Not Without Laughter

by Langston Hughes

  “How is you an’ yo’ new church makin’ it?” asked Hager, slightly embarrassed in the presence of her finely dressed society daughter.

  “Wonderful!” Tempy replied. “Wonderful! Father Hill is so dignified, and the services are absolutely refined! There’s never anything niggerish about them—so you know, mother, they suit me.”

  “I’s glad you likes it,” said Hager.

  There was an awkward silence; then Tempy distributed her gifts, kissed them all as though it were her Christian duty, and went her way, saying that she had calls to make at Lawyer and Mrs. Moore’s, and Professor Booth’s, and Madam Temple’s before she returned home. When she had gone, everybody felt relieved—as though a white person had left the house. Willie-Mae began to play again, and Hager pushed her feet out of her shoes once more, while Annjee went into the bedroom and lay down.

  Sandy sat on the floor and untied his present, wrapped in several thicknesses of pink tissue paper, and found, in a bright Christmas box, a big illustrated volume of Andersen’s Fairy Tales decorated in letters of gold. With its heavy pages and fine pictures, it made the ten-cent-store books that Hager had bought him appear cheap and thin. It made his mother’s sled look cheap, too, and shamed all the other gifts the ones he loved had given him.

  “I don’t want it,” he said suddenly, as loud as he could. “I don’t want Tempy’s old book!” And from where he was sitting, he threw it with all his might underneath the stove.

  Hager gasped in astonishment. “Pick that up, sir,” she cried amazed. “Yo’ Aunt Tempy done bought you a fine purty book an’ here you throwin’ it un’neath de stove in de ashes! Lawd have mercy! Pick it up, I say, this minute!”

  “I won’t!” cried Sandy stubbornly. “I won’t! I like my sled what you-all gave me, but I don’t want no old book from Tempy! I won’t pick it up!”

  Then the astonished Hager grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and jerked him to his feet.

  “Do I have to whip you yet this holy day? . . . Pick up that book, sir!”

  “No!” he yelled.

  She gave him a startled rap on the head with the back of her hand. “Talkin’ sassy to yo’ old grandma an’ tellin’ her no!”

  “What is it?” Annjee called from the bedroom, as Sandy began to wail.

  “Nothin’,” Hager replied, “ ’ceptin’ this chile’s done got beside hisself an’ I has to hit him—that’s all!”

  But Sandy was not hurt by his grandmother’s easy rap. He was used to being struck on the back of the head for misdemeanors, and this time he welcomed the blow because it gave him, at last, what he had been looking for all day—a sufficient excuse to cry. Now his pent-up tears flowed without ceasing while Willie-Mae sat in a corner clutching her rag doll to her breast, and Tempy’s expensive gift lay in the ashes beneath the stove.

  FOURTEEN

  Return

  * * *

  AFTER Christmas there followed a period of cold weather, made bright by the winter sun shining on the hard crusty snow, where children slid and rolled, and over which hay-wagons made into sleighs on great heavy runners drove jingling into town from the country. There was skating on the frozen river and fine sledding on the hills beyond the woods, but Sandy never went out where the crowds were with his sled, because he was ashamed of it.

  After New Year’s Annjee went back to work at Mrs. Rice’s, still coughing a little and still weak. But with bills to pay and Sandy in need of shoes and stockings and clothes to wear to school, she couldn’t remain idle any longer. Even with her mother washing and ironing every day except the Sabbath, expenses were difficult to meet, and Aunt Hager was getting pretty old to work so hard. Annjee thought that Tempy ought to help them a little, but she was too proud to ask her. Besides, Tempy had never been very affectionate towards her sisters even when they were all girls together—but she ought to help look out for their mother. Hager, however, when Annjee brought up the subject of Tempy’s help, said that she was still able to wash, thank God, and wasn’t depending on any of her children for anything—not so long as white folks wore clothes.

  At school Sandy passed all of his mid-year tests and, along with Sadie Butler, was advanced to the fifth A, but the other colored child in the class, a little fat girl named Mary Jones, failed and had to stay behind. Mary’s mother, a large sulphur-yellow woman who cooked at the Drummer’s Hotel, came to the school and told the teacher, before all the children, just what she thought of her for letting Mary fail—and her thoughts were not very complimentary to the stiff, middle-aged white lady who taught the class. The question of color came up, too, during the discussion.

