Eleven-year-old Langston narrates the novel, and his wistful reflections on the quiet dirt roads of Alabama, his birthplace, open the first chapter. It is early Autumn, 1946. Having recently moved away from Alabama with his father Henry, Langston now lives in a cramped, run-down apartment in Bronzeville, a predominantly African American neighborhood on Chicago’s south side. He attends nearby Haines Junior High School. When the final bell of the day interrupts his reveries, Langston rushes out the door, anxious to get away from the school, where he has no friends.

As Langston approaches his squalid apartment, he notes that no one waits for him there and that he only knows one neighbor by name. On cue, said neighbor—Miss Fulton—appears with heavy grocery bags and asks Langston to carry them up to her top-floor apartment, across the hall from Langston’s. She frequently requests Langston’s help. He politely, if begrudgingly, helps her, thinking that while her prettiness recalls his mother’s, she’s uppity, unlike his mother. Miss Fulton is a schoolteacher, and Langston notices her apartment is pleasant and tidy, in contrast to his own.

Memories of his mother and Alabama overtake Langston as he opens the door to his empty apartment.