The first act opens in 1905, in a boarding house bedroom in lower Manhattan. Esther, a “rather plain” (18) 35-year-old black woman, is sewing a corset while the sounds of a party can be heard in the next room. Mrs. Dickson, a 50-year-old black woman and the owner of the boarding house, enters and informs Esther that a man named Mr. Charles has complimented the bread pudding that Esther made for the party, but Esther is unimpressed with him. The party is celebrating another young tenant, Corinna Mae, who is getting married and the corset is for her wedding night. Esther is forlorn because she has just turned thirty-five and is still unmarried. Since moving into the boarding house at seventeen, Esther has watched twenty-two young women leave to get married.

Mrs. Dickson points out that Esther is intelligent, an excellent seamstress, and a good person, and that “all Corinna Mae got be her honey-colored skin” (22). She insists that Esther come to the party and celebrate the bride. Esther relents. Before exiting, Mrs. Dickson surprises Esther and hands her a letter from someone named George Armstrong, whom Esther doesn’t know. After Mrs. Dickson leaves, George, an attractive, fit African Caribbean man in his thirties appears in a separate light to read his letter.