  “Look at ma chile settin’ back there behind all de white ones,” screamed the sulphur-yellow woman. “An’ me payin’ as much taxes as anybody! You treats us colored folks like we ain’t citizerzens—that’s what you does!” The argument had to be settled in the principal’s office, where the teacher went with the enraged mother, while the white children giggled that a fat, yellow colored lady should come to school to quarrel about her daughter’s not being promoted. But the colored children in the class couldn’t laugh.

  St. Valentine’s day came and Sadie Butler sent Sandy a big red heart. But for Annjee, “the mail-man passed and didn’t leave no news,” because Jimboy hadn’t written yet, nor had Harriett thanked her for the three dollars she had mailed to Memphis before Christmas. There were no letters from anybody.

  The work at Mrs. Rice’s was very heavy, because Mrs. Rice’s sister, with two children, had come from Indiana to spend the winter, and Annjee had to cook for them and clean their rooms, too. But she was managing to save a little money every week. She bought Sandy a new blue serge suit with a Norfolk coat and knickerbocker pants. And then he sat up very stiffly in Sterner’s studio and had his picture taken.

  The freckled-faced white boy, Paul Biggers, who sat across from Sandy in school, delivered the Daily Leader to several streets in Sandy’s neighborhood, and Sandy sometimes went with him, helping to fold and throw the papers in the various doorways. One night it was almost seven o’clock when he got home.

  “I had a great mind not to wait for you,” said Aunt Hager, who had long had the table set for supper. “Wash yo’ face an’ hands, sir! An’ brush that snow off yo’ coat ’fo’ you hang it up.”

  His grandmother took a pan of hot spoon-bread from the oven and put it on the table, where the little oil-lamp glowed warmly and the plain white dishes looked clean and inviting. On the stove there was a skillet full of fried apples and bacon, and Hager was making a pot of tea.

  “Umn-nn! Smells good!” said Sandy, speaking of everything at once as he slid into his chair. “Gimme a lot o’ apples, grandma.”

  “Is that de way you ask fo’ ’em, sir? Can’t you say please no mo’?”

  “Please, ma’am,” said the boy, grinning, for Hager’s sharpness wasn’t serious, and her old eyes were twinkling.

  While they were eating, Annjee came in from work with a small bucket of oyster soup in her hands. They heated this and added it to their supper, and Sandy’s mother sat down in front of the stove, with her feet propped up on the grate to dry quickly. It was very comfortable in the little kitchen.

  “Seems like the snow’s melting,” said Annjee. “It’s kinder sloppy and nasty underfoot. . . . Ain’t been no mail today, has they?”

  “No, honey,” said Hager. “Leastwise, I been washin’ so hard ain’t had no time to look in de box. Sandy, run there to de front do’ an’ see. But I knows there ain’t nothin’, nohow.”

  “Might be,” said Annjee as Sandy took a match and went through the dark bedroom and parlor to the front porch. There was no mail. But Sandy saw, coming across the slushy dirty-white snow towards the house, a slender figure approaching in the gloom. He waited, shivering in the doorway a moment to see who it was; then all at once he yelled at the top of his lungs: “Aunt Harrie’s here!”

  Pulling her by the hand, after having kissed and hugged and almost choked her, he ran back
to the kitchen. “Look, here’s Aunt Harrie!” he cried. “Aunt Harrie’s home!” And Hager turned from the table, upsetting her tea, and opened wide her arms to take her to her bosom.

  “Ma chile!” she shouted. “Done come home again! Ma baby chile come home!”

  Annjee hugged and kissed Harriett, too, as her sister sat on Hager’s knees—and the kitchen was filled with sound, warm and free and loving, for the prodigal returned.

  “Ma chile’s come back!” her mother repeated over and over. “Thank de Lawd! Ma chile’s back!”

  “You want some fried apples, Harrie?” asked Sandy, offering her his plate. “You want some tea?”

  “No, thank you, honey,” she replied when the excitement had subsided and Aunt Hager had released her, with her little black hat askew and the powder kissed off one side of her face.

