The big one said to the smaller one: “I’m a fast-black and you know I sho won’t run! Jest you pick up that piece o’ iron that belongs to me. Go ahead, jest you try!”
And the short boy replied: “I’m your match, long skinny! Strike me an’ see if you don’t get burnt up!” And then they started to play the dozens, and Sandy, standing by, learned several new and very vulgar words to use when talking about other peoples’ mothers.
The tall kid said finally: “Aw, go on, you little clay-colored nigger, you looks too much like mustard to me anyhow!” Picking up the disputed piece of scrap-iron, he proceeded on his quest for junk, looking into all the trash-piles and garbage-cans along the alley, but the smaller of the two boys took his gunnysack and went in the opposite direction alone.
“Be careful, sissy, and don’t break your dishes,” his late companion called after his retreating buddy, and Sandy carefully memorized the expression to try on Jimmy Lane some time—that is, if Jimmy’s mother got well, for Mrs. Lane now was in the last stages of consumption. But if she got better, Sandy was going to tell her son to be careful and not break his dishes—always wearing his mother’s shoes, like a girl.
By that time he had forgotten what Hager sent him to the store to buy, and instead of getting meal he bought washing-powder. When he came home, after nearly an hour’s absence, his grandmother threatened to cut an elm switch, but she satisfied herself instead by scolding him for staying so long, and then sending him back to exchange the washing-powder for meal—and she waiting all that time to make corn dumplings to put in the greens!
In the afternoon Sandy played in his back yard or next door at the Johnson’s, but Hager never allowed him outside their block. The white children across the street were frequently inclined to say “Nigger,” so he was forbidden to play there. Usually Buster, who looked like a white kid, and Willie-Mae, who couldn’t have been blacker, were his companions. The three children would run at hide-and-seek, in the tall corn; or they would tag one another in the big yard, or play house under the apple-tree.
Once when they were rummaging in the trash-pile to see what they could find, Sandy came across a pawn ticket which he took into the kitchen to Hager. It was for a watch his Aunt Harriett had pawned the Saturday she ran away.
Sometimes in the late afternoon the children would go next door to Madam de Carter’s and she would give them ginger cookies and read to them from the Bible Story Reader. Madam de Carter looked very pompous and important in her silk waist as she would put on her pince-nez and say: “Now, children, seat yourselves and preserve silence while I read you-all this moralizing history of Samson’s treacherous hair. Now, Buster, who were Samson? Willie-Mae, has you ever heard of Delilah?”
Sometimes, if Jimboy was home, he would take down his old guitar and start the children to dancing in the sunlight—but then Hager would always call Sandy to pump water or go to the store as soon as she heard the music.
“Out there dancin’ like you ain’t got no raisin’!” she would say. “I tells Jimboy ’bout playin’ that ole ragtime here! That’s what ruint Harriett!”
And on Sundays Sandy went to Sabbath school at the Shiloh Baptist Church, where he was given a colored picture card with a printed text on it. The long, dull lessons were taught by Sister Flora Garden, who had been to Wilberforce College, in Ohio. There were ten little boys in Sandy’s class, ranging from nine to fourteen, and they behaved very badly, for Miss Flora Garden, who wore thick-lensed glasses on her roach-colored face, didn’t understand little boys.
“Where was Moses when the lights went out?” Gritty Smith asked her every Sunday, and she didn’t even know the answer.
Sandy didn’t think much of Sunday-school, and frequently instead of putting his nickel in the collection basket he spent it for candy, which he divided with Buster—until one very hot Sunday Hager found it out. He had put a piece of the sticky candy in his shirt-pocket and it melted, stuck, and stained the whole front of his clean clothes. When he came home, with Buster behind him the first thing Hager said was: “What’s all this here stuck up in yo’ pocket?” and Buster commenced to giggle and said Sandy had bought candy.
“Where’d you get the money, sir?” demanded Aunt Hager searchingly of her grandson.
“I—we—er—Madam Carter gimme a nickel,” Sandy replied haltingly, choosing the first name he could think of, which would have been all right had not Madam de Carter herself stopped by the house, almost immediately afterwards, on her way home from church.
