1HAVING grown taller and older, I now associated with older boys and I had to pay for my admittance into their company by subscribing to certain racial sentiments. The touchstone of fraternity was my feeling toward white people, how much hostility I held toward them, what degrees of value and honor I assigned to race. None of this was premeditated, but sprang spontaneously out of the talk of black boys who met at the crossroads.

2It was degrading to play with girls and in our talk we relegated them to a remote island of life. We had somehow caught the spirit of the role of our sex and we flocked together for common moral schooling. We spoke boastfully in bass voices; we used the word “nigger” to prove the tough fiber of our feelings; we spouted excessive profanity as a sign of our coming manhood; we pretended callousness toward the injunctions of our parents; and we strove to convince one another that our decisions stemmed from ourselves and ourselves alone. Yet we frantically concealed how dependent we were upon one another.

3Of an afternoon when school had let out I would saunter down the street, idly kicking an empty tin can, or knocking a stick against the palings of a wooden fence, or whistling, until I would stumble upon one or more of the gang loitering at a corner, standing in a field, or sitting upon the steps of somebody’s house.

4“Hey.” Timidly.

5“You eat yet?” Uneasily trying to make conversation.

6“Yeah, man. I done really fed my face.” Casually.

7“I had cabbage and potatoes.” Confidently.

8“I had buttermilk and black-eyed peas.” Meekly informational.

9“Hell, I ain’t gonna stand near you, nigger!” Pronouncement.

10“How come?” Feigned innocence.

11“’Cause you gonna smell up this air in a minute!” A shouted accusation.

12Laughter runs through the crowd.

13“Nigger, your mind’s in a ditch.” Amusingly moralistic.

14“Ditch, nothing! Nigger, you going to break wind any minute now!” Triumphant pronouncement creating suspense.

15“Yeah, when them black-eyed peas tell that buttermilk to move over, that buttermilk ain’t gonna wanna move and there’s gonna be war in your guts and your stomach’s gonna swell up and bust!” Climax.

16The crowd laughs loud and long.

17“Man, them white folks oughta catch you and send you to the zoo and keep you for the next war!” Throwing the subject into a wider field.

18“Then when that fighting starts, they oughta feed you on buttermilk and black-eyed peas and let you break wind!” The subject is accepted and extended.

19“You’d win the war with a new kind of poison gas!” A shouted climax.

20There is high laughter that simmers down slowly.

21“Maybe poison gas is something good to have.” The subject of white folks is associationally swept into the orbit of talk.

22“Yeah, if they hava race riot round here, I’m gonna kill all the white folks with my poison.” Bitter pride.

23Gleeful laughter. Then silence, each waiting for the other to contribute something.

24“Them white folks sure scared of us, though.” Sober statement of an old problem.

25“Yeah, they send you to war, make you lick them Germans, teach you how to fight and when you come back they scared of you, want to kill you.” Half boastful and half complaining.

26“My mama says that old white woman where she works talked ’bout slapping her and Ma said: ‘Miz Green, if you slaps me, I’ll kill you and go to hell and pay for it!’” Extension, development, sacrificial boasting.

27“Hell, I woulda just killed her if she hada said that to me.” An angry grunt of supreme racial assertion.

28Silence.

29“Man, them white folks sure is mean.” Complaining.

30“That’s how come so many colored folks leaving the South.” Informational.

31“And, man, they sure hate for you to leave.” Pride of personal and racial worth implied.

32“Yeah. They wanna keep you here and work you to death.”

33“The first white sonofabitch that bothers me is gonna get a hole knocked in his head!” Naïve rebellion.

34“That ain’t gonna do you no good. Hell, they’ll catch you.” Rejection of naïve rebellion.

35“Ha-ha-ha.... Yeah, goddammit, they really catch you, now.” Appreciation of the thoroughness of white militancy.

36“Yeah, white folks set on their white asses day and night, but leta nigger do something, and they get every bloodhound that was ever born and put ’em on his trail.” Bitter pride in realizing what it costs to defeat them.

