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in truth I didn’t have an overwhelming confidence in my talent. I knew what I wanted to do with my life, but it still seemed almost unfathomable that I could actually make it happen. I was much younger than my twenty years in oh-so-many ways: I had, after all, been sleeping in bed with my mother for most of my life, including, on this exciting, anxious, and life-altering trip to the big city.
    The man who had hosted our visit agreed to allow me to stay on in his apartment with him for a few more months, and I broke the news to my mother that I was determined to remain. I remember standing on the platform at Penn Station, watching my mother board her train back to Atlanta. She was clearly devastated and worried about me. I had been her life, day in and day out, for twenty years. I was an extension of her—her arm, her leg—I belonged to her. Completely.
    We were now about to live nearly a thousand miles apart, but her attempts to cajole me into returning with her were useless. The truth is, I was so happy at the prospect of independence and a life in New York that I did not give much thought to my mother’s state of mind. For the first time in my life I felt free. Despite any anxieties and fears, I had a strong will—if I hadn’t, by this point my mother would have subsumed me entirely. I was, I realize now, more than a little ruthless in my determination. There was no way my mother could have stopped me from staying, short of handcuffing me and dragging me onto the train behind her. I don’t remember seeing her cry, but she must have on the way home. As a mother myself, I can imagine how frightened and sad she must have been on thattrain back to Atlanta, but back then I had one all-encompassing thought: I was in New York with the possibility of an exciting future ahead of me.
    I was in love with Herb, but it was never a serious love affair from his perspective. In the beginning he was clearly attracted to me and made all the moves, but I was truly crazy about him—he was my first love. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I was incredibly naïve, very needy, and, probably because of my father having left, still had an overwhelming desire to be loved, cared for, and protected. I can remember actually saying to Herb: “Please love me.” If there’s a phrase that is sure to make a guy run, that’s gotta be it. I remember the moment I said it, thinking that it was the wrong thing to say. It’s embarrassing to admit, and embarrassing to remember, but it’s also the truth. I was one very young, impressionable, naïve young woman. Eventually Herb got married and had two boys, one of whom he named after Will Rogers—Wil Shriner.
    With or without Herb, I was on my own, yet not at all lonely. I had few acquaintances, and was by myself much of the time, but I was having a love affair with the city, overwhelmed with a sense of freedom and exhilaration. I had never been away from home before—I hadn’t gone to college—so this was the first time that my life belonged completely to me.
    I’d wake up at dawn and just lose myself wandering the streets as the city was coming to life. I would stop at diners and have a cup of coffee, which I imagined to be a very adult thing to do. The sounds of the city delighted me—even the early-morning groans of the garbage trucks seemed musical to me. The winter of 1948 proved to be particularly frigid, and snow from a December blizzard was still piled up along the sidewalks. But even the cold heldan enchantment for me, since I knew with absolute certainty that I was finally where I belonged.
    I belonged in New York in a way I never had in Atlanta. Even as a small girl, I had never understood segregation—it literally made no sense to me. Separate water fountains labeled “white” and “colored”? Segregated seating on the bus? When “colored” help came to work in a white person’s