Not Without Laughter

by Langston Hughes

  “After she done gone to bed, late one springtime night when de moon were shinin’, I hear Miss Jeanne a-cryin’: ‘He’s come! . . . Hager, ma Robert’s come back to me!’ An’ I jumped out o’ ma bed in de next room where I were sleepin’ an’ run in to her, an’ there she was in her long, white night-clothes standin’ out in de moonlight on de little balcony, high up in de middle o’ that big stone porch. She was lookin’ down into de yard at this stump of a tree a-holdin’ up its arms. An’ she thinks it’s Marster Robert a-callin’ her. She thinks he’s standin’ there in his uniform, come back from de war, a-callin’ her. An’ she say: ‘I’m comin’, Bob, dear’; . . . I can hear her now. . . . She say: ‘I’m comin’!’ . . . An’ ’fore I think what she’s doin’, Miss Jeanne done stepped over de little rail o’ de balcony like she were walkin’ on moonlight. An’ she say: ‘I’m comin’, Bob!’

  “She ain’t left no will, so de house an’ all went to de State, an’ I been left with nothin’. But I ain’t care ’bout that. I followed her to de grave, an’ I been with her all de time, ’cause she’s ma friend. An’ I were sorry for her, ’cause I knowed that love were painin’ her soul, an’ warn’t nobody left to help her but me.

  “An’ since then I’s met many a white lady an’ many a white gentleman, an’ some of ’em’s been kind to me an’ some of ’em ain’t; some of ’em’s cussed me an’ wouldn’t pay me fo’ ma work; an’ some of ’em’s hurted me awful. But I’s been sorry fo’ white folks, fo’ I knows something inside must be aggravatin’ de po’ souls. An’ I’s kept a room in ma heart fo’ ’em, ’cause white folks needs us, honey, even if they don’t know it. They’s like spoilt chillens what’s got too much o’ ever’thing—an’ they needs us niggers, what ain’t got nothin’.

  “I’s been livin’ a long time in yesterday, Sandy chile, an’ I knows there ain’t no room in de world fo’ nothin’ mo’n love. I knows, chile! Ever’thing there is but lovin’ leaves a rust on yo’ soul. An’ to love sho ’nough, you got to have a spot in yo’ heart fo’ ever’body—great an’ small, white an’ black, an’ them what’s good an’ them what’s evil—’cause love ain’t got no crowded-out places where de good ones stays an’ de bad ones can’t come in. When it gets that way, then it ain’t love.

  “White peoples maybe mistreats you an’ hates you, but when you hates ’em back, you’s de one what’s hurted, ’cause hate makes yo’ heart ugly—that’s all it does. It closes up de sweet door to life an’ makes ever’thing small an’ mean an’ dirty. Honey, there ain’t no room in de world fo’ hate, white folks hatin’ niggers, an’ niggers hatin’ white folks. There ain’t no room in this world fo’ nothin’ but love, Sandy chile. That’s all they’s room fo’—nothin’ but love.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Barber–Shop

  * * *

  MR. LOGAN, hearing that Aunt Hager had an empty room since all her daughters were gone, sent her one evening a new-comer in town looking for a place to stay. His name was Wim Dogberry and he was a brickmason and hod-carrier, a tall, quiet, stoop-shouldered black man, neither old nor young. He took, for two dollars and a half a week, the room that had been Annjee’s, and Hager gave him a key to the front door.

  Wim Dogberry was carrying hod then on a new moving-picture theatre that was being built. He rose early and came in late, face, hands, and overalls covered with mortar dust. He washed in a tin basin by the pump and went to bed, and about all he ever said to Aunt Hager and Sandy was “Good-mornin’ ” and “Good-evenin’,” and maybe a stumbling “How is you?” But on Sunday mornings Hager usually asked him to breakfast if he got up on time—for on Saturday nights Wim drank licker and came home mumbling to himself a little later than on a week-day evenings, so sometimes he would sleep until noon Sundays.

  One Saturday night he wet the bed, and when Hager went to make it up on the Sabbath morning, she found a damp yellow spot in the middle. Of this act Dogberry was so ashamed that he did not even say “Good-mornin’” for several days, and if, from the corner, he saw Aunt Hager and her grandson sitting on the porch in the twilight when he came towards home, he would pass his street and walk until he thought they had gone inside to bed. But he was a quiet roomer, he didn’t give anyone any trouble, and he paid regularly. And since Hager was in no position to despise two dollars and a half every week, she rather liked Dogberry.

