Not Without Laughter

by Langston Hughes

  An’ it won’t be long. . . .

  While outside, on his front door-step, two nappy-headed little yellow kids were solemnly balling-the-jack.

  Two days before, Sandy had come home from school and found his grandmother lying across the bed, the full tubs still standing in the kitchen, her clothes not yet hung out to dry.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “I’s washed down, chile,” said the old woman, panting. “I feels kinder tired-like, that’s all.”

  But Sandy knew that there must be something else wrong with Aunt Hager, because he had never seen her lying on the bed in broad daylight, with her clothes still in the tubs.

  “Does your back ache?” asked the child.

  “I does feel a little misery,” sighed Aunt Hager. “But seems to be mo’ ma side an’ not ma back this time. But ’tain’t nothin’. I’s just tired.”

  But Sandy was scared. “You want some soda and water, grandma?”

  “No, honey.” Then, in her usual tones of assumed anger: “Go on away from here an’ let a body rest. Ain’t I told you they ain’t nothin’ the matter ’ceptin’ I’s all washed out an’ just got to lay down a minute? Go on an’ fetch in yo’ wood . . . an’ spin yo’ top out yonder with Buster and them. Go on!”

  It was nearly five o’clock when the boy came in again. Aunt Hager was sitting in the rocker near the stove then, her face drawn and ashy. She had been trying to finish her washing.

  “Chile, go get Sister Johnson an’ ask her if she can’t wring out ma clothes fo’ me—Mis’ Dunset ain’t sent much washin’ this week, an’ you can help her hang ’em up. I reckon it ain’t gonna rain tonight, so’s they can dry befo’ mawnin’.”

  Sandy ran towards the door.

  “Now, don’t butt your brains out!” said the old lady. “Ain’t no need o’ runnin’.”

  Not only did Sister Johnson come at once and hang out the washing, but she made Hager get in bed, with a hot-water bottle on her paining side. And she gave her a big dose of peppermint and water.

  “I ’spects it’s from yo’ stomick,” she said. “I knows you et cabbage fo’ dinner!”

  “Maybe ’tis,” said Hager.

  Sister Johnson took Sandy to her house for supper that evening and he and Willie-Mae ate five sweet potatoes each.

  “You-all gwine bust!” said Tom Johnson.

  About nine o’clock the boy went to bed with his grandmother, and all that night Hager tossed and groaned, in spite of her efforts to lie quiet and not keep Sandy awake. In the morning she said: “Son, I reckon you better stay home from school, ’cause I’s feelin’ mighty po’ly. Seems like that cabbage ain’t digested yet. Feels like I done et a stone. . . . Go see if you can’t make de fire up an’ heat me a cup o’ hot water.”

  About eleven o’clock Madam de Carter came over. “I thought I didn’t perceive you nowhere in the yard this morning and the sun ’luminating so bright and cheerful. You ain’t indispensed, are you? Sandy said you was kinder ill.” She chattered away. “You know it don’t look natural not to see you hanging out clothes long before the noon comes.”

  “I ain’t well a-tall this mawnin’,” said Hager when she got a chance to speak. “I’s feelin’ right bad. I suffers with a pain in ma side; seems like it ain’t gettin’ no better. Sister Johnson just left here from rubbin’ it, but I still suffers terrible an’ can’t eat nothin’. . . . You can use de phone, can’t you, Sister Carter?”

  “Why, yes! Yes indeedy! I oftens phones from over to Mis’ Petit’s. You think you needs a physicianer?”

  In spite of herself a groan came from the old woman’s lips as she tried to turn towards her friend. Aunt Hager, who had never moaned for lesser hurts, did not intend to complain over this one—but the pain!

  “It’s cuttin’ me in two.” She gasped. “Send fo’ old Doc McDillors an’ he’ll come.”

  Madam de Carter, proud and important at the prospect of using her white neighbor’s phone, rushed away.

  “I didn’t know you were so sick, grandma!” Sandy’s eyes were wide with fright and sympathy. “I’m gonna get Mis’ Johnson to come rub you again.”

