9

The nurse comes in the room where we all sitting and waiting and says the doctor won’t take no more patients till one o’clock this evening. My mama jumps up off the bench and goes up to the white lady.

“Nurse, I have to go back in the field this evening,” she says.

“The doctor is treating his last patient now,” the nurse says. “One o’clock this evening.”

“Can I at least speak to the doctor?” my mama asks.

“I’m his nurse,” the lady says.

“My little boy’s sick,” my mama says. “Right now his tooth almost killing him.”

The nurse looks at me. She’s trying to make up her mind if to let me come in. I look at her real pitiful. The tooth ain’t hurting me at all, but Mama say it is, so I make ’tend for her sake.

“This evening,” the nurse says, and goes on back in the office.

“Don’t feel ’jected, honey,” the lady says to Mama. “I been round them a long time—they take you when they want to. If you was white, that’s something else; but we the wrong color.”

Mama don’t say nothing to the lady, and me and her go outside and stand ’gainst the wall. It’s cold out there. I can feel that wind going through my coat. Some of the other people come out of the room and go up the street. Me and Mama stand there a little while and we start walking. I don’t know where we going. When we come to the other street we just stand there.

“You don’t have to make water, do you?” Mama says.

“No, ma’am,” I say.

We go on up the street. Walking real slow. I can tell Mama don’t know where she’s going. When we come to a store we stand there and look at the dummies. I look at a little boy wearing a brown overcoat. He’s got on brown shoes, too. I look at my old shoes and look at his’n again. You wait till summer, I say.

Me and Mama walk away. We come up to another store and we stop and look at them dummies, too. Then we go on again. We pass a café where the white people in there eating.

Mama tells me keep my eyes in front where they belong, but I can’t help from seeing them people eat. My stomach starts to growling ’cause I’m hungry. When I see people eating, I get hungry; when I see a coat, I get cold.

A man whistles at my mama when we go by a filling station. She makes ’tend she don’t even see him. I look back and I feel like hitting him in the mouth. If I was bigger, I say; if I was bigger, you’d see.

We keep on going. I’m getting colder and colder, but I don’t say nothing. I feel that stuff running down my nose and I sniff.

“That rag,” Mama says.

I get it out and wipe my nose. I’m getting cold all over now—my face, my hands, my feet, everything. We pass another little café, but this’n for white people, too, and we can’t go in there, either. So we just walk. I’m so cold now I’m ’bout ready to say it. If I knowed where we was going I wouldn’t be so cold, but I don’t know where we going. We go, we go, we go. We walk clean out of Bayonne. Then we cross the street and we come back. Same thing I seen when I got off the bus this morning. Same old trees, same old walk, same old weeds, same old cracked pave—same old everything.

I sniff again.

“That rag,” Mama says.

I wipe my nose real fast and jugg that handkerchief back in my pocket ’fore my hand gets too cold. I raise my head and I can see David’s hardware store. When we come up to it, we go in. I don’t know why, but I’m glad.

It’s warm in there. It’s so warm in there you don’t ever want to leave. I look for the heater, and I see it over by them barrels. Three white men standing round the heater talking in Creole. One of them comes over to see what my mama want.

“Got any axe handles?” she says.

Me, Mama and the white man start to the back, but Mama stops me when we come up to the heater. She and the white man go on. I hold my hands over the heater and look at them. They go all the way to the back, and I see the white man pointing to the axe handles ’gainst the wall. Mama takes one of them and shakes it like she’s trying to figure how much it weighs. Then she rubs her hand over it from one end to the other end. She turns it over and looks at the other side, then she shakes it again, and shakes her head and puts it back. She gets another one and she does it just like she did the first one, then she shakes her head. Then she gets a brown one and do it that, too. But she don’t like this one, either. Then she gets another one, but ’fore she shakes it or anything, she looks at me. Look like she’s trying to say something to me, but I don’t know what it is. All I know is I done got warm now and I’m feeling right smart better. Mama shakes this axe handle just like she did the others, and shakes her head and says something to the white man. The white man just looks at his pile of axe handles, and when Mama pass him to come to the front, the white man just scratch his head and follows her. She tells me come on and we go on out and start walking again.

We walk and walk, and no time at all I’m cold again. Look like I’m colder now ’cause I can still remember how good it was back there. My stomach growls and I suck it in to keep Mama from hearing it. She’s walking right ’side me, and it growls so loud you can hear it a mile. But Mama don’t say a word.