  Now Hager kept the growing Sandy close by her all the time to help her while she washed and ironed and to talk to her while she sat on the porch in the evenings. Of course, he played sometimes in his own yard whenever Willie-Mae or Buster or, on Sundays, Jimmie Lane came to the house. But Jimmie Lane was running wild since his mother died, and Hager didn’t like him to visit her grandson any more. He was bad.

  When Sandy wanted to go to the vacant lot to play baseball with the neighbor boys, his grandmother would usually not allow him to leave her. “Stay here, sir, with Hager. I needs you to pump ma water fo’ me an’ fill up these tubs,” she would say. Or else she would yell: “Ain’t I told you you might get hurt down there with them old rough white boys? Stay here in yo’ own yard, where you can keep out o’ mischief.”

  So he grew accustomed to remaining near his grandmother, and at night, when the other children would be playing duck-on-the-rock under the arc-light at the corner, he would be sitting on the front porch listening to Aunt Hager telling her tales of slavery and talking of her own far-off youth. When school opened in the fall, the old woman said: “I don’t know what I’s gwine do all day without you, Sandy. You sho been company to me, with all my own chillens gone.” But Sandy was glad to get back to a roomful of boys and girls again.

  One Indian-summer afternoon when Aunt Hager was hanging up clothes in the back yard while the boy held the basket of clothes-pins, old man Logan drove past on his rickety trash-wagon and bowed elaborately to Hager. She went to the back fence to joke and gossip with him as usual, while his white mule switched off persistent flies with her tail.

  Before the old beau drove away, he said: “Say, Hager, does you want that there young one o’ your’n to work? I knows a little job he can have if you does,” pointing to Sandy.

  “What’ll he got to do?” demanded Hager.

  “Well, Pete Scott say he need a boy down yonder at de barber-shop on Saturdays to kinder clean up where de kinks fall, an’ shine shoes fo’ de customers. Ain’t nothin’ hard ’bout it, an’ I was thinkin’ it would just ’bout be Sandy’s size. He could make a few pennies ever’ week to kinder help things ’long.”

  “True, he sho could,” said Hager. “I’ll have him go see Pete.”

  So Sandy went to see Mr. Peter Scott at the colored barber-shop on Pearl Street that evening and was given his first regular job. Every Saturday, which was the barber-shop’s only busy day, when the working-men got paid off, Sandy went on the job at noon and worked until eight or nine in the evening. His duties were to keep the place swept clean of the hair that the three barbers sheared and to shine the shoes of any customer who might ask for a shine. Only a few customers permitted themselves that last luxury, for many of them came to the shop in their working-shoes, covered with mud or lime, and most of them shined their own boots at home on Sunday mornings before church. But occasionally Cudge Windsor, who owned a pool hall, or some of the dressed-up bootleggers, might climb on the stand and permit their shoes to be cleaned by the brown youngster, who asked shyly: “Shine, mister?”

  The barber-shop was a new world to Sandy, who had lived thus far tied to Aunt Hager’s apron-strings. He was a dreamy-eyed boy who had grown to his present age largely under the dominant influence of women—Annjee, Harriett, his grandmother—because Jimboy had been so seldom home. But the barber-shop then was a man’s world, and, on Saturdays, while a dozen or more big laborers awaited their turns, the place was filled with loud man-talk and smoke and laughter. Baseball, Jack Johnson, racehorses, white folks, Teddy Roosevelt, local gossip, Booker Washington, women, labor prospects in Topeka, Kansas City, Omaha, religion, poli
tics, women, God—discussions and arguments all afternoon and far up into the night, while crisp kinks rolled to the floor, cigarette and cigar-butts were thrown on the hearth of the monkey-stove, and Sandy called out: “Shine, mister?”

  Sometimes the boy earned one or two dollars from shines, but on damp or snowy days he might not make anything except the fifty cents Pete Scott paid him for sweeping up. Or perhaps one of the barbers, too busy to go out for supper, would send Sandy for a sandwich and a bottle of milk, and thus he would make an extra nickel or dime.

