1THE next day at school I inquired among the students about jobs and was given the name of a white family who wanted a boy to do chores. That afternoon, as soon as school had let out, I went to the address. A tall, dour white woman talked to me. Yes, she needed a boy, an honest boy. Two dollars a week. Mornings, evenings, and all day Saturdays. Washing dishes. Chopping wood. Scrubbing floors. Cleaning the yard. I would get my breakfast and dinner. As I asked timid questions, my eyes darted about. What kind of food would I get? Was the place as shabby as the kitchen indicated?

2“Do you want this job?” the woman asked.

3“Yes, ma’am,” I said, afraid to trust my own judgment.

4“Now, boy, I want to ask you one question and I want you to tell me the truth,” she said.

5“Yes, ma’am,” I said, all attention.

6“Do you steal?” she asked me seriously.

7I burst into a laugh, then checked myself.

8“What’s so damn funny about that?” she asked.

9“Lady, if I was a thief, I’d never tell anybody.”

10“What do you mean?” she blazed with a red face.

11I had made a mistake during my first five minutes in the white world. I hung my head.

12“No, ma’am,” I mumbled. “I don’t steal.”

13She stared at me, trying to make up her mind.

14“Now, look, we don’t want a sassy nigger around here,” she said.

15“No, ma’am,” I assured her. “I’m not sassy.”

16Promising to report the next morning at six o’clock, I walked home and pondered on what could possibly have been in the woman’s mind to have made her ask me point-blank if I stole. Then I recalled hearing that white people looked upon Negroes as a variety of children, and it was only in the light of that that her question made any sense. If I had been planning to murder her, I certainly would not have told her and, rationally, she no doubt realized it. Yet habit had overcome her rationality and had made her ask me: “Boy, do you steal?” Only an idiot would have answered: “Yes, ma’am. I steal.”

17What would happen now that I would be among white people for hours at a stretch? Would they hit me? Curse me? If they did, I would leave at once. In all my wishing for a job I had not thought of how I would be treated, and now it loomed important, decisive, sweeping down beneath every other consideration. I would be polite, humble, saying yes sir and no sir, yes ma’am and no ma’am, but I would draw a line over which they must not step. Oh, maybe I’m just thinking up trouble, I told myself. They might like me....

18The next morning I chopped wood for the cook stove, lugged in scuttles of coal for the grates, washed the front porch and swept the back porch, swept the kitchen, helped wait on the table, and washed the dishes. I was sweating. I swept the front walk and ran to the store to shop. When I returned the woman said:

19“Your breakfast is in the kitchen.”

20“Thank you, ma’am.”

21I saw a plate of thick, black molasses and a hunk of white bread on the table. Would I get no more than this? They had had eggs, bacon, coffee.... I picked up the bread and tried to break it; it was stale and hard. Well, I would drink the molasses. I lifted the plate and brought it to my lips and saw floating on the surface of the black liquid green and white bits of mold. Goddamn.... I can’t eat this, I told myself. The food was not even clean. The woman came into the kitchen as I was putting on my coat.

22“You didn’t eat,” she said.

23“No, ma’am,” I said. “I’m not hungry.”

24“You’ll eat at home?” she asked hopefully.

25“Well, I just wasn’t hungry this morning, ma’am,” I lied.

26“You don’t like molasses and bread,” she said dramatically.

27“Oh, yes, ma’am, I do,” I defended myself quickly, not wanting her to think that I dared criticize what she had given me.

28“I don’t know what’s happening to you niggers nowadays,” she sighed, wagging her head. She looked closely at the molasses. “It’s a sin to throw out molasses like that. I’ll put it up for you this evening.”

29“Yes, ma’am,” I said heartily.

30Neatly she covered the plate of molasses with another plate, then felt the bread and dumped it into the garbage. She turned to me, her face lit with an idea.

31“What grade are you in school?”

32“Seventh, ma’am.”

33“Then why are you going to school?” she asked in surprise.

34“Well, I want to be a writer,” I mumbled, unsure of myself; I had not planned to tell her that, but she had made me feel so utterly wrong and of no account that I needed to bolster myself.

35“A what?” she demanded.

36“A writer,” I mumbled.

37“For what?”

38“To write stories,” I mumbled defensively.

39“You’ll never be a writer,” she said. “Who on earth put such ideas into your nigger head?”

40“Nobody,” I said.

41“I didn’t think anybody ever would,” she declared indignantly.