“Is you give Sandy a nickel to buy candy this mawnin’?” Hager asked her as soon as she entered the parlor.
“Why, no, Sister Williams, I isn’t. I had no coins about me a-tall at services this morning.”
“Umn-huh! I thought so!” said Hager. “You Sandy!”
The little boy, guilt written all over his face, came in from the front porch, where he had been sitting with his father after Buster went home.
“Where’d you tell me you got that nickel this mawnin’?” And before he could answer, she spat out: “I’m gonna whip you!”
“Jehovah help us! Children sure is bad these days,” said Madam de Carter, shaking her head as she left to go next door to her own house. “They sure are bad,” she added, self-consciously correcting her English.
“I’m gonna whip you,” Hager continued, sitting down amazed in her plush chair. “De idee o’ withholdin’ yo’ Sunday-school money from de Lawd an’ buyin’ candy.”
“I only spent a penny,” Sandy lied, wriggling.
“How you gwine get so much candy fo’ a penny that you has some left to gum up in yo’ pocket? Tell me that, how you gonna do it?”
Sandy, at a loss for an answer, was standing with lowered eyelids, when the screen door opened and Jimboy came in. Sandy looked up at him for aid, but his father’s usually amiable face was stern this time.
“Come here!” he said. The man towered very tall above the little fellow who looked up at him helplessly.
“I’s gwine whip him!” interposed Hager.
“Is that right, you spent your Sunday-school nickel for candy?” Jimboy demanded gravely.
Sandy nodded his head. He couldn’t lie to his father, and had he spoken now, the sobs would have come.
“Then you told a lie to your grandma—and I’m ashamed of you,” his father said.
Sandy wanted to turn his head away and escape the slow gaze of Jimboy’s eyes, but he couldn’t. If Aunt Hager would only whip him, it would be better; then maybe his father wouldn’t say any more. But it was awful to stand still and listen to Jimboy talk to him this way—yet there he stood, stiffly holding back the sobs.
“To take money and use it for what it ain’t s’posed to be used is the same as stealing,” Jimboy went on gravely to his son. “That’s what you done today, and then come home and lie about it. Nobody’s ugly as a liar, you know that! . . . I’m not much, maybe. Don’t mean to say I am. I won’t work a lot, but what I do I do honest. White folks gets rich lyin’ and stealin’—and some niggers gets rich that way, too—but I don’t need money if I got to get it dishonest, with a lot o’ lies trailing behind me, and can’t look folks in the face. It makes you feel dirty! It’s no good! . . . Don’t I give you nickels for candy whenever you want ’em?”
The boy nodded silently, with the tears trickling down his chin.
“And don’t I go with you to the store and buy you ice-cream and soda-pop any time you ask me?”
The child nodded again.
“And then you go and take the Sunday-school nickel that your grandma’s worked hard for all the week, spend it on candy, and come back home and lie about it. So that’s what you do! And then lie!”
Jimboy turned his back and went out on the porch, slamming the screen door behind him. Aunt Hager did not whip her grandson, but returned to the kitchen and left him standing disgraced in the parlor. Then Sandy began to cry, with one hand in his mouth so no one could hear him, and when Annjee came home from work in the late aft
ernoon, she found him lying across her bed, head under the pillows, still sobbing because Jimboy had called him a liar.
ELEVEN
School
* * *
SOME weeks later the neighbors were treated to an early morning concert:
I got a high yaller
An’ a little short black,
But a brown-skin gal
Can bring me right on back!
I’m singin’ brown-skin!
Lawdy! . . . Lawd!
Brown-skin! . . . O, ma Lawd!
“It must be Jimboy,” said Hager from the kitchen. “A lazy coon, settin’ out there in the cool singin’, an’ me in here sweatin’ and washin’ maself to dust!”
Kansas City Southern!
I mean de W. & A.!
I’m gonna ride de first train
I catch goin’ out ma way.
I’m got de railroad blues—
“I wish to God you’d go on, then!” mumbled Hager over the wash-boilers.
But I ain’t got no railroad fare!
I’m gwine to pack ma grip an’
Beat ma way away from here!