  The patrons liked him and often kidded him about his sandy hair. “Boy, you’s too dark to have hair like that. Ain’t nobody but white folks s’posed to have sandy-colored hair. An’ your’n’s nappy at that!” Then Sandy would blush with embarrassment —if the change from a dry chocolate to a damp chocolate can be called a blush, as he grew warm and perspired—because he didn’t like to be kidded about his hair. And he hadn’t been around uncouth fellows long enough to learn the protective art of turning back a joke. He had discovered already, though, that so-called jokes are often not really jokes at all, but rather unpleasant realities that hurt unless you can think of something equally funny and unpleasant to say in return. But the men who patronized Pete Scott’s barber-shop seldom grew angry at the hard pleasantries that passed for humor, and they could play the dozens for hours without anger, unless the parties concerned became serious, when they were invited to take it on the outside. And even at that a fight was fun, too.

  After a winter of Saturday nights at Pete’s shop Sandy himself became pretty adept at “kidding”; but at first he was timid about it and afraid to joke with grown-up people, or to give smart answers to strangers when they teased him about his crinkly, sand-colored head. One day, however, one of the barbers gave him a tin of Madam Walker’s and told him: “Lay that hair down an’ stop these niggers from laughin’ at you.” Sandy took his advice.

  Madam Walker’s—a thick yellow pomade—and a good wetting with water proved most efficacious to the boy’s hair, when aided with a stocking cap—the top of a woman’s stocking cut off and tied in a knot at one end so as to fit tightly over one’s head, pressing the hair smooth. Thereafter Sandy appeared with his hair slick and shiny. And the salve and water together made it seem a dark brown, just the color of his skin, instead of the peculiar sandy tint it possessed in its natural state. Besides he soon advanced far enough in the art of “kidding” to say: “So’s your pa’s,” to people who informed him that his head was nappy.

  During the autumn Harriett had been home once to see her mother and had said that she was working as chambermaid with Maudel at the hotel. But in the barber-shop that winter Sandy often heard his aunt’s name mentioned in less proper connections. Sometimes the boy pretended not to hear, and if Pete Scott was there, he always stopped the men from talking.

  “Tired o’ all this nasty talk ’bout women in ma shop,” he said one Saturday night. “Some o’ you men better look after your own womenfolks if you got any.”

  “Aw, all de womens in de world ain’t worth two cents to me,” said a waiter sitting in the middle chair, his face covered with lather. “I don’t respect no woman but my mother.”

  “An’ neither do I,” answered Greensbury Jones. “All of em’s evil, specially if they’s black an’ got blue gums.”

  “I’s done told you to hush,” said Pete Scott behind the first chair, where he was clipping Jap Logan’s hair. “Ma wife’s black herself, so don’t start talkin’ ’bout no blue gums! I’s tired o’ this here female talk anyhow. This is ma shop, an’ ma razors sho can cut somethin’ else ’sides hair—so now just keep on talkin’ ’bout blue gums!”

  “I see where Bryant’s runnin’ for president agin,” said Greens­­­bury Jones.

  But one Saturday, while the proprietor was out to snatch a bite to eat, a discussion came up as to who was the prettiest colored girl in town. Was she yellow, high-brown, chocolate, or black? Of course, there was no agreement, but names were mentioned and qualities were described. One girl had eyes like Eve herself; another had hips like Miss Cleopatra; one smooth brown-skin had legs like—like—like—

  “Aw, man! De Statue of Liberty!” somebody suggested when the name of a famous beauty failed the speaker’s memory.

  “But, feller, there ain’t nothin’ in all them rainbow shades,” a young teamster argued against Uncle Dan Givens, who preferred high yellows. “Gimme a cool black gal ever’ time! They’s too dark to fade—and when they are good-looking, I mean they are good-looking! I’m talkin’ ’bout Harrietta Williams, too! That’s who I mean! Now, find a better-looking gal than she is!”

  “I admits Harrietta’s all right,” said the old man; “all right to look at but—sput-t-tsss!” He spat contemptuously at the stove.

  “O, I know that!” said the teamster; “but I ain’t talkin’ ’bout what she is! I’m talkin’ ’bout how she looks. An’ a songster out o’ this world don’t care if she is a—!”

  “S-s-s-sh! Soft-pedal it brother.” One of the men nudged the speaker. “There’s one o’ the Williamses right here—that kid over yonder shinin’ shoes’s Harriett’s nephew or somethin’ ’nother.”

  “You niggers talks too free, anyhow,” one of the barbers added. “Somebody gwine cut your lips off some o’ these days. De idee o’ ole Uncle Dan Givens’ arguin’ ’bout women and he done got whiskers all round his head like a wore-out cheese.”

