Not Without Laughter

by Langston Hughes

  Her friend laughed too. “He’s a hot one, taking flowers to the women already, and a white girl at that! You’ve got a fast-working son, Elvira, I must say. . . . But, do you know, when you first moved here and I saw you and the boy going in and out, I thought sure you were both white folks. I didn’t know you was colored till my husband said: ‘That’s Eddie’s wife!’ You-all sure looked white to me.”

  The machine started to whir, making the conversation inaudible for a few minutes, and when Sandy caught their words again, they were talking about the Elks’ club-house that the colored people were planning to build.

  “Can you go out?” Sandy demanded of Buster, since they were making no headway with the tough clothes-pins and dull knives.

  “Maybe,” said Buster. “I’ll go see.” And he went into the other room and asked his mother.

  “Put on your overcoat,” she commanded. “It’s not summer yet. And be back in here before dark.”

  “All right, Vira,” the child said.

  The two children went to Mrs. Rumford’s shop on the corner and bought three cents’ worth of candy and seven cents’ worth of peewees with which to play marbles when it got warm. Then Sandy walked back past Buster’s house with him and they played for a while in the street before Sandy turned to run home.

  Aunt Hager was making mush for supper. She sent him to the store for a pint bottle of milk as soon as he arrived, but he forgot to take the bottle and had to come back for it.

  “You’d forget yo’ head if it wasn’t tied to you!” the old woman reminded him.

  They were just finishing supper when Annjee got home with two chocolate éclairs in her coat-pocket, mashed together against Jimboy’s letter.

  “Huh! I’m crazy!” she said, running her hand down into the sticky mess. “But listen, ma! He’s got a job and is doing well in Detroit, Jimboy says. . . . And I’m going to him!”

  “You what?” Hager gasped, dropping her spoon in her mush-bowl. “What you sayin’?”

  “I said I’m going to him, ma! I got to!” Annjee stood with her coat and hat still on, holding the sticky letter. “I’m going where my heart is, ma! . . . Oh, not today.” She put her arms around her mother’s neck. “I don’t mean today, mama, nor next week. I got to save some money first. I only got a little now. But I mean I’m going to him soon’s I can. I can’t help it, ma—I love him!”

  “Lawd, is you foolish?” cried Hager. “What’s you gwine do with this chile, trapesin’ round after Jimboy? What you gwine do if he leaves you in Detroiter or wherever he are? What you gwine do then? You loves him! Huh!”

  “But he ain’t gonna leave me in Detroit, ’cause I’m going with him everywhere he goes,” she said, her eyes shining. “He ain’t gonna leave me no more!”

  “An’ Sandy?”

  “Couldn’t he stay with you, mama? And then maybe we’d come back here and live, Jimboy and me, some time, when we get a little money ahead, and could pay off the mortgage on the house. . . . But there ain’t no use arguing, mama, I got to go!”

  Hager had never seen Annjee so positive before; she sat speechless, looking at the bowl of mush.

  “I got to go where it ain’t lonesome and where I ain’t unhappy—and that’s where Jimboy is! I got to go soon as I can.”

  Hager rose to put some water on the stove to heat for the dishes.

  “One by one you leaves me—Tempy, then Harriett, then you,” she said. “But Sandy’s gonna stick by me, ain’t you, son? He ain’t gwine leave his grandma.”

  The youngster looked at Hager, moving slowly about the kitchen putting away the supper things.

  “And I’s gwine to make a fine man out o’ you, Sandy. I’s gwine raise one chile right yet, if de Lawd lets me live—just one chile right!” she murmured.

  That night the March wind began to blow and the window-panes rattled. Sandy woke up in the dark, lying close and warm beside his mother. When he went back to sleep again, he dreamed that his Aunt Tempy’s Christmas book had been turned into a chariot, and that he was riding through the sky with Tempy standing very dignifiedly beside him as he drove. And he couldn’t see anybody down on earth, not even Hager.

  When his mother rolled out at six o’clock to go to work, he woke up again, and while she dressed, he lay watching his breath curl mistily upwards in the cold room. Outside the window it was bleak and grey and the March wind, humming through the leafless branches of the trees, blew terrifically. He heard Aunt Hager in the kitchen poking at the stove, making up a blaze to start the coffee boiling. Then the front door closed when his mother went out and, as the door slammed, the wind howled fiercely. It was nice and warm in bed, so he lay under the heavy quilts half dreaming, half thinking, until his grandmother shook him to get up. And many were the queer, dream-drowsy thoughts that floated through his mind —not only that morning, but almost every morning while he lay beneath the warm quilts until Hager had called him three or four times to get ready for school.