42As I walked around her house to the street, I knew that I would not go back. The woman had assaulted my ego; she had assumed that she knew my place in life, what I felt, what I ought to be, and I resented it with all my heart. Perhaps she was right; perhaps I would never be a writer; but I did not want her to say so.

43Had I kept the job I would have learned quickly just how white people acted toward Negroes, but I was too naïve to think that there were many white people like that. I told myself that there were good white people, people with money and sensitive feelings. As a whole, I felt that they were bad, but I would be lucky enough to find the exceptions.

44Fearing that my family might think I was finicky, I lied to them, telling them that the white woman had already hired a boy. At school I continued to ask about jobs and was directed to another address. As soon as school was out I made for the house. Yes, the woman said that she wanted a boy who could milk a cow, feed chickens, gather vegetables, help serve breakfast and dinner.

45“But I can’t milk a cow, ma’am,” I said.

46“Where are you from?” she asked incredulously.

47“Here in Jackson,” I said.

48“You mean to stand there, nigger, and tell me that you live in Jackson and don’t know how to milk a cow?” she demanded in surprise.

49I said nothing, but I was quickly learning the reality—a Negro’s reality—of the white world. One woman had assumed that I would tell her if I stole, and now this woman was amazed that I could not milk a cow, I, a nigger who dared live in Jackson.... They were all turning out to be alike, differing only in detail. I faced a wall in the woman’s mind, a wall that she did not know was there.

50“I just never learned,” I said finally.

51“I’ll show you how to milk,” she said, as though glad to be charitable enough to repair a nigger’s knowledge on that score. “It’s easy.”

52The place was large; they had a cow, chickens, a garden, all of which spelled food and that decided me. I told her that I would take the job and I reported for work the next morning. My tasks were simple but many; I milked the cow under her supervision, gathered eggs, swept, and was through in time to serve breakfast. The dining-room table was set for five; there were eggs, bacon, toast, jam, butter, milk, apples.... That seemed promising. The woman told me to bring the food in as they called for it, and I familiarized myself with the kitchen so that I could act quickly when called upon. Finally the woman came into the dining room followed by a pale young man who sat down and stared at the food.

53“What the hell!” he snarled. “Every morning it’s these damn eggs for breakfast.”

54“Listen, you sonofabitch,” the woman said, sitting too, “you don’t have to eat ’em.”

55“You might try serving some dirt,” he said, and forked up the bacon.

56I felt that I was dreaming. Were they like that all the time? If so, I would not stay here. A young girl came and flopped into her chair.

57“That’s right, you bitch,” the young man said. “Knock the food right out of my goddamn mouth.”

58“You know what you can do,” the girl said.

59I stared at them so intently that I was not aware that the young man was watching me.

60“Say, what in hell are you glaring at me for, you nigger bastard?” he demanded. “Get those goddamn biscuits off that stove and put ’em on the table.”

61“Yes, sir.”

62Two middle-aged men came in and sat down. I never learned who was in the family, who was related to whom, or if it was a family. They cursed each other in an amazingly offhand manner and nobody seemed to mind. As they hurled invectives, they barely looked at each other. I was tense each moment, trying to anticipate their wishes and avoid a curse, and I did not suspect that the tension I had begun to feel that morning would lift itself into the passion of my life. Perhaps I had waited too long to start working for white people; perhaps I should have begun earlier, when I was younger—as most of the other black boys had done—and perhaps by now the tension would have become an habitual condition, contained and controlled by reflex. But that was not to be my lot; I was always to be conscious of it, brood over it, carry it in my heart, live with it, sleep with it, fight with it.

63The morning was physically tiring, but the nervous strain, the fear that my actions would call down upon my head a storm of curses, was even more damaging. When the time came for me to go to school, I was emotionally spent. But I clung to the job because I got enough to eat and no one watched me closely and measured out my food. I had rarely tasted eggs and I would put hunks of yellow butter into a hot skillet and hurriedly scramble three or four eggs at a time and gobble them down in huge mouthfuls so that the woman would not see me. And I would take tumblers of milk behind a convenient door and drain them in a swallow, as though they contained water.

64Though the food I ate strengthened my body, I acquired another problem: I had fallen down in my studies at school. Had I been physically stronger, had not my new tensions sapped my already limited energy, I might have been able to work mornings and evenings and still carry my studies successfully. But in the middle of the day I would grow groggy; in the classroom I would feel that the teacher and the pupils were receding from me and I would know that I was drifting off to sleep. I would go to the water fountain in the corridor and let cold water run over my wrists, chilling my blood, hoping in that way to keep awake.

