“That’s all right, madam! Annjee’s got sense—savin’ her health an’ strength!”
Harriett was not impressed. “For what? To spend her life in Mrs. Rice’s kitchen?” She shrugged her shoulders.
“What you bring yo’ suit-case home fo’?”
“I’m quitting the job Saturday,” she said. “I’ve told them already.”
“Quitting!” her mother exclaimed. “What fo’? Lawd, if it ain’t one thing, it’s another!”
“What for?” Harriett retorted angrily. “There’s plenty what for! All that work for five dollars a week with what little tips those pikers give you. And white men insulting you besides, asking you to sleep with ’em. Look at my finger-nails, all broke from scrubbing that dining-room floor.” She thrust out her dark slim hands. “Waiting table and cleaning silver, washing and ironing table-linen, and then scrubbing the floor besides —that’s too much of a good thing! And only three waitresses on the job. That old steward out there’s a regular white folks’ nigger. He don’t care how hard he works us girls. Well, I’m through with the swell new Stanton County Country Club this coming Saturday—I’m telling everybody!” She shrugged her shoulders again.
“What you gonna do then?”
“Maudel says I can get a job with her.”
“Maudel? . . . Where?” The old woman had begun to wring the clothes dry and pile them in a large dish-pan.
“At the Banks Hotel, chambermaid, for pretty good pay.”
Hager stopped again and turned decisively towards her daughter. “You ain’t gonna work in no hotel. You hear me! They’s dives o’ sin, that’s what they is, an’ a child o’ mine ain’t goin’ in one. If you was a boy, I wouldn’t let you go, much less a girl! They ain’t nothin’ but strumpets works in hotels.”
“Maudel’s no strumpet.” Harriett’s eyes narrowed.
“I don’t know if she is or ain’t, but I knows I wants you to stop runnin’ with her—I done tole you befo’. . . . Her mammy ain’t none too straight neither, raisin’ them chillen in sin. Look at Sammy in de reform school ’fore he were fifteen for gamblin’. An’ de oldest chile, Essie, done gone to Kansas City with that yaller devil she ain’t married. An’ Maudel runnin’ de streets night an’ day, with you tryin’ to keep up with her! . . . Lawd a mercy! . . . Here, hang up these clothes!”
Her mother pointed to the tin pan on the table filled with damp, twisted, white underwear. Harriett took the pan in both hands. It was heavy and she trembled with anger as she lifted it to her shoulders.
“You can bark at me if you want to, mama, but don’t talk about my friends. I don’t care what they are! Maudel’d do anything for me. And her brother’s a good kid, whether he’s been in reform school or not. They oughtn’t to put him there just for shooting dice. What’s that? I like him, and I like Mrs. Smothers, too. She’s not always scolding people for wanting a good time and for being lively and trying to be happy.”
Hot tears raced down each cheek, leaving moist lines in the pink powder. Sandy, playing marbles with Buster under the apple-tree, heard her sniffling as she shook out the clothes and hung them on the line in the yard.
“You Sandy,” Aunt Hager called loudly from the kitchen-door. “Come in here an’ get me some water an’ cut mo’ firewood.” Her black face was wet with perspiration and drawn from fatigue and worry. “I got to get the rest o’ these clothes out yet this evenin’. . . . That chile Harriett’s aggravatin’ me to death! Help me, Sandy, honey.”
They ate supper in silence, for Hager’s attempts at conversation with her young daughter were futile. Once the old woman said: “That onery Jimboy’s comin’ home Saturday,” and Harriett’s face brightened a moment.
“Gee, I’m glad,” she replied, and then her mouth went sullen again. Sandy began uncomfortably to kick the table-leg.
“For Christ’s sake!” the girl frowned, and the child stopped, hurt that his favorite aunt should yell at him peevishly for so slight an offense.
“Lawd knows, I wish you’d try an’ be mo’ like yo’ sisters, Annjee an’ Tempy,” Hager began as she washed the dishes, while Harriett stood near the stove, cloth in hand, waiting to dry them. “Here I is, an old woman, an’ you tries ma soul! After all I did to raise you, you don’t even hear me when I speak.” It was the old theme again, without variation. “Now, there’s Annjee, ain’t a better chile livin’—if she warn’t crazy ’bout Jimboy. An’ Tempy married an’ doin’ well, an’ respected ever’where. . . . An’ you runnin’ wild!”
