My mother fell ill and the problem of food became an acute, daily agony. hunger was with us always. sometimes the neighbors would feed us or a dollar bill would come in the mail from my grandmother. it was winter and i would buy a dime’s worth of coal each morning from the corner coalyard and lug it home in paper bags. for a time i remained out of school to wait upon my mother, then granny came to visit us and i returned to school.