37“Man, you reckon these white folks is ever gonna change?” Timid, questioning hope.

38“Hell, no! They just born that way.” Rejecting hope for fear that it could never come true.

39“Shucks, man. I’m going north when I get grown.” Rebelling against futile hope and embracing flight.

40“A colored man’s all right up north.” Justifying flight.

41“They say a white man hit a colored man up north and that colored man hit that white man, knocked him cold, and nobody did a damn thing!” Urgent wish to believe in flight.

42“Man for man up there.” Begging to believe in justice.

43Silence.

44“Listen, you reckon them buildings up north is as tall as they say they is?” Leaping by association to something concrete and trying to make belief real.

45“They say they gotta building in New York forty stories high!” A thing too incredible for belief.

46“Man, I’d be scareda them buildings!” Ready to abandon the now suppressed idea of flight.

47“You know, they say that them buildings sway and rock in the wind.” Stating a miracle.

48“Naw, nigger!” Utter astonishment and rejection.

49“Yeah, they say they do.” Insisting upon the miracle.

50“You reckon that could be?” Questioning hope.

51“Hell, naw! If a building swayed and rocked in the wind, hell, it’d fall! Any fool knows that! Don’t let people maka fool outta you, telling you them things!” Moving body agitatedly, stomping feet impatiently, and scurrying back to safe reality.

52Silence. Somebody would pick up a stone and toss it across a field.

53“Man, what makes white folks so mean?” Returning to grapple with the old problem.

54“Whenever I see one I spit.” Emotional rejection of whites.

55“Man, ain’t they ugly?” Increased emotional rejection.

56“Man, you ever get right close to a white man, close enough to smell ’im?” Anticipation of statement.

57“They say we stink. But my ma says white folks smell like dead folks.” Wishing the enemy was dead.

58“Niggers smell from sweat. But white folks smell all the time.” The enemy is an animal to be killed on sight.

59And the talk would weave, roll, surge, spurt, veer, swell, having no specific aim or direction, touching vast areas of life, expressing the tentative impulses of childhood. Money, God, race, sex, color, war, planes, machines, trains, swimming, boxing, anything.... The culture of one black household was thus transmitted to another black household, and folk tradition was handed from group to group. Our attitudes were made, defined, set, or corrected; our ideas were discovered, discarded, enlarged, torn apart, and accepted. Night would fall. Bats would zip through the air. Crickets would cry from the grass. Frogs would croak. The stars would come out. Dew would dampen the earth. Yellow squares of light would glow in the distance as kerosene lamps were lit in our homes. Finally, from across the fields or down the road a long slow yell would come:

60“Youuuuuuuu, Daaaaaaaavee!”

61Easy laughter among the boys, but no reply.

62“Calling the hogs.”

63“Go home, pig.”

64Laughter again. A boy would slowly detach himself from the gang.

65“Youuuuuuu, Daaaaaaaavee!”

66He would not answer his mother’s call, for that would have been a sign of dependence.

67“I’ll do you-all like the farmer did the potato,” the boy would say.

68“How’s that?”

69“Plant you now and dig you later!”

70The boy would trot home slowly and there would be more easy laughter. More talk. One by one we would be called home to fetch water from the hydrant in the back yard, to go to the store and buy greens and meal for tomorrow, to split wood for kindling.

71On Sundays, if our clothes were presentable, my mother would take me and my brother to Sunday school. We did not object, for church was not where we learned of God or His ways, but where we met our school friends and continued our long, rambling talks. Some of the Bible stories were interesting in themselves, but we always twisted them, secularized them to the level of our street life, rejecting all meanings that did not fit into our environment. And we did the same to the beautiful hymns. When the preacher intoned:

72Amazing grace, how sweet it sounds

73we would wink at one another and hum under our breath:

74A bulldog ran my grandma down

75We were now large enough for the white boys to fear us and both of us, the white boys and the black boys, began to play our traditional racial roles as though we had been born to them, as though it was in our blood, as though we were being guided by instinct. All the frightful descriptions we had heard about each other, all the violent expressions of hate and hostility that had seeped into us from our surroundings, came now to the surface to guide our actions. The roundhouse was the racial boundary of the neighborhood, and it had been tacitly agreed between the white boys and the black boys that the whites were to keep to the far side of the roundhouse and we blacks were to keep to our side. Whenever we caught a white boy on our side we stoned him; if we strayed to their side, they stoned us.