“Tempy?” Harriett sneered suddenly, pricked by this comparison. “So respectable you can’t touch her with a ten-foot pole, that’s Tempy! . . . Annjee’s all right, working herself to death at Mrs. Rice’s, but don’t tell me about Tempy. Just because she’s married a mail-clerk with a little property, she won’t even see her own family any more. When niggers get up in the world, they act just like white folks—don’t pay you no mind. And Tempy’s that kind of a nigger—she’s up in the world now!”
“Close yo’ mouth, talking that way ’bout yo’ own sister! I ain’t asked her to be always comin’ home, is I, if she’s satisfied in her own house?”
“No, you aren’t asking her, mama, but you’re always talking about her being so respectable. . . . Well, I don’t want to be respectable if I have to be stuck up and dicty like Tempy is. . . . She’s colored and I’m colored and I haven’t seen her since before Easter. . . . It’s not being black that matters with her, though, it’s being poor, and that’s what we are, you and me and Annjee, working for white folks and washing clothes and going in back doors, and taking tips and insults. I’m tired of it, mama! I want to have a good time once in a while.”
“That’s ’bout all you does have is a good time,” Hager said. “An’ it ain’t right, an’ it ain’t Christian, that’s what it ain’t! An’ de Lawd is takin’ notes on you!” The old woman picked up the heavy iron skillet and began to wash it inside and out.
“Aw, the church has made a lot of you old Negroes act like Salvation Army people,” the girl returned, throwing the dried knives and forks on the table. “Afraid to even laugh on Sundays, afraid for a girl and boy to look at one another, or for people to go to dances. Your old Jesus is white, I guess, that’s why! He’s white and stiff and don’t like niggers!”
Hager gasped while Harriett went on excitedly, disregarding her mother’s pain: “Look at Tempy, the highest-class Christian in the family—Episcopal, and so holy she can’t even visit her own mother. Seems like all the good-time people are bad, and all the old Uncle Toms and mean, dried-up, long-faced niggers fill the churches. I don’t never intend to join a church if I can help it.”
“Have mercy on this chile! Help her an’ save her from hell-fire! Change her heart, Jesus!” the old woman begged, standing in the middle of the kitchen with uplifted arms. “God have mercy on ma daughter.”
Harriett, her brow wrinkled in a steady frown, put the dishes away, wiped the table, and emptied the water with a splash through the kitchen-door. Then she went into the bedroom that she shared with her mother, and began to undress. Sandy saw, beneath her thin white underclothes, the soft black skin of her shapely young body.
“Where you goin’?” Hager asked sharply.
“Out,” said the girl.
“Out where?”
“O, to a barbecue at Willow Grove, mama! The boys are coming by in an auto at seven o’clock.”
“What boys?”
“Maudel’s brother and some fellows.”
“You ain’t goin’ a step!”
A pair of curling-irons swung in the chimney of the lighted lamp on the dresser. Harriett continued to get ready. She was making bangs over her forehead, and the scent of scorching hair-oil drifted by Sandy’s nose.
“Up half de night in town Monday, an’ de Lawd knows how late ever’ night in de country, an’ then you comes home to run out agin! . . . You ain’t goin’!” continued her mother.
Harriett was pulling on a pair of red silk
stockings, bright and shimmering to her hips.
“You quit singin’ in de church choir. You say you ain’t goin’ back to school. You won’t keep no job! Now what is you gonna do? Yo’ pappy said years ago, ’fore he died, you was too purty to ’mount to anything, but I ain’t believed him. His last dyin’ words was: ‘Look out fo’ ma baby Harriett.’ You was his favourite chile. . . . Now look at you! Runnin’ de streets an’ wearin’ red silk stockings!” Hager trembled. “ ’Spose yo’ pappy was to come back an’ see you?”
Harriett powdered her face and neck, pink on ebony, dashed white talcum at each arm-pit, and rubbed her ears with perfume from a thin bottle. Then she slid a light blue dress of many ruffles over her head. The skirt ended midway between the ankle and the knee, and she looked very cute, delicate, and straight, like a black porcelain doll in a Vienna toy shop.
