The novel opens with an incident from 1976 that is deemed “[t]he miracle [that] happened on West Seventy-Fourth Street in the home where Mama worked” (3). The narrator of this section, Ruth, is a young black girl, whose mother, Lou, works as a maid for a rich white family, the Hallowells, in a part of New York City that “was white,” and not just because of the snow falling that day, but also because of the faces on the people who live and work there, which “looked nothing like [Ruth]’” (4).

Ruth narrates the lead up to the “miracle” of the opening sentence: they were with their mother because it was a snow day and had nowhere else to go. They entered the side entrance of the home and put their coats and personal articles in a small closet, as opposed to the main entry of the house, then the three of them—Ruth, her sister, Rachel, and their mother—set up in the kitchen, preparing for their mother’s work day. Ruth begins to color with crayons and Rachel asks if they can play with Christina, the Hallowells’ daughter. Before their mother can reply, Ms. Mina Hallowell, who is pregnant, lets out “a scream so piercing and ragged that it stabbed [Ruth] in the chest” (5).