65But the job had its boon. At the midday recess I would crowd gladly into the corner store and eat sandwiches with the boys, slamming down my own money on the counter for what I wanted, swapping descriptions of the homes of white folks in which we worked. I used to divert them with vivid word pictures of the cursing family, their brooding silences, their indifference toward one another. I told them of the food I managed to eat when the woman’s back was turned, and they were filled with friendly envy.

66The boys would now examine some new article of clothing I had bought; none of us allowed a week to pass without buying something new, paying fifty cents down and fifty cents per week. We knew that we were being cheated, but we never had enough cash to buy in any other way.

67My mother began a rapid recovery. I was happy when she expressed the hope that someday soon we might have a home of our own. Though Granny was angry and disgusted, my mother began to attend a Methodist church in the neighborhood, and I went to Sunday school, not because my mother begged me to—which she did—but to meet and talk with my classmates.

68In the black Protestant church I entered a new world: prim, brown, puritanical girls who taught in the public schools; black college students who tried to conceal their plantation origin; black boys and girls emerging self-consciously from adolescence; wobbly-bosomed black and yellow church matrons; black janitors and porters who sang proudly in the choir; subdued redcaps and carpenters who served as deacons; meek, blank-eyed black and yellow washerwomen who shouted and moaned and danced when hymns were sung; jovial, potbellied black bishops; skinny old maids who were constantly giving rallies to raise money; snobbery, clannishness, gossip, intrigue, petty class rivalry, and conspicuous displays of cheap clothing.... I liked it and I did not like it; I longed to be among them, yet when with them I looked at them as if I were a million miles away. I had been kept out of their world too long ever to be able to become a real part of it.

69Nevertheless, I was so starved for association with people that I allowed myself to be seduced by it all, and for a few months I lived the life of an optimist. A revival began at the church and my classmates at school urged me to attend. More because I liked them than from any interest in religion, I consented. As the services progressed night after night, my mother tried to persuade me to join, to save my soul at last, to become a member of a responsible community church. Despite the fact that I told them I could never feel any religion, the boys of my gang begged me to “come to God.”

70“You believe in God, don’t you?” they asked.

71I evaded the question.

72“But this is a new day,” they said, pulling down the corners of their lips. “We don’t holler and moan in church no more. Come to church and be a member of the community.”

73“Oh, I don’t know,” I said.

74“We don’t want to push you,” they said delicately, implying that if I wanted to associate with them I would have to join.

75On the last night of the revival, the preacher asked all those who were members of the church to stand. A good majority of those present rose. Next the preacher called upon the Christians who were not members of any church to stand. More responded. There remained now but a few young men who, belonging to no church and professing no religion, were scattered sheepishly about the pews. Having thus isolated the sinners, the preacher told the deacons to prevail upon those who lived “in darkness to discuss the state of their souls with him.” The deacons sped to their tasks and asked us to go into a room and talk with a man “chosen and anointed of God.” They held our arms and smiled as they bent and talked to us. Surrounded by people I knew and liked, with my mother’s eyes looking pleadingly into mine, it was hard to refuse. I followed the others into a room where the preacher stood; he smiled and shook our hands.

76“Now, you young men,” he began in a brisk, clipped tone, “I want all of you to know God. I’m not asking you to join the church, but it’s my duty as a man of God to tell you that you are in danger. Your peril is great; you stand in the need of prayer. Now, I’m going to ask each of you a personal favor. I want you to let the members of this church send up a prayer to God for you. Now, is there any soul here so cold, so hard, so lost, that he would say no to that? Can you refuse to let the good people of this community pray for you?”

77He paused dramatically and no one answered. All the techniques of his appeal were familiar to me and I sat there feeling foolish, wanting to leap through the window and go home and forget about it. But I sat still, filled more with disgust than sin.

78“Would any man in this room dare fling no into God’s face?” the preacher asked.

79There was silence.

80“Now, I’m going to ask all of you to rise and go into the church and take a seat on the front bench,” he said, edging on to more definite commitments. “Just stand up,” he said, lifting his hands, palms up, as though he had the power to make us rise by magic. “That’s it, young man,” he encouraged the first boy who rose.

81I followed them and we sat like wet ducks on a bench facing the congregation. Some part of me was cursing. A low, soft hymn began.