  “O! . . . O, ma Lawd, help!” Alone for a moment with no one to hear her, she couldn’t hold back the moans any longer. A cold sweat stood on her forehead.

  The doctor came—the kind old white man who had known Hager for years and in whom she had faith.

  “Well,” he said, “It’s quite a surprise to see you in bed, Aunty.” Then, looking very serious and professional, he took her pulse.

  “Go out and close the door,” he said gently to Madam de Carter and Sister Johnson, Willie-Mae and Sandy, all of whom had gathered around the bed in the little room. “Somebody heat some water.” He turned back the quilts from the woman’s body and unbuttoned her gown.

  Ten minutes later he said frankly, but with great kindness in his tones: “You’re a sick woman, Hager, a very sick woman.”

  That afternoon Tempy came, like a stranger to the house, and took charge of things. Sandy felt uncomfortable and shy in her presence. This aunt of his had a hard, cold, correct way of talking that resembled Mrs. Rice’s manner of speaking to his mother when Annjee used to work there. But Tempy quickly put the house in order, bathed her mother, and spread the bed with clean sheets and a white counterpane. Before evening, members of Hager’s Lodge began to drop in bringing soups and custards. White people of the neighborhood stopped, too, to inquire if there was anything they could do for the old woman who had so often waited on them in their illnesses. About six o’clock old man Logan drove up the alley and tied his white mule to the back fence.

  The sun was setting when Tempy called Sandy in from the back yard, where he was chopping wood for the stove. She said: “James”—how queerly his correct name struck his ears as it fell from the lips of this cold aunt!—“James, you had better send this telegram to your mother. Now, here is a dollar bill and you can bring back the change. Look on her last letter and get the correct address.”

  Sandy took the written sheet of paper and the money that his aunt gave him. Then he looked through the various drawers in the house for his mother’s last letter. It had been nearly a month since they had heard from her, but finally the boy found the letter in the cupboard, under a jelly-glass full of small coins that his grandmother kept there. He carried the envelope with him to the telegraph office, and there he paid for a message to Annjee in Detroit:

  Mother very sick, come at once. Tempy.

  As the boy walked home in the gathering dusk, he felt strangely alone in the world, as though Aunt Hager had already gone away, and when he reached the house, it was full of lodge members who had come to keep watch. Tempy went home, but Sister Johnson remained in the sick-room, changing the hot-water bottles and administering, every three hours, the medicine the doctor had left.

  There were so many people in the house that Sandy came out into the back yard and sat down on the edge of the well. It was cool and clear, and a slit of moon rode in a light-blue sky spangled with stars. Soon the apple-trees would bud and the grass would be growing. Sandy was a big boy. When his next birthday came, he would be fourteen, and he had begun to grow tall and heavy. Aunt Hager said she was going to buy him a pair of long pants this coming summer. And his mother would hardly know him when she saw him again, if she ever came home.

  Tonight, inside, there were so many old sisters from the lodge that Sandy couldn’t even talk to his grandmother while she lay in bed. They were constantly going in and out of the sick-room, drinking coffee in the kitchen, or gossiping in the parlor. He wished they would all go away. He could take care of his grandmother himself until she got well—he and Sister Johnson. They didn’t even need Tempy, who, he felt, shouldn’t be there, because he didn’t like her.

  “They callin’ you inside,” Willie-Mae came out to tell him as he sat by himself in the cold on the edge of the well. She was taller than Sandy now and had a regular job taking care of a white lady’s baby. She
no longer wore her hair in braids. She did it up, and she had a big leather pocket-book that she carried on her arm like a woman. Boys came to take her to the movies on Saturday nights. “They want you inside.”

  Sandy got up, his legs stiff and numb, and went into the kitchen. An elderly brown woman, dressed in black silk that swished as she moved, opened the door to Hager’s bedroom and whispered to him loudly: “Be quiet, chile.”

  Sandy entered between a lane of old women. Hager looked up at him and smiled—so grave and solemn he appeared.

