With Jonah’s cap on my head, I tiptoe down the fire escape. And run. On the corner I put on shoes, and notice how the fog can swallow you up. I’m moving slowly. Taking two steps then stopping to see if I am heading in the right direction. Holding my hands out in front of me, making sure I don’t walk into walls. Or end up in the river. I keep on with my big plan.

Footsteps are behind me after a while. I stop. They stop. Walking faster, I take the steps down to Bend River. And do not go my regular route.

Feet are close on my trail. I speed up. Boats blow their horns and show their bright lights, but cannot help me any. A woman walking toward me is carrying a little girl. “Excuse me, miss …” I try to get her attention. “Somebody is —”

She does not stop. “It ain’t none of our business.” Disappearing like the river, they pass by me and run up the steps.

I walk as fast as I can. “Got ya!” From behind, strong hands snatch me like grapes from a vine, and squeeze me so tight I cannot escape.

“Get off of me. Turn me a loose.” I twist and turn, closing my eyes, I punch whoever is trying to kill me.

“Octobia May. Did you think I wouldn’t catch up to you?”

“Officer O’Malley?”

He sets me down and stands facing me. “And who else would be out here by the river on a day like this, except civil servants or the strange in the head?”

He bends down to my height. “Can’t you do what you’ve been told ever, girlie? What everyone in this city has been told to do?” He takes me by the arm. “Home with ya.” He pulls me along.

“I can’t …” I fix my feet on the ground as firms as cobblestones. “I’m going this way.”

“No more of this, child. Your auntie —”

“You talked to Auntie? She won’t let me visit. She told Mr. Buster she’d put everyone out if they brought me there.” Auntie told them there are some things a child shouldn’t witness: a foul-mouthed woman and a lady in jail. I ask him why the police won’t let her come home.

“Leave that to the officers of the law, Octobia May. We know a few things.”

The fog and cold give me a chill. Officer O’Malley takes off his coat and puts it over my shoulders. “A colored girl biting a cop. It’s enough to get you locked up, you know.”

I’ve been keeping up my reading of the newspaper lately, for Auntie’s sake. And noticing that Negro is the word the newspaper uses most. So I tell him to call me that from now on.

Even in the fog, I see Officer O’Malley’s face turn red. “Negro. Colored. It’s no matter to me. If you bite me one more …”

I look up into his eyes and blink. He shakes his head and says he’d better get me home. I tell him I have something to show him. He isn’t listening. He is walking away, whistling and holding tight to my hand. I mention the bank president. He is pulling me along like a pup on a leash. I bring up Clinton Avenue, the grand party, stolen jewels, how they forged Auntie’s signature.

“You’ve pestered poor Mr. Davenport day and night while he was under your Auntie’s roof. Now he’s gone. Free. And your agitation continues.”

He warns me that he’ll have no more of my nonsense. I will mind my manners and be the nice colored Negro girl my aunt is trying to raise me into. He’s mumbling to himself about meeting with his captain to discuss changing beats. I ask him to turn my hand loose so I may tie my shoestrings.

“No, lassie. You tricked me with that last time. A second bite, and you’ll be on a chain gang for sure, I’ll tell you that.”

“Do they put children on chain gangs, Officer O’Malley?” I say as he drags me along. “Mr. Buster’s brother was on one once. He said it is absolutely terrible.”

“That it is, child.”

“Is it just for coloreds? I mean Negroes?” Talking about it makes me wonder if that will happen to Auntie.

“Mostly,” he says. “Some whites. Sometimes.” He coughs. “But …” We both listen to the foghorn blow low and sad, like it could cry. “Do you always have to trouble a body, Octobia May? Can’t you just be a quiet little girl?”

“If I was on a chain gang?”

“Bloody day in the morning.”

“I would break those chains and free everybody.” Skipping along, I say, “I think all people should be free. Don’t you, Officer O’Malley?”

“How did I deserve the likes of you, child?”

I mention Mr. Davenport and Mr. Harrison again, but he forbids me to say either of their names once more tonight. I think I am being polite when I ask, “Do you like having red hair?”

He likes it just fine, he says, telling me to quit my talking. I ask if he knows that Negro people don’t have red hair very often. “Except my cousin. She has red hair. And red eyebrows. And …”

Pulling me along. Asking why I can’t keep my eyes ahead of me instead of behind, he wonders out loud. “How’d a colored man get to be so high-minded anyhow?” He stops. “That Mr. Davenport. So — fancy. Suits and fine hats. Luggage the best I’ve ever seen. And he leaves it at the curb like garbage.” He says that has worried him since the day Mr. Davenport left Auntie’s house. “But you, child, befuddle me so I forget the details of life.”

My father wears sophisticated suits. He is a professor, but they won’t let him teach at the university so he teaches at a high school and cleans office buildings at night. I tell Officer O’Malley about my father. He is quiet again. “Octobia May,” he says, when we are crossing another street. “Would you know that house on Clinton again if you saw it once more?”

“Yes! I’ll take you there right now.”

“Then do it, child,” he says, letting go of my hand.