82This may be the last time, I don’t know....

83They sang it, hummed it, crooned it, moaned it, implying in sweet, frightening tones that if we did not join the church then and there we might die in our sleep that very night and go straight to hell. The church members felt the challenge and the volume of song swelled. Could they sing so terrifyingly sweet as to make us join, burst into tears and drop to our knees? A few boys rose and gave their hands to the preacher. A few women shouted and danced with joy. Another hymn began.

84It ain’t my brother, but it’s me, Oh, Lord,

85Standing in the need of prayer....

86During the singing the preacher tried yet another ruse; he intoned mournfully, letting his voice melt into the singing, yet casting his words above it:

87“How many mothers of these young men are here tonight?”

88Among others, my mother rose and stood proudly.

89“Now, good sweet mothers, come right down in front here,” said the preacher.

90Hoping that this was the night of my long-deferred salvation, my mother came forward, limping, weeping, smiling. The mothers ringed their sons around, whispering, pleading.

91“Now, you good sweet mothers, symbols of Mother Mary at the tomb, kneel and pray for your sons, your only sons,” the preacher chanted.

92The mothers knelt. My mother grabbed my hands and I felt hot tears scalding my fingers. I tried to stifle my disgust. We young men had been trapped by the community, the tribe in which we lived and of which we were a part. The tribe, for its own safety, was asking us to be at one with it. Our mothers were kneeling in public and praying for us to give the sign of allegiance. The hymn ended and the preacher launched into a highly emotional and symbolic sermon, recounting how our mothers had given birth to us, how they had nursed us from infancy, how they had tended us when we were sick, how they had seen us grow up, how they had watched over us, how they had always known what was best for us. He then called for yet another hymn, which was hummed. He chanted above it in a melancholy tone:

93“Now, I’m asking the first mother who really loves her son to bring him to me for baptism!”

94Goddamn, I thought. It had happened quicker than I had expected. My mother was looking steadily at me.

95“Come, son, let your old mother take you to God,” she begged. “I brought you into the world, now let me help to save you.”

96She caught my hand and I held back.

97“I’ve been as good a mother as I could,” she whispered through her tears.

98“God is hearing every word,” the preacher underscored her plea.

99This business of saving souls had no ethics; every human relationship was shamelessly exploited. In essence, the tribe was asking us whether we shared its feelings; if we refused to join the church, it was equivalent to saying no, to placing ourselves in the position of moral monsters. One mother led her beaten and frightened son to the preacher amid shouts of amen and hallelujah.

100“Don’t you love your old crippled mother, Richard?” my mother asked. “Don’t leave me standing here with my empty hands,” she said, afraid that I would humiliate her in public.

101It was no longer a question of my believing in God; it was no longer a matter of whether I would steal or lie or murder; it was a simple, urgent matter of public pride, a matter of how much I had in common with other people. If I refused, it meant that I did not love my mother, and no man in that tight little black community had ever been crazy enough to let himself be placed in such a position. My mother pulled my arm and I walked with her to the preacher and shook his hand, a gesture that made me a candidate for baptism. There were more songs and prayers; it lasted until well after midnight. I walked home limp as a rag; I had not felt anything except sullen anger and a crushing sense of shame. Yet I was somehow glad that I had got it over with; no barriers now stood between me and the community.

102“Mama, I don’t feel a thing,” I told her truthfully.

103“Don’t you worry; you’ll grow into feeling it,” she assured me.

104And when I confessed to the other boys that I felt nothing, they too admitted that they felt nothing.

105“But the main thing is to be a member of the church,” they said.

106The Sunday of the baptism arrived. I dressed in my best and showed up sweating. The candidates were huddled together to listen to a sermon in which the road of salvation was mapped out from the cradle to the grave. We were then called to the front of the church and lined up. The preacher, draped in white robes, dipped a small branch of a tree in a huge bowl of water and hovered above the head of the first candidate.

107“I baptize thee in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” he pronounced sonorously as he shook the wet branch. Drops trickled down the boy’s face.

108From one boy to another he went, dipping the branch each time. Finally my turn came and I felt foolish, tense; I wanted to yell for him to stop; I wanted to tell him that all this was so much nonsense. But I said nothing. The dripping branch was shaken above my head and drops of water wet my face and scalp, some of it rolling down my neck and wetting my back, like insects crawling. I wanted to squirm, but I held still. Then it was over. I relaxed. The preacher was now shaking the branch over another boy’s head. I sighed. I had been baptized.

