted having come, for my nostrils would be assailed with the scent of food that did not belong to me and which I was forbidden to eat. Toward evening my mother would take the hot dishes into the dining room where the white people were seated, and I would stand as near the dining-room door as possible to get a quick glimpse of the white faces gathered around the loaded table, eating, laughing, talking. If the white people left anything, my brother and I would eat well; but if they did not, we would have our usual bread and tea.

222Watching the white people eat would make my empty stomach churn and I would grow vaguely angry. Why could I not eat when I was hungry? Why did I always have to wait until others were through? I could not understand why some people had enough food and others did not.

223I now found it irresistible to roam during the day while my mother was cooking in the kitchens of the white folks. A block away from our flat was a saloon in front of which I used to loiter all day long. Its interior was an enchanting place that both lured and frightened me. I would beg for pennies, then peer under the swinging doors to watch the men and women drink. When some neighbor would chase me away from the door, I would follow the drunks about the streets, trying to understand their mysterious mumblings, pointing at them, teasing them, laughing at them, imitating them, jeering, mocking, and taunting them about their lurching antics. For me the most amusing spectacle was a drunken woman stumbling and urinating, the dampness seeping down her stockinged legs. Or I would stare in horror at a man retching. Somebody informed my mother about my fondness for the saloon and she beat me, but it did not keep me from peering under the swinging doors and listening to the wild talk of drunks when she was at work.

224One summer afternoon—in my sixth year—while peering under the swinging doors of the neighborhood saloon, a black man caught hold of my arm and dragged me into its smoky and noisy depths. The odor of alcohol stung my nostrils. I yelled and struggled, trying to break free of him, afraid of the staring crowd of men and women, but he would not let me go. He lifted me and sat me upon the counter, put his hat upon my head and ordered a drink for me. The tipsy men and women yelled with delight. Somebody tried to jam a cigar into my mouth, but I twisted out of the way.

225“How do you feel, setting there like a man, boy?” a man asked.

226“Make ’im drunk and he’ll stop peeping in here,” somebody said.

227“Let’s buy ’im drinks,” somebody said.

228Some of my fright left as I stared about. Whisky was set before me.

229“Drink it, boy,” somebody said.

230I shook my head. The man who had dragged me in urged me to drink it, telling me that it would not hurt me. I refused.

231“Drink it; it’ll make you feel good,” he said.

232I took a sip and coughed. The men and women laughed. The entire crowd in the saloon gathered about me now, urging me to drink. I took another sip. Then another. My head spun and I laughed. I was put on the floor and I ran giggling and shouting among the yelling crowd. As I would pass each man, I would take a sip from an offered glass. Soon I was drunk.

233A man called me to him and whispered some words into my ear and told me that he would give me a nickel if I went to a woman and repeated them to her. I told him that I would say them; he gave me the nickel and I ran to the woman and shouted the words. A gale of laughter went up in the saloon.

234“Don’t teach that boy that,” someone said.

235“He doesn’t know what it is,” another said.

236From then on, for a penny or a nickel, I would repeat to anyone whatever was whispered to me. In my foggy, tipsy state the reaction of the men and women to my mysterious words enthralled me. I ran from person to person, laughing, hiccoughing, spewing out filth that made them bend double with glee.

237“Let that boy alone now,” someone said.

238“It ain’t going to hurt ’im,” another said.

239“It’s a shame,” a woman said, giggling.

240“Go home, boy,” somebody yelled at me.

241Toward early evening they let me go. I staggered along the pavements, drunk, repeating obscenities to the horror of the women I passed and to the amusement of the men en route to their homes from work.

242To beg drinks in the saloon became an obsession. Many evenings my mother would find me wandering in a daze and take me home and beat me; but the next morning, no sooner had she gone to her job than I would run to the saloon and wait for someone to take me in and buy me a drink. My mother protested tearfully to the proprietor of the saloon, who ordered me to keep out of his place. But the men—reluctant to surrender their sport—would buy me drinks anyway, letting me drink out of their flasks on the streets, urging me to repeat obscenities.