76Our battles were real and bloody; we threw rocks, cinders, coal, sticks, pieces of iron, and broken bottles, and while we threw them we longed for even deadlier weapons. If we were hurt, we took it quietly; there was no crying or whimpering. If our wounds were not truly serious, we hid them from our parents. We did not want to be beaten for fighting. Once, in a battle with a gang of white boys, I was struck behind the ear with a piece of broken bottle; the cut was deep and bled profusely. I tried to stem the flow of blood by dabbing at the cut with a rag and when my mother came from work I was forced to tell her that I was hurt, for I needed medical attention. She rushed me to a doctor who stitched my scalp; but when she took me home she beat me, telling me that I must never fight white boys again, that I might be killed by them, that she had to work and had no time to worry about my fights. Her words did not sink in, for they conflicted with the code of the streets. I promised my mother that I would not fight, but I knew that if I kept my word I would lose my standing in the gang, and the gang’s life was my life.

77My mother became too ill to work and I began to do chores in the neighborhood. My first job was carrying lunches to the men who worked in the roundhouse, for which I received twenty-five cents a week. When the men did not finish their lunches, I would salvage what few crumbs remained. Later I obtained a job in a small café carting wood in my arms to keep the big stove going and taking trays of food to passengers when trains stopped for a half hour or so in a near-by station. I received a dollar a week for this work, but I was too young and too small to perform the duties; one morning while trying to take a heavily loaded tray up the steps of a train, I fell and dashed the tray of food to the ground.

78Inability to pay rent forced us to move into a house perched atop high logs in a section of the town where flood waters came. My brother and I had great fun running up and down the tall, shaky steps.

79Again paying rent became a problem and we moved nearer the center of town, where I found a job in a pressing shop, delivering clothes to hotels, sweeping floors, and listening to Negro men boast of their sex lives.

80Yet again we moved, this time to the outskirts of town, near a wide stretch of railroad tracks to which, each morning before school, I would take a sack and gather coal to heat our frame house, dodging in and out between the huge, black, puffing engines.

81My mother, her health failing rapidly, spoke constantly now of Granny’s home, of how ardently she wanted to see us grow up before she died. Already there had crept into her speech a halting, lisping quality that, though I did not know it, was the shadow of her future. I was more conscious of my mother now than I had ever been and I was already able to feel what being completely without her would mean. A slowly rising dread stole into me and I would look at my mother for long moments, but when she would look at me I would look away. Then real fear came as her illness recurred at shorter intervals. Time stood still. My brother and I waited, hungry and afraid.

82One morning a shouting voice awakened me.

83“Richard! Richard!”

84I rolled out of bed. My brother came running into the room.

85“Richard, you better come and see Mama. She’s very sick,” he said.

86I ran into my mother’s room and saw her lying upon her bed, dressed, her eyes open, her mouth gaped. She was very still.

87“Mama!” I called.

88She did not answer or turn her head. I reached forward to shake her, but drew back, afraid that she was dead.

89“Mama!” I called again, my mind unable to grasp that she could not answer.

90Finally I went to her and shook her. She moved slightly and groaned. My brother and I called her repeatedly, but she did not speak. Was she dying? It seemed unthinkable. My brother and I looked at each other; we did not know what to do.

91“We better get somebody,” I said.

92I ran into the hallway and called a neighbor. A tall, black woman bustled out of a door.

93“Please, won’t you come and see my mama? She won’t talk. We can’t wake her up. She’s terribly sick,” I told her.

