To interrupt the fantasy, I turned to look at the girl. She was a spindly little thing in a bulky purple coat who had clambered up onto the stoop wall and was balancing there with one thin leg out in front of her. Under the coat she was wearing what looked like a tutu, a pink concoction of tulle and net over heavy black tights that bagged at her knees. But what was most noticeable about the child was her hair, a pale brown mass of soft curls that enveloped her small head like a huge halo. The mother’s skin was darker than the child’s. If these two were mother and daughter, I decided, the girl’s father could be white. I drew a breath as I watched her leap from the wall, but she landed easily on the ground with a little bounce in her knees. Like Tinkerbell, I thought.

LOOKING BACK AT our early life, the most astonishing feature must be how small our house was, my father wrote. A kitchen, living room, and bedroom on the first floor came to 476 square feet. Two lofts on the second floor, which were used as bedrooms, provided the same amount of floor space. There were no amenities. Our plumbing consisted of an outdoor toilet and a hand-operated pump, each at its own location about 75 feet from the house. A teakettle provided hot water, as did a reservoir attached to the kitchen range. Unlike better-equipped farms we had no underground cistern to store rainwater, but we did have a large metal tank which caught rainwater during the summer. During the winter we melted snow. Kerosene lamps provided light. Although rural electrification began in the thirties, we did not “hook up” until 1949. There was no furnace. A wood-burning range warmed the kitchen and a heater cared for the living room. Except for storm windows, the house had no insulation. Only during the coldest spells was fire maintained in the heater overnight. The water in the teakettle was often frozen by morning. Father was up first. He built the fire so much of the edge was gone by the time we crawled out of bed. Even so there was shivering and huddling around the stoves as we got dressed. One winter in the early 1930s we ran out of wood. Not enough had been put up in the first place. If one must burn green wood, ash and maple will serve you best.