me we’d be able to drink and eat wherever we wanted to in Ohio. I woke up off and on just long enough to eat and stare through tear-filled eyes out the train window at the world going by me.
After we had arrived in Richland, Ohio, which was about a hundred miles south of Cleveland, we had to walk from the train station to Scary Mary’s house because we couldn’t get a cab driver who was brave enough to go into that part of town. It took us more than an hour to get there. By then I was so tired and weak I was dizzy. It was the middle of November and so cold I shivered for the first time in my life. When the urge to pee came over me, I had no choice but to run behind a building and do it there. I got hungry again, and Mama stuffed a baloney sandwich in my mouth.
An ominous feeling came over me as soon as me and Mama, hugging our tattered suitcases, walked up onto the porch of Scary Mary’s shabby old house, a house very much unlike her nice redbrick house in Florida. There was a bullet hole in one of her front-room windows! On the front door next to a wallet-sized, black-and-white picture of Jesus was a crude sign that said: NO CREDIT, NO PERSONAL CHECKS, NO WEAPONS ALLOWED. Stray dogs, cats, and people were roaming all over the run-down neighborhood. A policeman was sitting in his patrol car on the street sound asleep. We knocked on Scary Mary’s door for five minutes before a man leading a drunk woman down the street told us that Scary Mary was in jail.
“But we ain’t got nowhere to stay,” Mama told the man, dabbing at her eyes with a dingy handkerchief.
I could see that the man was sympathetic. He looked at us and shook his head. Old and shabbily dressed, he didn’t look like somebody in a position to help two homeless strangers; he could barely hold up the woman who was falling-down drunk. All he could do was give us the address to the welfare department, but since Mama refused to accept handouts from Uncle Sam, we didn’t go there. Instead, we returned to the train station, where I sat alone on a bench in the waiting area for four hours while Mama went to look for work.
“Don’t you say nothin’ to no strangers,” was all she said before she hurried away.
I ran to the window and watched her drag her weary feet down that cold, mean street. A large tear rolled down the side of my face. The tail of her tattered old coat had started to unravel, and her shoes were so old, the heels were completely gone.
Not long after I returned to my seat, a heavily made-up white woman wearing a floppy hat came up to me. First she let out this long low whistle, and then she said, “I just got to touch those pigtails. Can I?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied. The woman laughed, patted my rough braids, and slapped a penny in my hand.
“What a little nigger frog you are,” she said as she turned to leave.
I didn’t know if she had complimented or insulted me. I couldn’t think of anything uglier than a frog. But on the other hand, some people thought frogs were cute. The woman’s comment troubled me. Even at my young age, I knew that there was nothing complimentary about being called a nigger. So there I was, homeless, helpless, and a nigger frog.
Finally, Mama returned to the train station. I was shocked when I saw her crawl out of a big black car with a middle-aged, moon-faced white man behind the wheel. This was her new employer and we had a new home: his basement. I was glad when we moved into our own house a month later.
CHAPTER 4
We didn’t spend much time in our first house in Ohio, just four months. It was this lopsided pile of bricks on a dark rural road. Behind it were some train tracks and in front across the road was a cemetery. Every time a train roared by, the house shook. On both sides were deserted, boarded-up houses with CONDEMNED signs all over the place. Tramps that traveled on the passing freight trains hopped off now and then to sleep in one of the deserted houses and peep in our windows and go through our garbage cans. We had these great