  She got up, shook herself, and removed her hat to brush down her hair, but she kept her faded coat on as she laid her little purse of metal mesh on the table. Then she sat down on the chair that Annjee offered her near the fire. She was thinner and her hair had been bobbed, giving her a boyish appearance, like the black pages in old Venetian paintings. But her lips were red and there were two little spots of rouge burning on each cheek, although her eyes were dark with heavy shadows as though she had been ill.

  Hager was worried. “Has you been sick, chile?” she asked.

  “No, mama,” Harriett said. “I’ve been all right—just had a hard time, that’s all. I got mad, and quit the show in Memphis, and they wouldn’t pay me—so that was that! The minstrels left the carnival for the winter and started playing the theatres, and the new manager was a cheap skate. I couldn’t get along with him.”

  “Did you get my letter and the money?” Annjee asked. “We didn’t have no more to send you, and afterwards, when you didn’t write, I didn’t know if you got it.”

  “I got it and meant to thank you, sis, but I don’t know—just didn’t get round to it. But, anyway, I’m out of the South now. It’s a hell—I mean it’s an awful place if you don’t know anybody! And more hungry niggers down there! I wonder who made up that song about Dear Old Southland. There’s nothing dear about it that I can see. Good God! It’s awful! . . . But I’m back.” She smiled. “Where’s Jimboy? . . . O, that’s right, Annjee—you told me in the letter. But I sort-a miss him around here. Lord, I hope he didn’t go to Memphis!”

  “Did you find a job down there?” Annjee asked, looking at her sister’s delicate hands.

  “Sure, I found a job all right,” Harriett replied in a tone that made Annjee ask no more questions. “Jobs are like hen’s teeth —try and find ’em.” And she shrugged her shoulders as Sandy had so often seen her do, but she no longer seemed to him like a little girl. She was grown-up and hard and strange now, but he still loved her.

  “Aunt Harrie, I passed to the fifth A,” he announced proudly.

  “That’s wonderful,” she answered. “My, but you’re smart! You’ll be a great man some day, sure, Sandy.”

  “Where’s yo’ suit-case, honey?” Hager interrupted, too happy to touch her food on the table or to take her eyes away from the face of her returned child. “Didn’t you bring it back with you? Where is it?”

  “Sure, I got it. . . . But I’m gonna live at Maudel’s this time, mama. . . . I left it at the station. I didn’t think you-all’d want me here.” She tried to make the words careless-like, but they were pitifully forced.

  “Aw, honey!” Annjee cried, the tears coming.

  The shadow of inner pain passed over Hager’s black face, but the only reply she made was: “You’s growed up now, chile. I reckon you knows what you’s doin’. You’s been ten thousand miles away from yo’ mammy, an’ I reckon you knows. . . . Come on, Sandy, let’s we eat.” Slowly the old woman returned to the cold food on her plate. “Won’t you eat something with us, daughter?”

  Harriett’s eyes lowered and her shoulders drooped. “No, mama, thank you. I’m—not hungry.”

  Then a long, embarrassing silence followed while Hager gulped at her tea, Sandy tried to swallow a mouthful of bread that seemed to choke him, and Annjee stared stupidly at the stove.

  Finally Harriett said: “I got to go now.” She stood up to button her coat and put on her hat. Then she took her metal purse from the table.

  “Maudel’ll be waiting for me, but I’ll be seeing you-all again soon, I guess. Good-bye, Sandy honey! I got to go. . . . Annjee, I got to go now. . . . Good-bye, mama!” She was trembling. As she bent down to kiss Hager, her purse slipped out of her hands and fell in a little metal heap on the floor. She stooped to pick it up.

  “I got to go now.”

  A tiny perfume-bottle in the bag had broken from the fall, and as she went through the cold front room towards the door, the odor of cheap and poignant drugstore violets dripped across the house.

  FIFTEEN

  One by One

  * * *

  YOU could smell the spring.

  “ ’Tain’t gwine be warm fo’ weeks yet!” Hager said.

  Nevertheless, you could smell the spring. Little boys were already running in the streets without their overcoats, and the ground-hog had seen its shadow. Snow remained in the fence corners, but it had melted on the roofs. The yards were wet and muddy, but no longer white.