  “Is they takin’ care o’ you?” she asked weakly. “Ain’t it bedtime, honey? Is you had something to eat? Come on an’ kiss yo’ old grandma befo’ you go to sleep. She’ll be better in de mawnin’.”

  She couldn’t seem to lift her head, so Sandy sat down on the bed and kissed her. All he said was: “I’m all right, grandma,” because there were so many old women in there that he couldn’t talk. Then he went out into the other room.

  The air in the house was close and stuffy and the boy soon became groggy with sleep. He fell across the bed that had been Annjee’s, and later Dogberry’s, with all his clothes on. One of the lodge women in the room said: “You better take off yo’ things, chile, an’ go to sleep right.” Then she said to the other sisters: “Come on in de kitchen, you-all, an’ let this chile go to bed.”

  In the morning Tempy woke him. “Are you sure you had Annjee’s address correct last night?” she demanded. “The telegraph office says she couldn’t be found, so the message was not delivered. Let me see the letter.”

  Sandy found the letter again, and the address was verified.

  “Well, that’s strange,” said Tempy. “I suppose, as careless and irresponsible as Jimboy is, they’ve got it wrong, or else moved. . . . Do you know where Harriett can be? I don’t suppose you do, but mother has been calling for her all night. I suppose we’ll have to try to get her, wherever she is.”

  “I got her address,” said Sandy. “She wrote it down for me when I was working at the hotel this winter. I can find her.”

  “Then I’ll give you a note,” said Tempy. “Take it to her.”

  So Sandy went to the big grey house in the Bottoms that morning to deliver Tempy’s message, before the girls there had risen from their beds.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Beyond the Jordan

  * * *

  DURING the day the lodge members went to their work in the various kitchens and restaurants and laundries of the town. And Madam de Carter was ordered to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where a split in her organization was threatened because of the elections of the grand officers. Hager was resting easy, no pain now, but very weak.

  “It’s only a matter of time,” said the doctor. “Give her the medicine so she won’t worry, but it does no good. There’s nothing we can do.”

  “She’s going to die!” Sandy thought.

  Harriett sat by the bedside holding her mother’s hand as the afternoon sunlight fell on the white spread. Hager had been glad to see the girl again, and the old woman held nothing against her daughter for no longer living at home.

  “Is you happy, chile?” Hager asked. “You looks so nice. Yo’ clothes is right purty. I hopes you’s findin’ what you wants in life. You’s young, honey, an’ you needs to be happy. . . . Sandy!” She called so weakly that he could hardly hear her, though he was standing at the head of the bed. “Sandy, look in that drawer, chile, under ma night-gowns an’ things, an’ hand me that there little box you sees down in de corner.”

  The child found it and gave it to her, a small, white box from a cheap jeweller’s. It was wrapped carefully in a soft handkerchief. The old woman took it eagerly and tried to hold it out towards her daughter. Harriett unwound the handkerchief and opened the lid of the box. Then she saw that it contained the tiny gold watch that her mother had given her on her sixteenth birthday, which she had pawned months ago in order to run away with the carnival. Quick tears came to the girl’s eyes.

  “I got it out o’ pawn fo’ you,” Hager said, “’cause I wanted you to have it fo’ yo’self, chile. You know yo’ mammy bought it fo’ you.”

  It was such a little watch! Old-timey, with a breast-pin on it. Harriett quickly put her handkerchief over her wrist to hide the flashy new timepiece she was wearing on a gold bracelet.

  That night Hager died. The undertakers came at dawn with their wagon and carried the body away to embalm it. Sandy stood on the front porch looking at the morning star as the clatter of the horses’ hoofs echoed in the street. A sleepy young white boy was driving the undertaker’s wagon, and the horse that pulled it was white.

  The women who had been sitting up all night began to go home now to get their husbands’ breakfasts and to prepare to go to work themselves.

  “It’s Wednesday,” Sandy thought. “Today I’m supposed to go get Mrs. Reinhart’s clothes, but grandma’s dead. I guess I won’t get them now. There’s nobody to wash them.”

