The novel opens as Lutie Johnson walks the uninviting streets of Harlem looking for a new apartment for herself and her 8-year-old son, Bub. The streets are dirty and empty and the harsh wind outside does “everything it could to discourage the people walking along the street,” (2). Despite this harsh environment, Lutie is determined to find a new apartment, so she and Bub can move out of the one they currently share with her father, Pops, and his girlfriend, Lil. Upon seeing a building advertising three-room apartments and “Respectable tenants” (2), Lutie considers how run-down the apartment could be and whether she could afford it. As Lutie thinks, a neighbor woman watching from a window encourages her to come in, though Lutie does not like the woman’s eyes, which she finds as “malignant as the eyes of a snake” (6).

Lutie enters and knocks on the super’s door. The super, William Jones, answers, and Lutie is instantly afraid of him: “his eyes had filled with a hunger so urgent that she was instantly afraid of him and afraid to show her fear” (10). Though she can’t quite put her finger on it, there is something menacing about him.