  He wondered sometimes whether if he washed and washed his face and hands, he would ever be white. Someone had told him once that blackness was only skin-deep. . . . And would he ever have a big house with electric lights in it, like his Aunt Tempy—but it was mostly white people who had such fine things, and they were mean to colored. . . . Some white folks were nice, though. Earl was nice at school, but not the little boys across the street, who called him “nigger” every day . . . and not Mrs. Rice, who scolded his mother. . . . Aunt Harrie didn’t like any white folks at all. . . . But Jesus was white and wore a long, white robe, like a woman’s, on the Sunday-school cards. . . . Once Jimmie Lane said: “God damn Jesus” when the teacher scolded him for not knowing his Bible lesson. He said it out loud in church, too, and the church didn’t fall down on him, as Sandy thought it might. . . . Grandma said it was a sin to cuss and swear, but all the fellows at school swore—and Jimboy did, too. But every time Sandy said “God damn,” he felt bad, because Aunt Hager said God was mighty good and it was wrong to take His name in vain. But he would like to learn to say “God damn” without feeling anything like most boys said it—just “God damn! . . . God damn! . . . God damn!” without being ashamed of himself. . . . The Lord never seemed to notice, anyhow. . . . And when he got big, he wanted to travel like Jimboy. He wanted to be a railroad engineer, but Harriett had said there weren’t any colored engineers on trains. . . . What would he be, then? Maybe a doctor; but it was more fun being an engineer and travelling far away.

  Sandy wished Annjee would take him with her when she went to join Jimboy—but then Aunt Hager would be all by herself, and grandma was so nice to him he would hate to leave her alone. Who would cut wood for her then? . . . But when he got big, he would go to Detroit. And maybe New York, too, where his geography said they had the tallest buildings in the world, and trains that ran under the river. . . . He wondered if there were any colored people in New York. . . . How ugly African colored folks looked in the geography—with bushy heads and wild eyes! Aunt Hager said her mother was an African, but she wasn’t ugly and wild; neither was Aunt Hager; neither was little dark Willie-Mae, and they were all black like Africans. . . . And Reverend Braswell was as black as ink, but he knew God. . . . God didn’t care if people were black, did He? . . . What was God? Was He a man or a lamb or what? Buster’s mother said God was a light, but Aunt Hager said He was a King and had a throne and wore a crown—she intended to sit down by His side by and by. . . . Was Buster’s father white? Buster was white and colored both. But he didn’t look like he was colored. What made Buster not colored? . . . And what made girls different from boys? . . . Once when they were playing house, Willie-Mae told him how girls were different from boys, but they didn’t know why. Now Willie-Mae was in the seventh grade and had hard little breasts that stuck out sharp-like, and Jimmy Lane said dirty things about Willie-Mae. . . . Once he asked his mother what his navel was for and she said, “Layovers to catch meddlers.” What did that mean? . . . And how come ladies got sick and stayed in bed when they ha
d babies? Where did babies come from, anyhow? Not from storks—a fairy-story like Santa Claus. . . . Did God love people who told fairy-stories and lied to kids about storks and Santa Claus? . . . Santa Claus was no good, anyhow! God damn Santa Claus for not bringing him the sled he wanted Christmas! It was all a lie about Santa Claus!

  The sound of Hager pouring coal on the fire and dragging her wash-tubs across the kitchen-floor to get ready for work broke in on Sandy’s drowsy half-dreams, and as he rolled over in bed, his grandmother, hearing the springs creak, called loudly: “You Sandy! Get up from there! It’s seven and past! You want to be late gettin’ to yo’ school?”

  “Yes’m, I’m coming, grandma!” he said under the quilts. “But it’s cold in here.”

  “You knows you don’t dress in yonder! Bring them clothes on out behind this stove, sir.”

  “Yes’m.” So with a kick of the feet his covers went flying back and Sandy ran to the warmth of the little kitchen, where he dressed, washed, and ate. Then he yelled for Willie-Mae—when he felt like it—or else went on to school without her, joining some of the boys on the way.

