"Thank You, M'am" by Langston Hughes

She was a large woman with a large purse that had everything in it but hammer and nails.

He looked as if he were fourteen or fifteen, frail and willow-wild, in tennis shoes and blue jeans.

She switched on the light and left the door open.

The boy wanted to say something else other that "Thank you, m’am" tto Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones, but he couldn’t do so as he turned at the barren stoop and looked back at the large woman in the door.

When she got to her door, she dragged the boy inside, down a hall, and into a large kitchenette-furnished room at the rear of the house.

But the boy’s weight and the weight of the purse combined caused him to lose his balance so, intsead of taking off full blast as he had hoped, the boy fell on his back on the sidewalk, and his legs flew up. the large woman simply turned around and kicked him right square in his blue-jeaned sitter.

She did not release him.

But she bent down enough to permit him to stoop and pick up her purse.

Sweat popped out on the boy’s face and he began to struggle.

"I wanted a pair of blue-suede shoes," said the boy.

...as he turned at the foot of the barren stoop and looked up at the large woman in the door.

The woman did not ask the boy anything about where he lived, or his folks, or anything else that would embarrass him.

She heated some lima beans and ham she had in the icebox, made the cocoa, and set the table..

"Pick up my pocketbook, boy, and give it here."

...when a boy ran up behind her and tried to snatch her purse.