“Some o’ Maudel’s makin’s, that dress—anybody can tell,” her mother went on quarrelling. “Short an’ shameless as it can be! Regular bad gal’s dress, that’s what ’tis. . . . What you puttin’ it on fo’ anyhow, an’ I done told you you ain’t goin’ out? You must think I don’t mean ma words. Ain’t more’n sixteen last April an’ runnin’ to barbecues at Willer Grove! De idee! When I was yo’ age, wasn’t up after eight o’clock, ’ceptin’ Sundays in de church house, that’s all. . . . Lawd knows where you young ones is headin’. An’ me prayin’ an’ washin’ ma fingers to de bone to keep a roof over yo’ head.”
The sharp honk of an automobile horn sounded from the street. A big red car, full of laughing brown girls gaily dressed, and coatless, slick-headed black boys in green and yellow silk shirts, drew up at the curb. Somebody squeezed the bulb of the horn a second time and another loud and saucy honk! struck the ears.
“You Sandy,” Hager commanded. “Run out there an’ tell them niggers to leave here, ’cause Harriett ain’t goin’ no place.”
But Sandy did not move, because his young and slender aunt had gripped him firmly by the collar while she searched feverishly in the dresser-drawer for a scarf. She pulled it out, long and flame-colored, with fiery, silky fringe, before she released the little boy.
“You ain’t gwine a step this evenin’!” Hager shouted. “Don’t you hear me?”
“O, no?” said Harriett coolly in a tone that cut like knives. “You’re the one that says I’m not going—but I am!”
Then suddenly something happened in the room—the anger fell like a veil from Hager’s face, disclosing aged, helpless eyes full of fear and pain.
“Harriett, honey, I wants you to be good,” the old woman stammered. The words came pitiful and low—not a command any longer—as she faced her terribly alive young daughter in the ruffled blue dress and the red silk stockings. “I just wants you to grow up decent, chile. I don’t want you runnin’ to Willer Grove with them boys. It ain’t no place fo’ you in the night-time—an’ you knows it. You’s mammy’s baby girl. She wants you to be good, honey, and follow Jesus, that’s all.”
The baritone giggling of the boys in the auto came across the yard as Hager started to put a timid, restraining hand on her daughter’s shoulder—but Harriett backed away.
“You old fool!” she cried. “Lemme go! You old Christian fool!”
She ran through the door and across the sidewalk to the waiting car, where the arms of the young men welcomed her eagerly. The big machine sped swiftly down the street and the rapid sput! sput! sput! of its engine grew fainter and fainter. Finally, the auto was only a red tail-light in the summer dusk. Sandy, standing beside his grandmother in the doorway, watched it until it disappeared.
FIVE
Guitar
* * *
Throw yo’ arms around me, baby,
Like de circle round de sun!
Baby, throw yo’ arms around me
Like de circle round de sun,
An’ tell yo’ pretty papa
How you want yo’ lovin’ done!
JIMBOY was home. All the neighborhood could hear his rich low baritone voice giving birth to the blues. On Saturday night he and Annjee went to bed early. On Sunday night Aunt Hager said: “Put that guitar right up, less’n it’s hymns you plans on playin’. An’ I don’t want too much o’ them, ’larmin’ de white neighbors.”
But this was Monday, and the sun had scarcely fallen below the horizon before the music had begun to float down the alley, over back fences and into kitchen-windows where nice white ladies sedately washed their supper dishes.
Did you ever see peaches
Growin’ on a watermelon vine?
Says did you ever see peaches
On a watermelon vine?
Did you ever see a woman
That I couldn’t get for mine?
Long, lazy length resting on the kitchen-door-sill, back against the jamb, feet in the yard, fingers picking his sweet guitar, left hand holding against its finger-board the back of an old pocket-knife, sliding the knife upward, downward, getting thus weird croons and sighs from the vibrating strings:
O, I left ma mother
An’ I cert’ly can leave you.
Indeed I left ma mother
An’ I cert’ly can leave you,
For I’d leave any woman
That mistreats me like you do.