94She followed me into our flat.

95“Mrs. Wright!” she called to my mother.

96My mother lay still, unseeing, silent. The woman felt my mother’s hands.

97“She ain’t dead,” she said. “But she’s sick, all right. I better get some more of the neighbors.”

98Five or six of the women came and my brother and I waited in the hallway while they undressed my mother and put her to bed. When we were allowed back in the room, a woman said:

99“Looks like a stroke to me.”

100“Just like paralysis,” said another.

101“And she’s so young,” someone else said.

102My brother and I stood against a wall while the bustling women worked frantically over my mother. A stroke? Paralysis? What were those things? Would she die? One of the women asked me if there was any money in the house; I did not know. They searched through the dresser and found a dollar or two and sent for a doctor. The doctor arrived. Yes, he told us, my mother had suffered a stroke of paralysis. She was in a serious condition. She needed someone with her day and night; she needed medicine. Where was her husband? I told him the story and he shook his head.

103“She’ll need all the help that she can get,” the doctor said. “Her entire left side is paralyzed. She cannot talk and she will have to be fed.”

104Later that day I rummaged through drawers and found Granny’s address; I wrote to her, pleading with her to come and help us. The neighbors nursed my mother day and night, fed us and washed our clothes. I went through the days with a stunned consciousness, unable to believe what had happened. Suppose Granny did not come? I tried not to think of it. She had to come. The utter loneliness was now terrifying. I had been suddenly thrown emotionally upon my own. Within an hour the half-friendly world that I had known had turned cold and hostile. I was too frightened to weep. I was glad that my mother was not dead, but there was the fact that she would be sick for a long, long time, perhaps for the balance of her life. I became morose. Though I was a child, I could no longer feel as a child, could no longer react as a child. The desire for play was gone and I brooded, wondering if Granny would come and help us. I tried not to think of a tomorrow that was neither real nor wanted, for all tomorrows held questions that I could not answer.

105When the neighbors offered me food, I refused, already ashamed that so often in my life I had to be fed by strangers. And after I had been prevailed upon to eat I would eat as little as possible, feeling that some of the shame of charity would be taken away. It pained me to think that other children were wondering if I were hungry, and whenever they asked me if I wanted food, I would say no, even though I was starving. I was tense during the days I waited for Granny, and when she came I gave up, letting her handle things, answering questions automatically, obeying, knowing that somehow I had to face things alone. I withdrew into myself.

106I wrote letters that Granny dictated to her eight children—there were nine of them, including my mother—in all parts of the country, asking for money with which “to take Ella and her two little children to our home.” Money came and again there were days of packing household effects. My mother was taken to the train in an ambulance and put on board upon a stretcher. We rode to Jackson in silence and my mother was put abed upstairs. Aunt Maggie came from Detroit to help nurse and clean. The big house was quiet. We spoke in lowered voices. We walked with soft tread. The odor of medicine hung in the air. Doctors came and went. Night and day I could hear my mother groaning. We thought that she would die at any moment.

107Aunt Cleo came from Chicago. Uncle Clark came from Greenwood, Mississippi. Uncle Edward came from Carters, Mississippi. Uncle Charles from Mobile, Alabama. Aunt Addie from a religious school in Huntsville, Alabama. Uncle Thomas from Hazelhurst, Mississippi. The house had an expectant air and I caught whispered talk of “what is to become of her children?” I felt dread, knowing that others—strangers even though they were relatives—were debating my destiny. I had never seen my mother’s brothers and sisters before and their presence made live again in me my old shyness. One day Uncle Edward called me to him and he felt my skinny arms and legs.

108“He needs more flesh on him,” he commented impersonally, addressing himself to his brothers and sisters.

109I was horribly embarrassed, feeling that my life had somehow been full of nameless wrong, an unatonable guilt.

110“Food will make him pick up in weight,” Granny said.