“Learn me how to pick a cord, papa,” Sandy begged as he sat beside his father under the apple-tree, loaded with ripe fruit.
“All right, look a-here! . . . You put your thumb like this. . . .” Jimboy began to explain. “But, doggone, your fingers ain’t long enough yet!”
Still they managed to spend a half-day twanging at the old instrument, with Sandy trying to learn a simple tune.
The sunny August mornings had become September mornings, and most of Aunt Hager’s “white folks” had returned from their vacations; her kitchen was once more a daily laundry. Great boilers of clothes steamed on the stove and, beside the clothes, pans of apple juice boiled to jelly, and the peelings of peaches simmered to jam.
There was no news from the runaway Harriett. . . . Mrs. Lane died one sultry night, with Hager at the bedside, and was buried by the lodge with three hacks and a fifty-dollar coffin. . . . The following week the Drill of All Nations, after much practising by the women, was given with great success and Annjee, dressed in white and wrapped in a Scandinavian flag, marched proudly as Sweden. . . . Madam de Carter’s house was now locked and barred, as she had departed for Oklahoma to organize branches of the lodge there. . . . Tempy had stopped to see Hager one afternoon, but she didn’t stay long. She told her mother she was out collecting rents and that she and her husband were buying another house. . . . Willie-Mae had a new calico dress. . . . Buster had learned to swear better than Sandy. . . . And next Monday was to be the opening of the new school term.
Sandy hated even to think about going back to school. He was having much fun playing, and Jimboy had been teaching him to box. Then the time to go to classes came.
“Wash yo’ face good, sir, put on yo’ clean waist, an’ polish yo’ shoes,” Aunt Hager said bright and early, “ ’cause I don’t want none o’ them white teachers sayin’ I sends you to school dirty as a ’cuse to put you back in de fourth grade. You hear me, sir!”
“Yes’m,” Sandy replied.
This morning he was to enter the “white” fifth grade, having passed last June from the “colored” fourth, for in Stanton the Negro children were kept in separate rooms under colored teachers until they had passed the fourth grade. Then, from the fifth grade on, they went with the other children, and the teachers were white.
When Sandy arrived on the school grounds with his face shining, he found the yard already full of shouting kids. On the girls’ side he saw Willie-Mae jumping rope. Sandy found Earl and Buster and some boys whom he knew playing mumble-peg on the boys’ side, and he joined them. When the bell rang, they all crowded into the building, as the marching-lines had not yet been formed. Miss Abigail Minter, the principal, stood at the entrance, and there were big signs on all the room doors marking the classes. Sandy found the fifth-grade room upstairs and went in shyly. It was full of whispering youngsters huddled in little groups. He saw two colored children among them, both girls whom he didn’t know, but there were no colored boys. Soon the teacher rapped briskly on her desk, and silence ensued.
“Take seats, all of you, please,” she rasped out. “Anywhere now until we get order.” She rapped again impatiently with the ruler. “Take seats at once.” So the children each selected a desk and sat down, most of the girls at the front of the room and most of the boys together at the back, where they could play and look out the windows.
Then the teacher, middle-aged and wearing glasses, passed out tiny slips of paper to each child in the front row, with the command that they be handed backwards, so that every student received one slip.
“Now, write your names on the paper, turning it longways,” she said. “Nothing but your names, that’s all I want today. You will receive forms to fill out later, but I want to get your seats assigned this morning, however.”
Amid much confusion and borrowing of pencils, the slips were finally signed in big awkward letters, and collected by the teacher, who passed up and down the aisles. Then she went to her desk, and there was a delightful period of whispering and wriggling as she sorted the slips and placed them in alphabetical order. Finally she finished.
“Now,” she said, “each child rise as I call out your names, so I can see who you are.”
The teacher stood up with the papers in her hand.
“Mary Atkins . . . Carl Dietrich . . . Josephine Evans,” she called slowly glancing up after each name. “Franklin Rhodes . . . James Rodgers.” Sandy stood up quickly. “Ethel Shortlidge . . . Roland Thomas.” The roll-call continued, each child standing until he had been identified, then sitting down again.