  It was a sunny afternoon in late March that a letter came. On his last delivery the mail-man stopped, dropped it in the box—and Sandy saw him. It was addressed to his mother and he knew it must be from Jimboy.

  “Go on an’ take it to her,” his grandma said, as soon as she saw the boy coming with it in his hand. “I knows that’s what you want to do. Go on an’ take it.” And she bent over her ironing again.

  Sandy ran almost all the way to Mrs. Rice’s, dropping the letter more than once on the muddy sidewalk, so excited he did not think to put it in his pocket. Into the big yard and around to the white lady’s back door he sped—and it was locked! He knocked loudly for a long time, and finally an upper window opened and Annjee, a dust-rag around her head, looked down, squinting in the sunlight.

  “Who’s there?” she called stridently, thinking of some peddler or belated tradesman for whom she did not wish to stop her cleaning.

  Sandy pantingly held up the letter and was about to say something when the window closed with a bang. He could hear his mother almost falling down the back stairs, she was coming so fast. Then the key turned swiftly in the lock, the door opened, and, without closing it, Annjee took the letter from him and tore it open where she stood.

  “It’s from Jimboy!”

  Sandy stood on the steps looking at his mother, her bosom heaving, her sleeves rolled up, and the white cloth tied about her head, doubly white against her dark-brown face.

  “He’s in Detroit, it says. . . . Umn! I ain’t never seen him write such a long letter. ‘I had a hard time this winter till I landed here,’ it says, ‘but things look pretty good now, and there is lots of building going on and plenty of work opening up in the automobile plants . . . a mighty lot of colored folks here . . . hope you and Sandy been well. Sorry couldn’t send you nothing Xmas, but I was in St. Paul broke. . . . Kiss my son for me. . . . Tell ma hello even if she don’t want to hear it. Your loving husband, Jimboy Rogers.’”

  Annjee did her best to hold the letter with one hand and pick up Sandy with the other, but he had grown considerably during the winter and she was still a little weak from her illness; so she bent down to his level and kissed him several times before she re-read the letter.

  “From your daddy!” she said. “Umn-mn. . . . Come on in here and warm yourself. Lemme see what he says again!” . . . She lighted the gas oven in the white kitchen and sat down in front of it with her letter, forgetting the clock and the approaching time for Mrs. Rice’s dinner, forgetting everything. “A letter from my daddy! From my far-off sugar-daddy!”

  “From my daddy,” corrected Sandy. . . . “Say, gimme a nickel to buy some marbles, mama. I wanta go play.”

  With
out taking her eyes from the precious note Annjee fumbled in her apron and found a coin. “Take it and go on!” she said.

  It was a dime. Sandy skipped around the house and down the street in the chilly sunshine. He decided to stop at Buster’s for a while before going home, since he had to pass there anyway, and he found his friend in the house trying to carve boats from clothes-pins with a rusty jack-knife.

  Buster’s mother was a seamstress, and, after opening the front door and greeting Sandy with a cheery “Hello,” she returned to her machine and a friend who was calling on her. She was a tall young light-mulatto woman, with skin like old ivory. Maybe that was why Buster was so white. But her husband was a black man who worked on the city’s garbage-trucks and was active politically when election time came, getting colored men to vote Republican. Everybody said he made lots of money, but that he wasn’t really Buster’s father.

  The golden-haired child gave Sandy a butcher-knife and together they whacked at the clothes-pins. You could hear the two women talking plainly in the little sewing-room, where the machine ran between snatches of conversation.

  “Yes,” Buster’s mother was saying, “I have the hardest time keeping that boy colored! He goes on just like he was white. Do you know what he did last week? Cut all the blossoms off my geranium plants here in the house, took them to school, and gave them to Dorothy Marlow, in his grade. And you know who Dorothy is, don’t you? Senator Marlow’s daughter! . . . I said: ‘Buster, if you ever cut my flowers to carry to any little girl again, I’ll punish you severely, but if you cut them to carry to little white girls, I don’t know what I’ll do with you. . . . Don’t you know they hang colored boys for things like that?’ I wanted to scare him—because you know there might be trouble even among kids in school over such things. . . . But I had to laugh.”