111Out of the family conferences it was decided that my brother and I would be separated, that it was too much of a burden for any one aunt or uncle to assume the support of both of us. Where was I to go? Who would take me? I became more anxious than ever. When an aunt or an uncle would come into my presence, I could not look at them. I was always reminding myself that I must not do anything that would make any of them feel they would not want me in their homes.

112At night my sleep was filled with wild dreams. Sometimes I would wake up screaming in terror. The grownups would come running and I would stare at them, as though they were figures out of my nightmare, then go back to sleep. One night I found myself standing in the back yard. The moon was shining bright as day. Silence surrounded me. Suddenly I felt that someone was holding my hand. I looked and saw an uncle. He was speaking to me in a low, gentle voice.

113“What’s the matter, son?”

114I stared at him, trying to understand what he was saying. I seemed to be wrapped in a kind of mist.

115“Richard, what are you doing?”

116I could not answer. It seemed that I could not wake up. He shook me. I came to myself and stared about at the moon-drenched yard.

117“Where are we going?” I asked him.

118“You were walking in your sleep,” he said.

119Granny gave me fuller meals and made me take naps in the afternoon and gradually my sleepwalking passed. The uneasy days and nights made me resolve to leave Granny’s home as soon as I was old enough to support myself. It was not that they were unkind, but I knew that they did not have money enough to feed me and my brother. I avoided going into my mother’s room now; merely to look at her was painful. She had grown very thin; she was still speechless, staring, quiet as stone.

120One evening my brother and I were called into the front room where a conference of aunts and uncles was being held.

121“Richard,” said an uncle, “you know how sick your mother is?”

122“Yes, sir.”

123“Well, Granny’s not strong enough to take care of you two boys,” he continued.

124“Yes, sir,” I said, waiting for his decision.

125“Well, Aunt Maggie’s going to take your brother to Detroit and send him to school.”

126I waited. Who was going to take me? I had wanted to be with Aunt Maggie, but I did not dare contest the decision.

127“Now, where would you like to go?” I was asked.

128The question caught me by surprise; I had been waiting for a fiat, and now a choice lay before me. But I did not have the courage to presume that anyone wanted me.

129“Anywhere,” I said.

130“Any of us are willing to take you,” he said.

131Quickly I calculated which of them lived nearest to Jackson. Uncle Clark lived in Greenwood, which was but a few miles distant.

132“I’d like to live with Uncle Clark, since he’s close to the home here,” I said.

133“Is that what you really want?”

134“Yes, sir.”

135Uncle Clark came to me and placed his hand upon my head.

136“All right. I’ll take you back with me and send you to school. Tomorrow we’ll go and buy clothes.”

137My tension eased somewhat, but stayed with me. My brother was happy. He was going north. I wanted to go, but I said nothing.

138A train ride and I was in yet another little southern town. Home in Greenwood was a four-room bungalow, comprising half of a double house that sat on a quiet shady road. Aunt Jody, a medium-sized, neat, silent, mulatto girl, had a hot supper waiting on the table. She baffled me with her serious, reserved manner; she seemed to be acting in conformity with a code unknown to me, and I assumed that she regarded me as a “wrong one,” a boy who for some reason did not have a home; I felt that in her mind she would push me to the outskirts of life and I was awkward and self-conscious in her presence. Both Uncle Clark and Aunt Jody talked to me as though I were a grownup and I wondered if I could do what was expected of me. I had always felt a certain warmth with my mother, even when we had lived in squalor; but I felt none here. Perhaps I was too apprehensive to feel any.

139During supper it was decided that I was to be placed in school the next day. Uncle Clark and Aunt Jody both had jobs and I was told that at noon I would find lunch on the stove.

140“Now, Richard, this is your new home,” Uncle Clark said.

141“Yes, sir.”

142“After school, bring in wood and coal for the fireplaces.”

143“Yes, sir.”

144“Split kindling and lay a fire in the kitchen stove.”

145“Yes, sir.”

