The path leading to Ray Charles began on the fire escape of a rent-controlled apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant. It was here that I discovered Paul Laurence Dunbar’s Little Brown Baby, Shakespeare’s “Et tu, Brute?” and Willard Motley’s Knock on Any Door; scurried down a rabbit hole; and walked on Gwendolyn Brooks’s A Street in Bronzeville. I discovered Francie and her singing-waiter father (like my own father) in Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and completed the homework assigned by the nuns of St. Michael Academy in Manhattan.

I wrote poetry on my fire escape. Teenage musings — often silly, banal.

My parents, John and Alice Bell, were avid readers, and our apartment was filled with books — particularly by African Americans.

My mother was a poet whose work was published in Freedomways and Ebony Jr!, and she could also draw beautifully. She eventually retired from the New York State Department of Labor. My father was a singing waiter, a bartender, a vivid storyteller, and a marvelous baritone.

I took for granted that Black people could write books. I never thought of myself as a writer, however. I enjoyed turning pages and crying or laughing or wondering — whatever John Oliver Killens, Zora Neale Hurston, or Countee Cullen wished me to do.

It was on my fire escape that my father, in winter, set out a large bowl for freshly fallen snow and then made snow ice cream for me; my brother, John; and my sisters, Patrellis and Marcia.

On my fire escape, high above the backyard (the escape was later placed on the front of the building at 219 Bainbridge Street), I could read books from the Lewis Avenue Public Library, with its huge fireplace and hearth. I would go back home and climb out onto my fire escape, sit down on my blanket, and swing my skinny legs through the bars.

On my fire escape, I read about Langston Hughes’s “crystal stair” and Richard Wright’s Mississippi. I had a room of my own — high above the yards and close to the trees. Writing poetry, yes. Writing books — not yet!

From the May/June 2019 Horn Book Magazine: Special Issue: CSK Book Awards at 50. Find more information about ordering copies of the special issue.