Near the beginning of World War I, the Williamses discovered, from returning neighbors and kin, the possibility of living better in another place. In shifts, lots, batches, mixed in with other families, they migrated, in six months and four journeys, to Kentucky, where there were mines and millwork. The Bluest Eye When all us left from down home and was waiting down by the depot for the truck, it was nighttime. June bugs was shooting everywhere. They lighted up a tree leaf, and I seen a streak of green every now and again. That was the last time I seen real june bugs. These things up here aint june bugs. Theys something else. Folks here call them reies. Down home they was different. But I recollect that streak of green. I recollect it well.

In Kentucky they lived in a real town, ten to fteen houses on a single street, with water piped right into the kitchen. Ada and Fowler Williams found a ve-room frame house for their family. The yard was bounded by a once-white fence against which Paulines mother planted owers and within which they kept a few chickens. Some of her brothers joined the Army, one sister died, and two got married, increasing the living space and giving the entire Kentucky venture a feel of luxury. The relocation was especially comfortable to Pauline, who was old enough to leave school. Mrs. Williams got a job cleaning and cooking for a white minister on the other side of town, and Pauline, now the oldest girl at home, took over the care of the house. She kept the fence in repair, pulling the pointed stakes erect, securing them with bits of wire, collected eggs, swept, cooked, washed, and minded the two younger childrena pair of twins called Chicken and Pie, who were still in school. She was not only goo

After her parents left for work and the other children were at school or in mines, the house was quiet. The stillness and isolation both calmed and energized her. She could arrange and clean without interruption until two oclock, when Chicken and Pie came home.

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