146“Bring in a bucket of water from the yard so that Jody can cook in the mornings.”

147“Yes, sir.”

148“After your chores are done, you may spend the afternoon studying.”

149“Yes, sir.”

150I had never been assigned definite tasks before and I went to bed a little frightened. I lay sleepless, wondering if I should have come, feeling the dark night holding strange people, strange houses, strange streets. What would happen to me here? How would I get along? What kind of woman was Aunt Jody? How ought I act around her? Would Uncle Clark let me make friends with other boys? I awakened the next morning to see the sun shining into my room; I felt more at ease.

151“Richard!” my uncle was calling me.

152I washed, dressed, and went into the kitchen and sat wordlessly at the table.

153“Good morning, Richard,” Aunt Jody said.

154“Oh, good morning,” I mumbled, wishing that I had thought to say it first.

155“Don’t people say good morning where you come from?” she asked.

156“Yes, ma’am.”

157“I thought they did,” she said pointedly.

158Aunt Jody and Uncle Clark began to question me about my life and I grew so self-conscious that my hunger left me. After breakfast, Uncle Clark took me to school, introduced me to the principal. The first half of the school day passed without incident. I sat looking at the strange reading book, following the lessons. The subjects seemed simple and I felt that I could keep up. My anxiety was still in me; I was wondering how I would get on with the boys. Each new school meant a new area of life to be conquered. Were the boys tough? How hard did they fight? I took it for granted that they fought.

159At noon recess I went into the school grounds and a group of boys sauntered up to me, looked at me from my head to my feet, whispering among themselves. I leaned against a wall, trying to conceal my uneasiness.

160“Where you from?” a boy asked abruptly.

161“Jackson,” I answered.

162“How come they make you people so ugly in Jackson?” he demanded.

163There was loud laughter.

164“You’re not any too good-looking yourself,” I countered instantly.

165“Oh!”

166“Aw!”

167“You hear what he told ’im?”

168“You think you’re smart, don’t you?” the boy asked, sneering.

169“Listen, I ain’t picking a fight,” I said. “But if you want to fight, I’ll fight.”

170“Hunh, hard guy, ain’t you?”

171“As hard as you.”

172“Do you know who you can tell that to?” he asked me.

173“And you know who you can tell it back to?” I asked.

174“Are you talking about my mama?” he asked, edging forward.

175“If you want it that way,” I said.

176This was my test. If I failed now, I would have failed at school, for the first trial came not in books, but in how one’s fellows took one, what value they placed upon one’s willingness to fight.

177“Take back what you said,” the boy challenged me.

178“Make me,” I said.

179The crowd howled, sensing a fight. The boy hesitated, weighing his chances of beating me.

180“You ain’t gonna take what that new boy said, is you?” someone taunted the boy.

181The boy came close. I stood my ground. Our faces were four inches apart.

182“You think I’m scared of you, don’t you?” he asked.

183“I told you what I think,” I said.

184Somebody, eager and afraid that we would not fight, pushed the boy and he bumped into me. I shoved him away violently.

185“Don’t push me!” the boy said.

186“Then keep off me!” I said.

187He was pushed again and I struck out with my right and caught him in the mouth. The crowd yelled, milled, surging so close that I could barely lift my arm to land a blow. When either of us tried to strike the other, we would be thrown off balance by the screaming boys. Every blow landed elicited shouts of delight. Knowing that if I did not win or make a good showing I would have to fight a new boy each day, I fought tigerishly, trying to leave a scar, seeking to draw blood as proof that I was not a coward, that I could take care of myself. The bell rang and the crowd pulled us apart. The fight seemed a draw.

188“I ain’t through with you!” the boy shouted.

189“Go to hell!” I answered.

190In the classroom the boys asked me questions about myself; I was someone worth knowing. When the bell rang for school to be dismissed, I was set to fight again; but the boy was not in sight.