109Even after receiving the “right hand of fellowship,” Sunday school bored me. The Bible stories seemed slow and meaningless when compared to the bloody thunder of pulp narrative. And I was not alone in feeling this; other boys went to sleep in Sunday school. Finally the boldest of us confessed that the entire thing was a fraud and we played hooky from church.

110As summer neared, my mother suffered yet another stroke of paralysis and again I had to watch her suffer, listen to her groans, powerless to help. I used to lie awake nights and think back to the early days in Arkansas, tracing my mother’s life, reliving events, wondering why she had apparently been singled out for so much suffering, meaningless suffering, and I would feel more awe than I had ever felt in church. My mind could find no answer and I would feel rebellious against all life. But I never felt humble.

111Another change took place at home. We needed money badly and Granny and Aunt Addie decided that we could no longer share the entire house, and Uncle Tom and his family were invited to live upstairs at a nominal rental. The dining room and the living room were converted into bedrooms and for the first time we were squeezed for living space. We began to get on each other’s nerves. Uncle Tom had taught school in country towns for thirty years and as soon as he was under the roof he proceeded to tell me what was wrong with my life. I ignored him and he resented it.

112Rattling pots and pans in the kitchen would now awaken me in the mornings and I would know that Uncle Tom and his family were getting breakfast. One morning I was roused by my uncle’s voice calling gently but persistently. I opened my eyes and saw the dim blob of his face peering from behind the jamb of the kitchen door.

113“What time have you?” I thought he asked me, but I was not sure.

114“Hunh?” I mumbled sleepily.

115“What time have you got?” he repeated.

116I lifted myself on my elbow and looked at my dollar watch, which lay on the chair at the bedside.

117“Eighteen past five,” I mumbled.

118“Eighteen past five?” he asked.

119“Yes, sir.”

120“Now, is that the right time?” he asked again.

121I was tired, sleepy; I did not want to look at the watch again, but I was satisfied that, on the whole, I had given him the correct time.

122“It’s right,” I said, snuggling back down into my pillow. “If it’s a little slow or fast, it’s not far wrong.”

123There was a short silence; I thought he had gone.

124“What on earth do you mean, boy?” he asked in loud anger.

125I sat up, blinking, staring into the shadows of the room, trying to see the expression on his face.

126“What do I mean?” I asked, bewildered. “I mean what I said.” Had I given him the wrong time? I looked again at my watch. “It’s twenty past now.”

127“Why, you impudent black rascal!” he thundered.

128I pushed back the covers of the bed, sensing trouble.

129“What are you angry about?” I asked.

130“I never heard a sassier black imp than you in all my life,” he spluttered.

131I swung my feet to the floor so that I could watch him.

132“What are you talking about?” I asked. “You asked me the time and I told you.”

133“‘If it’s a little fast or slow, it’s not far wrong,’” he said, imitating me in an angry, sarcastic voice. “I’ve taught school for thirty years, and by God I’ve never had a boy say anything like that to me.”

134“But what’s wrong with what I said?” I asked, amazed.

135“Shut up!” he shouted. “Or I’ll take my fist and ram it down your sassy throat! One more word out of you, and I’ll get a limb and teach you a lesson.”

136“What’s the matter with you, Uncle Tom?” I asked. “What’s wrong with what I said?”

137I could hear his breath whistling in his throat; I knew that he was furious.

138“This day I’m going to give you the whipping some man ought to have given you long ago,” he vowed.

139I got to my feet and grabbed my clothes; the whole thing seemed unreal. I had been confronted so suddenly with struggle that I could not pull all the strings of the situation together at once. I did not feel that I had given him cause to say I was sassy. I had spoken to him just as I spoke to everybody. Others did not resent my words, so why should he? I heard him go out of the kitchen door and I knew that he had gone into the back yard. I pulled on my clothes and ran to the window; I saw him tearing a long, young, green switch from the elm tree. My body tightened. I was damned if he was going to beat me with it. Until a few days ago he had never lived near me, had never had any say in my rearing or lack of rearing. I was working, eating my meals out, buying my own clothes, giving what few pennies I could to Granny to help out in the house. And now a strange uncle who felt that I was impolite was going to teach me to act as I had seen the backward black boys act on the plantations, was going to teach me to grin, hang my head, and mumble apologetically when I was spoken to.

