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hands. He dropped an envelope on top of them. “Here. Stamps, some penny postcards. Write to me, your girlfriends, and your aunt. Be careful, girlio.”
    “Oh, Poppa, I’m scared. Don’t make me go!” I fell over onto his shoulder. He rubbed and patted my back, but the wagon kept moving.
    “It’s just a test, girlio. All life’s a test and you got to pass it, just like how you wrote in your poem ‘Forsythia,’ remember?”
    “That was something I remembered from a St. Paul sermon,” I whispered. I didn’t believe those words.
    The wagon slowed and stopped. Colored people strolled around on the train station platform, shouting over the train and motorcar noises. Poppa helped me down to the ground. I saw Mr. Smithfield in his black jacket, black pants, and black cap. He waved at us to come over. I heaved my feet along like I wore horseshoes instead of my Buster Browns. Mr. Bivens handed my valise to Mr. Smithfield and my lunch basket to me. I held tight to my schoolbag and violin.
    Poppa whispered, “I love you, girlio. Gimme a kiss and a big smile. You’ll be back soon and I’ll be fine. Everything’ll be all right.”
    I set down my stuff, and I wrapped my arms around his neck and squeezed until he coughed. My face was too crumpled up to give him a good smile. My tummy was twisted up so bad it probably looked like a pretzel. The next thing I knew, my things and I were stumbling up the train steps behind Mr. Smithfield. “You play my niece on this trip,” he said. “Follow close, now.”
    Our Colored section of the train was crammed with grown folks, children, boxes, coal dust, and steamy air that reeked like rotten vegetables. Mr. Smithfield showed me to a seat by a woman and across from a frowning, skinny-as-a-beanpole, bald-headed boy pushing at three small children. The boy shoved at them as if he was trying to keep them stacked like the books on our bookshelves. “Don’t talk to nobody but these nice folks here,” Mr. Smithfield said. “I’ll watch your valise.”
    The woman yawned and smiled at me. “That your kinfolks?” She pointed out the open window to Poppa and Mr. Bivens waving on the platform. As the train wheels screeched into motion, I waved back until I couldn’t see my father or even the train station anymore. Mr. Smithfield shouted out greetings up and down the aisle while babies cried and people talked, laughed, and hollered. We rolled faster away from stores, streets, and people I had known all my life. Soon we were speeding past tobacco barns, people bent over in newly plowed fields, then woods.
    Poppa was gone, and so was everything else that I loved.

Chapter
Four
    T hat bald-headed skinny boy nudged me with his shoe. “Stop that sniffling and moaning,” he snapped. “You wake up these younguns and I’ll make you rock ’em back to sleep. Anybody got a right to cry is me. You don’t see me crying.”
    “Don’t be barking at me,” I wanted to say, but I didn’t. I just stopped crying as best I could. He was right. Nobody else around me was boo-hooing like this. I noticed that he had the thickest eyelashes I’d ever seen on a boy. And a crease-like dimple in his right cheek, like Poppa had. I loved dimples, I guess because Poppa had them.
    “If they wake up Momma, she’ll pop a knot on my head, see,” he explained, but not as snappy, nodding at the sleeping lady beside me. “Momma’s knots hurt.”
    “I guess you got your hands full both ways,” I told him.
    “You’re darn tootin’ I do.” He sounded almost proud. “Where you headed by yourself?”
    I hesitated. I didn’t even know this boy’s name. Aunt Society had drilled me about “Don’t talk to strangers on the trolleys, trains, and out on the street.” I decided to remember my manners and not be a stranger. “My name’s Celeste Lassiter Massey,” I said politely. “And who are you?”
    “Big Willie Madison. So, where you headed?”
    “New York City, to visit my Aunt Valentina. She’s