191On my way home I found a cheap ring in the streets and at once I knew what I was going to do with it. The ring had a red stone held by tiny prongs which I loosened, took the stone out, leaving the sharp tiny prongs jutting up. I slid the ring on to my finger and shadow boxed. Now, by God, let a goddamn bully come and I would show him how to fight; I would leave a crimson streak on his face with every blow.

192But I never had to use the ring. After I had exhibited my new weapon at school, a description of it spread among the boys. I challenged my enemy to another fight, but he would not respond. Fighting was not now necessary. I had been accepted.

193No sooner had I won my right to the school grounds than a new dread arose. One evening, before bedtime, I was sitting in the front room, reading, studying. Uncle Clark, who was a contracting carpenter, was at his drawing table, drafting models of houses. Aunt Jody was darning. Suddenly the doorbell rang and Aunt Jody admitted the next-door neighbor, the owner of the house in which we lived and its former occupant. His name was Burden; he was a tall, brown, stooped man and when I was introduced to him I rose and shook his hand.

194“Well, son,” Mr. Burden told me, “it’s certainly a comfort to see another boy in this house.”

195“Is there another boy here?” I asked eagerly.

196“My son was here,” Mr. Burden said, shaking his head. “But he’s gone now.”

197“How old is he?” I asked.

198“He was about your age,” Mr. Burden mumbled sadly.

199“Where did he go?” I asked stupidly.

200“He’s dead,” Mr. Burden said.

201“Oh,” I said.

202I had not understood him. There was a long silence. Mr. Burden looked at me wistfully.

203“Do you sleep in there?” he asked, pointing to my room.

204“Yes, sir.”

205“That’s where my boy slept,” he said.

206“In there?” I asked, just to make sure.

207“Yes, right in there.”

208“On that bed?” I asked.

209“Yes, that was his bed. When I heard that you were coming, I gave your uncle that bed for you,” he explained.

210I saw Uncle Clark shaking his head vigorously at Mr. Burden, but he was too late. At once my imagination began to weave ghosts. I did not actually believe in ghosts, but I had been taught that there was a God and I had given a kind of uneasy assent to His existence, and if there was a God, then surely there must be ghosts. In a moment I built up an intense loathing for sleeping in the room where the boy had died. Rationally I knew that the dead boy could not bother me, but he had become alive for me in a way that I could not dismiss. After Mr. Burden had gone, I went timidly to Uncle Clark.

211“I’m scared to sleep in there,” I told him.

212“Why? Because a boy died in there?”

213“Yes, sir.”

214“But, son, that’s nothing to be afraid of.”

215“I know. But I am scared.”

216“We all must die someday. So why be afraid?”

217I had no answer for that.

218“When you die, do you want people to be afraid of you?”

219I could not answer that either.

220“This is nonsense,” Uncle Clark went on.

221“But I’m scared,” I told him.

222“You’ll get over it.”

223“Can’t I sleep somewhere else?”

224“There’s nowhere else for you to sleep.”

225“Can I sleep here on the sofa?” I asked.

226“May I sleep here on the sofa?” Aunt Jody corrected me in a mocking tone.

227“May I sleep here on the sofa?” I repeated after her.

228“No,” Aunt Jody said.

229I groped into the dark room and fumbled for the bed; I had the illusion that if I touched it I would encounter the dead boy. I trembled. Finally I jumped roughly into the bed and jerked the covers over my face. I did not sleep that night and my eyes were red and puffy the next morning.

230“Didn’t you sleep well?” Uncle Clark asked me.

231“I can’t sleep in that room,” I said.

232“You slept in it before you heard of that boy who died in there, didn’t you?” Aunt Jody asked me.

233“Yes, ma’am.”

234“Then why can’t you sleep in it now?”

235“I’m just scared.”

236“You stop being a baby,” she told me.

237The next night was the same; fear kept me from sleeping. After Uncle Clark and Aunt Jody had gone to bed, I rose and crept into the front room and slept in a tight ball on the sofa, without any cover. I awakened the next morning to find Uncle Clark shaking me.

