Black Boy by Richard Wright

tense. Would someone say that I was a bad nigger and try to kill me here? What was keeping the woman so long? Would she tell other people that a nigger boy had said something wrong to her? Perhaps she was getting a mob? Maybe I ought to leave now and forget about Betsy? My mounting anxieties drowned out my hunger. I wanted to rush back to the safety of the black faces I knew.
    The door opened and the woman came out, smiling, still hugging Betsy in her arms. But I could not see her smile now; my eyes were full of the fears I had conjured up.
    “I just love this dog,” she said, “and I’m going to buy her. I haven’t got a dollar. All I have is ninety-seven cents.”
    Though she did not know it, she was now giving me my opportunity to ask for my dog without saying that I did not want to sell her to white people.
    “No, ma’am,” I said softly. “I want a dollar.”
    “But I haven’t got a dollar in the house,” she said.
    “Then I can’t sell the dog,” I said.
    “I’ll give you the other three cents when my mother comes home tonight,” she said.
    “No, ma’am,” I said, looking stonily at the floor.
    “But, listen, you said you wanted a dollar…”
    “Yes, ma’am. A dollar.”
    “Then here is ninety-seven cents,” she said, extending a handful of change to me, still holding on to Betsy.
    “No, ma’am,” I said, shaking my head. “I want a dollar.”
    “But I’ll give you the other three cents!”
    “My mama told me to sell her for a dollar,” I said, feeling that I was being too aggressive and trying to switch the moral blame for my aggressiveness to my absent mother.
    “You’ll get a dollar. You’ll get the three cents tonight.”
    “No, ma’am.”
    “Then leave the dog and come back tonight.”
    “No, ma’am.”
    “But what could you want with a dollar now ?” she asked.
    “I want to buy something to eat,” I said.
    “Then ninety-seven cents will buy you a lot of food,” she said.
    “No, ma’am. I want my dog.”
    She stared at me for a moment and her face grew red.
    “Here’s your dog,” she snapped, thrusting Betsy into my arms. “Now, get away from here! You’re just about the craziest nigger boy I ever did see!”
    I took Betsy and ran all the way home, glad that I had not sold her. But my hunger returned. Maybe I ought to have taken the ninety-seven cents? But it was too late now. I hugged Betsy in my arms and waited. When my mother came home that night, I told her what had happened.
    “And you didn’t take the money?” she asked.
    “No, ma’am.”
    “Why?”
    “I don’t know,” I said uneasily.
    “Don’t you know that ninety-seven cents is almost a dollar?” she asked.
    “Yes, ma’am,” I said, counting on my fingers. “Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred. But I didn’t want to sell Betsy to white people.”
    “Why?”
    “Because they’re white,” I said.
    “You’re foolish,” my mother said.
    A week later Betsy was crushed to death beneath the wheels of a coal wagon. I cried and buried her in the back yard and drove a barrel staving into the ground at the head of her grave. My mother’s sole comment was:
    “You could have had a dollar. But you can’t eat a dead dog, can you?”
    I did not answer.
    Up or down the wet or dusty streets, indoors or out, the days and nights began to spell out magic possibilities.
    If I pulled a hair from a horse’s tail and sealed it in a jar of my own urine, the hair would turn overnight into a snake.
    If I passed a Catholic sister or mother dressed in black and smiled and allowed her to see my teeth, I would surely die.
    If I walked under a leaning ladder, I would certainly have bad luck.
    If I kissed my elbow, I would turn into a girl.
    If my right ear itched, then something good was being said about me by somebody.
    If I touched a hunchback’s hump, then I would never be sick.
    If I placed a safety pin on a steel railroad track and let a train run over it, the safety pin would turn into a pair of