  So spring was coming and Annjee worked diligently at Mrs. Rice’s day after day. Often she did something extra for Mrs. Rice’s sister and her children—pressed a shirtwaist or ironed some stockings—and so added a few quarters or maybe even a dollar to her weekly wages, all of which she saved to help carry her to Jimboy in Detroit.

  For ten years she had been cooking, washing, ironing, scrubbing—and for what? For only the few weeks in a year, or a half-year, when Jimboy would come home from some strange place and take her in his strong arms and kiss her and murmur: “Annjee, baby!” That’s what she had been working for—then the dreary months were as nothing, and the hard years faded away. But now he had been gone all winter, and, from his letter, he might not come back soon, because he said Detroit was a fine place for colored folks. . . . But Stanton—well, Annjee thought there must surely be better towns, where a woman wouldn’t have to work so hard to live. . . . And where Jimboy was.

  So before the first buds opened on the apple-tree in the back yard, Annjee had gone to Detroit, leaving Sandy behind with his grandmother. And when the apple blossoms came in full bloom, there was no one living in the little house but a grey-headed old woman and her grandchild.

  “One by one they leaves you,” Hager said slowly. “One by one yo’ chillen goes.”

  SIXTEEN

  Nothing but Love

  * * *

  “A YEAR ago tonight was de storm what blowed ma porch away! You ’members, honey? . . . Done seem like this year took more’n ma porch, too. My baby chile’s left home an’ gone to stay down yonder in de Bottoms with them triflin’ Smothers family, where de piano’s goin’ night an’ day. An’ yo’ mammy’s done gone a-trapesin’ after Jimboy. . . . Well, I thanks de Lawd you ain’t gone too. You’s mighty little an’ knee-high to a duck, but you’s ma stand-by. You’s all I got, an’ you ain’t gwine leave yo’ old grandma, is you?”

  Hager had turned to Sandy in these lonely days for comfort and companionship. Through the long summer evenings they sat together on the front porch and she told her grandchild stories. Sometimes Sister Johnson came over and sat with them for a while smoking. Sometimes Madam de Carter, full of chatter and big words about the lodge and the race, would be there. But more often the two were alone—the black washwoman with the grey hair and the little brown boy. Slavery-time stories, myths, folk-tales like the Rabbit and the Tar Baby; the war, Abe Lincoln, freedom; visions of the Lord; years of faith and labor, love and struggle filled Aunt Hager’s talk of a summer night, while the lightning-bugs glowed and glimmered and the katydids chirruped, and the stars sparkled in the far-off heavens.

  Sandy was getting to be too big a boy to sit in his grandmother’s lap and be rocked to sleep as in summers gone by; now he sat on a little stool beside her, leaning his head on her legs when he was tired. Or else he lay flat on the floor of the porch listening, and looking up at the stars. Tonight Hager talked about love.

  “These young ones what’s comin’ up now, they calls us ole fogies, an’ handkerchief heads, an’ white folks’ niggers ’cause we don’t get mad an’ rar’ up in arms like they does ’cause things is kinder hard, but, honey, when you gets old, you knows they ain’t no sense in gettin’ mad an’ sourin’ yo’ soul with hatin’ peoples. White folks is white folks, an’ colored folks is colored, an’ neither one of ’em is bad as t’other make out. For mighty nigh seventy years I been knowin’ both of ’em, an’ I ain’t never had no room in ma heart to hate neither white nor colored. When you starts hatin’ people, you gets uglier than they is—an’ I ain’t never had no time for ugliness, ’cause that’s where de devil comes in—in ugliness!

  “They talks ’bout slavery time an’ they makes out now like it were de most awfullest time what ever was, but don’t you believe it, chile, ’cause it weren’t all that bad. Some o’ de white folks was just as nice to their niggers as they could be, nicer than many of ’em is now, what makes ’em work for less than they needs to eat. An’ in those days they had to feed ’em. An’ they ain’t every white man beat his slaves neither! Course I ain’t sayin’ ’twas no paradise, but I ain’t going to say it were no hell either. An’ maybe I’s kinder seein’ it on de bestest side ’cause I worked in de big house an’ ain’t never went to de fields like most o’ de niggers did. Ma mammy were de big-house cook an’ I grewed up right with her in de kitchen an’ played with little Miss Jeanne. An’ Miss Jeanne taught me to read what little I knowed. An’ when she growed up an’ I growed up, she kept me with her like her friend all de time. I loved her an’ she loved me. Miss Jeanne were de mistress’ daughter, but warn’t no difference ’tween us ’ceptin’ she called me Hager an’ I called her Miss Jeanne. But what difference do one word like ‘Miss’ make in yo’ heart? None, chile, none. De words don’t make no difference if de love’s there.