238“Why are you doing this?” he asked.

239“I’m scared to sleep in there,” I said.

240“You go back into that room and sleep tonight,” he told me. “You’ve got to get over this thing.”

241I spent another sleepless, shivering night in the dead boy’s room—it was not my room any longer—and I was so frightened that I sweated. Each creak of the house made my heart stand still. In school the next day I was dull. I came home and spent another long night of wakefulness and the following day I went to sleep in the classroom. When questioned by the teacher, I could give no answer. Unable to free myself from my terror, I began to long for home. A week of sleeplessness brought me near the edge of nervous collapse.

242Sunday came and I refused to go to church and Uncle Clark and Aunt Jody were astonished. They did not understand that my refusal to go to church was my way of silently begging them to let me sleep somewhere else. They left me alone in the house and I spent the entire day sitting on the front steps; I did not have enough courage to go into the kitchen to eat. When I became thirsty, I went around the house and drank water from the hydrant in the back yard rather than venture into the house. Desperation made me raise the issue of the room again at bedtime.

243“Please, let me sleep on the sofa in the front room,” I pleaded.

244“You’ve got to get out of that fear,” my uncle said.

245I made up my mind to ask to be sent home. I went to Uncle Clark, knowing that he had incurred expense in bringing me here, that he had thought he was helping me, that he had bought my clothes and books.

246“Uncle Clark, send me back to Jackson,” I said.

247He was bent over a little table and he straightened and stared at me.

248“You’re not happy here?” he asked.

249“No, sir,” I answered truthfully, fearing that the ceiling would crash down upon my head.

250“And you really want to go back?”

251“Yes, sir.”

252“Things will not be as easy for you at home as here,” he said. “There’s not much money for food and things.”

253“I want to be where my mother is,” I said, trying to strengthen my plea.

254“It’s really about the room?”

255“Yes, sir.”

256“Well, we tried to make you happy here,” my uncle said, sighing. “Maybe we didn’t know how. But if you want to go back, then you may go.”

257“When?” I asked eagerly.

258“As soon as school term has ended.”

259“But I want to go now!” I cried.

260“But you’ll break up your year’s schooling,” he said.

261“I don’t mind.”

262“You will, in the future. You’ve never had a single year of steady schooling,” he said.

263“I want to go home,” I said.

264“Have you felt this way a long time?” he asked.

265“Yes, sir.”

266“I’ll write Granny tonight,” he said, his eyes lit with surprise.

267Daily I asked him if he had heard from Granny only to learn that there had been no word. My sleeplessness made me feel that my days were a hot, wild dream and my studies suffered at school. I had been making high marks and now I made low ones and finally began to fail altogether. I was fretful, living from moment to moment.

268One evening, in doing my chores, I took the water pail to the hydrant in the back yard to fill it. I was half asleep, tired, tense, all but swaying on my feet. I balanced the handle of the pail on the jutting tip of the metal faucet and waited for it to fill; the pail slipped and water drenched my pants and shoes and stockings.

269“That goddamn lousy bastard sonofabitching bucket!” I spoke in a whisper of hate and despair.

270“Richard!” Aunt Jody’s amazed voice sounded in the darkness behind me.

271I turned. Aunt Jody was standing on the back steps. She came into the yard.

272“What did you say, boy?” she asked.

273“Nothing,” I mumbled, looking contritely at the ground.

274“Repeat what you said!” she demanded.

275I did not answer. I stooped and picked up the pail. She snatched it from me.

276“What did you say?” she asked again.

277I still kept my head down, vaguely wondering if she were intimidating me or if she really wanted me to repeat my curses.

278“I’m going to tell your uncle on you,” she said at last.

279I hated her then. I thought that hanging my head and looking mutely at the ground was a kind of confession and a petition for forgiveness, but she had not accepted it as such.

280“I don’t care,” I said.

281She gave me the pail, which I filled with water and carried to the house. She followed me.

282“Richard, you are a very bad, bad boy,” she said.