  “That’s all right, you young whip-snapper,” squeaked Uncle Dan heatedly. “Might have whiskers round ma head, but I ain’t wore out!”

  Laughter and smoke filled the little shop, while the winter wind blew sleet against the big plate-glass window and whistled through the cracks in the doorway, making the gas lights flicker overhead. Sandy smacked his polishing cloth on the toes of a gleaming pair of brown button shoes belonging to a stranger in town, then looked up with a grin and said: “Yes, sir!” as the man handed him a quarter.

  “Keep the change,” said the new-comer grandly.

  “That guy’s an actor,” one of the barbers said when the man went out. “He’s playin’ with the Smart Set at the Opery House tonight. I bet the top gallery’ll be full o’ niggers sence it’s a jig show, but I ain’t goin’ anear there myself to be Jim-Crowed, cause I don’t believe in goin’ nowhere I ain’t allowed to set with the rest of the folks. If I can’t be the table-cloth, I won’t be the dish-rag—that’s my motto. And if I can’t buy the seats I want at a show, I sure God can keep my change!”

  “Yes, and miss all the good shows,” countered a little red-eyed porter. “Just as well say if you can’t eat in a restaurant where white folks eat, you ain’t gonna eat.”

  “Anybody want a shine?” yelled Sandy above the racket. “And if you don’t want a shine, stay out of my chair and do your arguing on the floor!”

  A brown-skin chorus girl, on her way to the theatre, stepped into the shop and asked if she could buy a Chicago Defender there. The barber directed her to the colored restaurant, while all the men immediately stopped talking to stare at her until she went out.

  “Whew! . . . Some legs!” the teamster cried as the door closed on a vision of silk stockings. “How’d you like to shine that long, sweet brown-skin mama’s shoes, boy?”

  “She wouldn’t have to pay me!” said Sandy.

  “Whoopee! Gallery or no gallery,” shouted Jap Logan, “I’m gonna see that show! Don’t care if they do Jim-Crow niggers in the white folks’ Opery House!”

  “Yes,” muttered one of the barbers, “that’s just what’s the matter now—you ain’t got no race-pride! You niggers ain’t got no shame!”

  EIGHTEEN

  Children’s Day

  * * *

  WHEN Easter came that spring, Sandy had saved enough money to buy himself a suit and a new cap from his earnings at the barber-shop. He was very proud of this accomplishment and so was Aunt Hager.

  “You’s a ’dustrious chile, sho is! Gwine make a smart man even if yo’ daddy w
arn’t nothin’. Gwine get ahead an’ do good fo’ yo’self an’ de race, yes, sir!”

  The spring came early and the clear balmy days found Hager’s back yard billowing with clean white clothes on lines in the sun. Her roomer had left her when the theatre was built and had gone to work on a dam somewhere up the river, so Annjee’s room was empty again. Sandy had slept with his grandmother during the cold weather, but in summer he slept on a pallet.

  The boy did not miss his mother. When she had been home, Annjee had worked out all day, and she was quiet at night because she was always tired. Harriett had been the one to keep the fun and laughter going—Harriett and Jimboy, whenever he was in town. Sandy wished Harrie would live at home instead of staying at Maudel’s house, but he never said anything about it to his grandmother. He went to school regularly, went to work at the barber-shop on Saturdays and to Sunday-School on Sundays, and remained with Aunt Hager the rest of his time. She was always worried if she didn’t know where he was.

  “Colored boys, when they gets round twelve an’ thirteen, they gets so bad, Sandy,” she would say. “I wants you to stay nice an’ make something out o’ yo’self. If Hager lives, she ain’t gonna see you go down. She’s gonna make a fine man out o’ you fo’ de glory o’ God an’ de black race. You gwine to ’mount to something in this world. You hear me?”

  Sandy did hear her, and he knew what she meant. She meant a man like Booker T. Washington, or Frederick Douglass, or like Paul Laurence Dunbar, who did poetry-writing. Or maybe Jack Johnson. But Hager said Jack Johnson was the devil’s kind of greatness, not God’s.

  “That’s what you get from workin’ round that old barber-shop where all they talks ’bout is prize-fightin’ an’ hossracin’. Jack Johnson done married a white woman, anyhow! What he care ’bout de race?”

  The little boy wondered if Jack Johnson’s kids looked like Buster. But maybe he didn’t have any kids. He must ask Pete Scott about that when he went back to work on Saturday.