Black Boy Read Online Free

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    “Mama, come and stand by me,” I begged.
    “You didn’t stand by that kitten, so why should I stand by you?” she asked tauntingly from the menacing darkness.
    “I can’t touch it,” I whimpered, feeling that the kitten was staring at me with reproachful eyes.
    “Untie it!” she ordered.
    Shuddering, I fumbled at the rope and the kitten dropped to the pavement with a thud that echoed in my mind for many days and nights. Then, obeying my mother’s floating voice, I hunted for a spot of earth, dug a shallow hole, and buried the stiff kitten; as I handled its cold body my skin prickled. When I had completed theburial, I sighed and started back to the flat, but my mother caught hold of my hand and led me again to the kitten’s grave.
    “Shut your eyes and repeat after me,” she said.
    I closed my eyes tightly, my hand clinging to hers.
    “Dear God, our Father, forgive me, for I knew not what I was doing…”
    “Dear God, our Father, forgive me, for I knew not what I was doing,” I repeated.
    “And spare my poor life, even though I did not spare the life of the kitten…”
    “And spare my poor life, even though I did not spare the life of the kitten,” I repeated.
    “And while I sleep tonight, do not snatch the breath of life from me…”
    I opened my mouth but no words came. My mind was frozen with horror. I pictured myself gasping for breath and dying in my sleep. I broke away from my mother and ran into the night, crying, shaking with dread.
    “No,” I sobbed.
    My mother called to me many times, but I would not go to her.
    “Well, I suppose you’ve learned your lesson,” she said at last.
    Contrite, I went to bed, hoping that I would never see another kitten.
     
    Hunger stole upon me so slowly that at first I was not aware of what hunger really meant. Hunger had always been more or less at my elbow when I played, but now I began to wake up at night to find hunger standing at my bedside, staring at me gauntly. The hunger I had known before this had been no grim, hostile stranger; it had been a normal hunger that had made me beg constantly for bread, and when I ate a crust or two I was satisfied. But this new hunger baffled me, scared me, made me angry and insistent. Whenever I begged for food now my mother would pour me a cup of tea which would still the clamor in my stomach for a moment or two; but a little later I would feel hunger nudging my ribs, twistingmy empty guts until they ached. I would grow dizzy and my vision would dim. I became less active in my play, and for the first time in my life I had to pause and think of what was happening to me.
    “Mama, I’m hungry,” I complained one afternoon.
    “Jump up and catch a kungry,” she said, trying to make me laugh and forget.
    “What’s a kungry ?”
    “It’s what little boys eat when they get hungry,” she said.
    “What does it taste like?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Then why do you tell me to catch one?”
    “Because you said that you were hungry,” she said, smiling.
    I sensed that she was teasing me and it made me angry.
    “But I’m hungry. I want to eat.”
    “You’ll have to wait.”
    “But I want to eat now.”
    “But there’s nothing to eat,” she told me.
    “Why?”
    “Just because there’s none,” she explained.
    “But I want to eat,” I said, beginning to cry.
    “You’ll just have to wait,” she said again.
    “But why?”
    “For God to send some food.”
    “When is He going to send it?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “But I’m hungry!”
    She was ironing and she paused and looked at me with tears in her eyes.
    “Where’s your father?” she asked me.
    I stared in bewilderment. Yes, it was true that my father had not come home to sleep for many days now and I could make as much noise as I wanted. Though I had not known why he was absent, I had been glad that he was not there to shout his restrictions at me. But it had never occurred to me that his absence would mean that there would be no