140My senses reeled in protest. No, that could not be. He would not beat me. He was only bluffing. His anger would pass. He would think it over and realize that it was not worth all the bother. Dressed, I sat on the edge of the bed and waited. I heard his footsteps come onto the back porch. I felt weak all over. How long was this going to last? How long was I going to be beaten for trifles and less than trifles? I was already so conditioned toward my relatives that when I passed them I actually had a nervous tic in my muscles, and now I was going to be beaten by someone who did not like the tone of voice in which I spoke. I ran across the room and pulled out the dresser drawer and got my pack of razor blades; I opened it and took a thin blade of blue steel in each hand. I stood ready for him. The door opened. I was hoping desperately that this was not true, that this dream would end.

141“Richard!” he called me in a cold, even tone.

142“Yes, sir!” I answered, striving to keep my tension out of my voice.

143“Come here.”

144I walked into the kitchen, my eyes upon him, my hands holding the razors behind my back.

145“Now, Uncle Tom, what do you want with me?” I asked him.

146“You need a lesson in how to live with people,” he said.

147“If I do need one, you’re not going to give it to me,” I said.

148“You’ll swallow those words before I’m through with you,” he vowed.

149“Now, listen, Uncle Tom,” I said, “you’re not going to whip me. You’re a stranger to me. You don’t support me. I don’t live with you.”

150“You shut that foul mouth of yours and get into the back yard,” he snapped.

151He had not seen the razors in my hand. I ducked out the kitchen door and jumped lightly off the porch to the ground. He ran down the steps and advanced with the lifted switch.

152“I’ve got a razor in each hand!” I warned in a low, charged voice. “If you touch me, I’ll cut you! Maybe I’ll get cut too, but I’ll cut you, so help me God!”

153He paused, staring at my lifted hands in the dawning light of morning. I held a sharp blue edge of steel tightly between thumb and forefinger of each fist.

154“My God,” he gasped.

155“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings this morning,” I told him. “You insist I did. Now, I’ll be damned if I’m going to be beaten because of your hurt feelings.”

156“You’re the worst criminal I ever saw,” he exclaimed softly.

157“If you want to fight, I’ll fight. That’s the way it’ll be between us,” I told him.

158“You’ll never amount to anything,” he said, shaking his head and blinking his eyes in astonishment.

159“I’m not worried about that,” I said. “All I want you to do is keep away from me, now and always....”

160“You’ll end on the gallows,” he predicted.

161“If I do, you’ll have nothing to do with it,” I said.

162He stared at me in silence; evidently he did not believe me, for he took a step forward to test me.

163“Put those razors down,” he commanded.

164“I’ll cut you! I’ll cut you!” I said, hysteria leaping into my voice, my hands slicing out with points of steel as I backed away.

165He stopped; he had never in his life faced a person more grimly determined. Now and then he blinked his eyes and shook his head.

166“You fool!” he bellowed suddenly.

167“I’ll make you bloody if you hit me!” I warned him.

168His chest heaved and his body seemed to droop.

169“Somebody will yet break your spirit,” he said.

170“It won’t be you!”

171“You’ll get yours someday!”

172“You won’t be the one to give it to me!”

173“And you’ve just been baptized,” he said heavily.

174“The hell with that,” I said.

175We stood in the early morning light and a touch of sun broke on the horizon. Roosters were crowing. A bird chirped near-by somewhere. Perhaps the neighbors were listening. Finally Uncle Tom’s face began to twitch. Tears rolled down his cheeks. His lips trembled.

176“Boy, I’m sorry for you,” he said at last.

177“You’d better be sorry for yourself,” I said.

178“You think you’re a man,” he said, dropping his arm and letting the switch drag in the dust of the yard. His lips moved as he groped for words. “But you’ll learn, and you’ll learn the hard way. I wish I could be an example to you....”

179I knew that I had conquered him, had rid myself of him mentally and emotionally; but I wanted to be sure.

180“You are not an example to me; you could never be,” I spat at him. “You’re a warning. Your life isn’t so hot that you can tell me what to do.” He repaired chairs for a living now, since he had retired from teaching. “Do you think I want to grow up and weave the bottoms of chairs for people to sit in?”

181He twitched violently, trying to control himself.

182“You’ll be sorry you said that,” he mumbled.

183He turned his tall, lean, bent body and walked slowly up the steps. I sat on the porch a long time, waiting for my emotions to ebb. Then I crept cautiously into the house, got my hat, coat, books, and went to work, went to face the whims of the white folks.