  “I disremembers what year it were de war broke out, but white folks was scared, an’ niggers, too. Didn’t know what might happen. An’ we heard talk o’ Abraham Lincoln ’way down yonder in de South. An’ de ole marster, ole man Winfield, took his gun an’ went to war, an’ de young son, too, an’ de superintender and de overseer—all of ’em gone to follow Lee. Ain’t left nothin’ but womens an’ niggers on de plantation. De womens was a-cryin’ an’ de niggers was, too, ’cause they was sorry for de po’ grievin’ white folks.

  “Is I ever told you how Miss Jeanne an’ Marster Robert was married in de springtime o’ de war, with de magnolias all a-bloomin’ like candles for they weddin’? Is I ever told you, Sandy? . . . Well, I must some time. An’ then Marster Robert had to go right off with his mens, ’cause he’s a high officer in de army an’ they heard Sherman were comin’. An’ he left her a-standin’ with her weddin’-clothes on, leanin’ ’gainst a pillar o’ de big white porch, with nobody but me to dry her eyes—ole Missis done dead an’ de men-folks all gone to war. An’ nobody in that big whole mansion but black ole deaf Aunt Granny Jones, what kept de house straight, an’ me, what was stayin’ with ma mistress.

  “O, de white folks needed niggers then mo’n they ever did befo’, an’ they ain’t a colored person what didn’t stick by ’em when all they men-folks were gone an’ de white womens was a-cryin’ an’ a-faintin’ like they did in them days.

  “But lemme tell you ’bout Miss Jeanne. She just set in her room an’ cry. A-holdin’ Marster Bob’s pitcher, she set an’ cry, an’ she ain’t come out o’ her room to see ’bout nothin’—house, horses, cotton—nothin’. But de niggers, they ain’t cheat her nor steal from her. An’ come de news dat her brother done got wounded an’ died in Virginia, an’ her cousins got de yaller fever. Then come de news that Marster Robert, Miss Jeanne’s husband, ain’t no mo’! Killed in de battle! An’ I thought Miss Jeanne would like to go crazy. De news say he died like a soldier, brave an’ fightin’. But when she heard it, she went to de drawer an’ got out her weddin’-veil an’ t
ook her flowers in her hands like she were goin’ to de altar to meet de groom. Then she just sink in de flo’ an’ cry till I pick her up an’ hold her like a chile.

  “Well, de freedom come, an’ all de niggers scatter like buck-shot, goin’ to live in town. An’ de yard niggers say I’s a ole fool! I’s free now—why don’t I come with them? But I say no, I’s gwine stay with Miss Jeanne—an’ I stayed. I ’lowed ain’t nary one o’ them colored folks needed me like Miss Jeanne did, so I ain’t went with ’em.

  “An’ de time pass; it pass an’ it pass, an’ de ole house get rusty for lack o’ paint, an’ de things, they ’gin to fall to pieces. An’ Miss Jeanne say: ‘Hager, I ain’t got nobody in de world but you.’ An’ I say: ‘Miss Jeanne, I ain’t got nobody in de world but you neither.’

  “And then she’d start talkin’ ’bout her young husband what died so handsome an’ brave, what ain’t even had time that last day fo’ to ’scort her to de church for de weddin’, nor to hold her in his arms ’fore de orders come to leave. An’ we would set on de big high ole porch, with its tall stone pillars, in de evenin’s twilight till de bats start flyin’ overhead an’ de sunset glow done gone, she in her wide white skirts a-billowin’ round her slender waist, an’ me in ma apron an’ cap an’ this here chain she gimme you see on ma neck all de time an’ what’s done wore so thin.

  “They was a ole stump of a blasted tree in de yard front o’ de porch ’bout tall as a man, with two black pieces o’ branches raised up like arms in de air. We used to set an’ look at it, an’ Miss Jeanne could see it from her bedroom winder upstairs, an’ sometimes this stump, it look like it were movin’ right up de path like a man.