She knew her parents had an arranged marriage "which meant love had nothing to do with it." (McBride,15) Her father was cruel to her mother and to the kids. He didn't allow the kids to go out and play, it was their responsibility to run the store after school. Ruth's mother was crippled on her left side and her father would tell her that she disgust him and he didn't want to see her. She felt bad for her mother because despite the abuse she got from her husband and the fact that he was cheating on her, "She kept the religious traditions of a Jewish housewife and was loyal to her husband, but Tateh had absolutely no love for her." (McBride, 41) Ruth would rather die than have an arranged marriage.
Ruth's father hated black people more than gentiles. He treated them horribly by selling them bad food at inflated prices in his store. He would see them walking to church on sunday and remark, "They don't have a dime in their pockets and they"re always laughing." And ruth though, "But he had plenty of money and we were all miserable." (McBride,61) At age fifteen Ruth fell in love with an African American boy, not to spite her father but because he accepted her for who she was. From that point on Ruth never loved a man who was not black. This was unheard of for a black man to be dating a white girl. At age seventeen Ruth started to make decisions for herself. She decided to move away from her family and move to New York where her Aunts and Grandmother lived. .
She fell in love with a black man named Dennis who worked for her Aunt. "The first thing I liked about him, in fact what i like about most black folks all my life: They never judged me." (McBride,109) Dennis, like most blacks she met, accepted her and she was finally loved by someone other than her mother. In her fathers eyes this was the worst possible person she could fall in love with. When she went home a few months after moving to New York to see her sick mother, her father told her, "If you marry a nigger, don't ever come home again.