Jimboy, remembering brown-skin mamas in Natchez, Shreveport, Dallas; remembering Creole women in Baton Rouge, Louisiana:
O, yo’ windin’ an’ yo’ grindin’
Don’t have no effect on me,
Babe, yo’ windin’ an’ yo’ grindin’
Don’t have no ’fect on me,
’Cause I can wind an’ grind
Like a monkey round a coconut-tree!
Then Harriett, standing under the ripening apple-tree, in the back yard, chiming in:
Now I see that you don’t want me,
So it’s fare thee, fare thee well!
Lawd, I see that you don’t want me,
So it’s fare—thee—well!
I can still get plenty lovin’,
An’ you can go to—Kansas City!
“O, play it, sweet daddy Jimboy!” She began to dance.
Then Hager, from her seat on the edge of the platform covering the well, broke out: “Here, madam! Stop that prancin’! Bad enough to have all this singin’ without turnin’ de yard into a show-house.” But Harriett kept on, her hands picking imaginary cherries out of the stars, her hips speaking an earthly language quite their own.
“You got it, kid,” said Jimboy, stopping suddenly, then fingering his instrument for another tune. “You do it like the stage women does. You’ll be takin’ Ada Walker’s place if you keep on.”
“Wha! Wha! . . . You chillen sho can sing!” Tom Johnson shouted his compliments from across the yard. And Sarah, beside him on the bench behind their shack, added: “Minds me o’ de ole plantation times, honey! It sho do!”
“Unhuh! Bound straight fo’ de devil, that’s what they is,” Hager returned calmly from her place beside the pump. “You an’ Harriett both—singin’ an’ dancin’ this stuff befo’ these chillens here.” She pointed to Sandy and Willie-Mae, who sat on the ground with their backs against the chicken-box. “It’s a shame!”
“I likes it,” said Willie-Mae.
“Me too,” the little boy agreed.
“Naturally you would—none o’ you-all’s converted yet,” countered the old woman to the children as she settled back against the pump to listen to some more.
The music rose hoarse and wild:
I wonder where ma easy rider’s gone?
He done left me, put ma new gold watch in pawn.
It was Harriett’s voice in plaintive moan to the night sky. Jimboy had taught her that song, but a slight, clay-colored brown boy who had hopped bells at the Clinton Hotel for a couple of months, on his way from Houston to Omaha, discovered its meaning to her. Puppy-love, maybe, but it had hurt when he went away, saying nothing. And the guitar in Jimboy’s hands echoed that old pain with an even greater throb than
the original ache itself possessed.
Approaching footsteps came from the front yard.
“Lord, I can hear you-all two blocks away!” said Annjee, coming around the house, home from work, with a bundle of food under her left arm. “Hello! How are you, daddy? Hello, ma! Gimme a kiss Sandy. . . . Lord, I’m hot and tired and most played out. This late just getting from work! . . . Here, Jimboy, come on in and eat some of these nice things the white folks had for supper.” She stepped across her husband’s outstretched legs into the kitchen. “I brought a mighty good piece of cold ham for you, hon’, from Mis’ Rice’s.”
“All right, sure, I’ll be there in a minute,” the man said, but he went on playing Easy Rider, and Harriett went on singing, while the food was forgotten on the table until long after Annjee had come outdoors again and sat down in the cool, tired of waiting for Jimboy to come in to her.
Off and on for nine years, ever since he had married Annjee, Jimboy and Harriett had been singing together in the evenings. When they started, Harriett was a little girl with braided hair, and each time that her roving brother-in-law stopped in Stanton, he would amuse himself by teaching her the old Southern songs, the popular rag-time ditties, and the hundreds of varying verses of the blues that he would pick up in the big dirty cities of the South. The child, with her strong sweet voice (colored folks called it alto) and her racial sense of rhythm, soon learned to sing the songs as well as Jimboy. He taught her the parse me la, too, and a few other movements peculiar to Southern Negro dancing, and sometimes together they went through the buck and wing and a few taps. It was all great fun, and innocent fun except when one stopped to think, as white folks did, that some of the blues lines had, not only double, but triple meanings, and some of the dance steps required very definite movements of the hips. But neither Harriett nor Jimboy soiled their minds by thinking. It was music, good exercise—and they loved it.
Not Without Laughter Page 4