“Now,” the teacher said, “everybody rise and make a line around the walls. Quietly! No talking! As I call your names this time, take seats in order, starting with number one in the first row near the window. . . . Mary Atkins . . . Carl Dietrich. . . .” The roll was repeated, each child taking a seat as she had commanded. When all but four of the children were seated, the two colored girls and Sandy still were standing.
“Albert Zwick,” she said, and the last white child sat down in his place. “Now,” said the teacher, “you three colored children take the seats behind Albert. You girls take the first two, and you,” pointing to Sandy, “take the last one. . . . Now I’m going to put on the board the list of books to buy and I want all of you to copy them correctly.” And she went on with her details of schoolroom routine.
One of the colored girls turned round to Sandy and whispered: “She just put us in the back cause we’re niggers.” And Sandy nodded gravely. “My name’s Sadie Butler and she’s put me behind the Z cause I’m a nigger.”
“An old heifer!” said the first little colored girl, whispering loudly. “I’m gonna tell my mama.” But Sandy felt like crying. And he was beginning to be ashamed of crying because he was no longer a small boy. But the teacher’s putting the colored children in the back of the room made him feel like crying.
At lunch-time he came home with his list of books, and Aunt Hager pulled her wet arms out of the tub, wiped her hands, and held them up in horror.
“Lawdy! Just look! Something else to spend money for. Ever’ year more an’ more books, an’ chillens learn less an’ less! Used to didn’t have nothin’ but a blue-backed speller, and now look ahere—a list as long as ma arm! Go out there in de yard an’ see is yo’ pappy got any money to give you for ’em, ’cause I ain’t.”
Sandy found Jimboy sitting dejectedly on the well-stoop in the sunshine, with his head in his hands. “You got any money, papa?” he asked.
Jimboy looked at the list of books written in Sandy’s childish scrawl and slowly handed him a dollar and a half.
“You see what I got left, don’t you?” said his father as he turned his pants-pockets inside out, showing the little boy a jack-knife, a half-empty sack of Bull Durham, a key, and a dime. But he smiled, and took Sandy awkwardly in his arms and kissed him. “It’s all rig
ht, kid.”
That afternoon at school they had a long drill on the multiplication table, and then they had a spelling-match, because the teacher said that would be a good way to find out what the children knew. For the spelling-bee they were divided into two sides—the boys and the girls, each side lining up against an opposite wall. Then the teacher gave out words that they should have learned in the lower grades. On the boys’ side everyone was spelled down except Sandy, but on the girls’ side there were three proud little white girls left standing and Sandy came near spelling them down, too, until he put the e before i in “chief,” and the girls’ side won, to the disgust of the boys, and the two colored girls, who wanted Sandy to win.
After school Sandy went uptown with Buster to buy books, but there was so large a crowd of children in the bookstore that it was five o’clock before he was waited on and his list filled. When he reached home, Aunt Hager was at the kitchen-stove frying an egg-plant for supper.
“You stayin’ out mighty long,” she said without taking her attention from the stove.
“Where’s papa?” Sandy asked eagerly. He wanted to show Jimboy his new books—a big geography, with pictures of animals in it, and a Nature Story Reader that he knew his father would like to see.
“Look in yonder,” said Hager, pointing towards Annjee’s bedroom.
Sandy rushed in, then stopped, because there was no one there. Suddenly a queer feeling came over him and he put his books down on the bed. Jimboy’s clothes were no longer hanging against the wall where his working-shirts and overalls were kept. Then Sandy looked under the bed. His father’s old suit-case was not there either, nor his work-shoes, nor his Sunday patent-leathers. And the guitar was missing.
“Where’s papa?” he asked again, running back to the kitchen.
“Can’t you see he ain’t here?” replied his grandmother, busily turning slices of egg-plant with great care in the skillet. “Gone—that’s where he is—a lazy nigger. Told me to tell Annjee he say goodbye, ’cause his travellin’ blues done come on . . . ! Huh! Jimboy’s yo’ pappy, chile, but he sho ain’t worth his salt! . . . an’ I’s right glad he’s took his clothes an’ left here, maself.”
Not Without Laughter Page 10