  Sister Johnson called him to the kitchen to drink a cup of coffee. Harriett was there weeping softly. Tempy was inside busily cleaning the room from which they had removed the body. She had opened all the windows and was airing the house.

  Out in the yard a rooster flapped his wings and crowed shrilly at the rising sun. The fire crackled, and the coffee boiling sent up a fragrant aroma. Sister Johnson opened a can of condensed milk by punching it with the butcher-knife. She put some cups and saucers on the table.

  “Tempy, won’t you have some?”

  “No, thank you, Mrs. Johnson,” she called from the dead woman’s bedroom.

  When Aunt Hager was brought back to her house, she was in a long box covered with black plush. They placed it on a folding stand by the window in the front room. There was a crape on the door, and the shades were kept lowered, and people whispered in the house as though someone were asleep. Flowers began to be delivered by boys on bicycles, and the lodge members came to sit up again that night. The time was set for burial, and the Daily Leader carried this paragraph in small type on its back page:

  Hager Williams, aged colored laundress of 419 Cypress Street, passed away at her home last night. She was known and respected by many white families in the community. Three daughters and a grandson survive.

  They tried again to reach Annjee in Detroit by telegram, but without success. On the afternoon of the funeral it was cold and rainy. The little Baptist Church was packed with people. The sisters of the lodge came in full regalia, with banners and insignia, and the brothers turned out with them. Hager’s coffin was banked with flowers. There were many fine pieces from the families for whom she had washed and from the white neighbors she had nursed in sickness. There were offerings, too, from Tempy’s high-toned friends and from Harriett’s girl companions in the house in the Bottoms. Many of the bell-boys, porters, and bootleggers sent wreaths and crosses with golden letters on them: “At Rest in Jesus,” “Beyond the Jordan,” or simply: “Gone Home.” There was a bouquet of violets from Buster’s mother and a blanket of roses from Tempy herself. They were all pretty, but, to Sandy, the perfume was sickening in the close little church.

  The Baptist minister preached, but Tempy had Father Hill from her church to say a few words, too. The choir sang Shall We Meet Beyond the River? People wept and fainted. The services seemed interminable. Then came the long drive to the cemetery in horse-drawn hacks, with a few automobiles in line behind. In at the wide gates and through a vast expanse of tombstones the procession passed, across the graveyard, towards the far, lonesome corner where most of the Negroes rested. There Sandy saw the open grave. Then he saw the casket going down . . . down . . . down, into the earth.

  The boy stood quietly between his Aunt Tempy and his Aunt Harriett at the edge of the grave while Tempy stared straight ahead into the drizzling rain, and Harriett cried, streaking the powder on her cheeks.

  “That’s all right, mama,” Harriett sobbed to the body in the long, black box. “You won’t get lonesome out here. Harrie’ll come back tomorrow.
Harrie’ll come back every day and bring you flowers. You won’t get lonesome, mama.”

  They were throwing wet dirt on the coffin as the mourners walked away through the sticky clay towards their carriages. Some old sister at the grave began to sing:

  Dark was the night,

  Cold was the ground . . .

  in a high weird monotone. Others took it up, and, as the mourners drove away, the air was filled with the minor wailing of the old women. Harriett was wearing Hager’s gift, the little gold watch, pinned beneath her coat.

  When they got back to the house where Aunt Hager had lived for so long, Sister Johnson said the mail-man had left a letter under the door that afternoon addressed to the dead woman. Harriett was about to open it when Tempy took it from her. It was from Annjee.

  “Dear mama,” it began.

  We have moved to Toledo because Jimboy thought he would do better here and the reason I haven’t written, we have been so long getting settled. I have been out of work but we both got jobs now and maybe I will be able to send you some money soon. I hope you are well, ma, and all right. Kiss Sandy for me and take care of yourself. With love and God’s blessings from your daughter,

  Annjee

  Tempy immediately turned the letter over and wrote on the back:

  We buried your mother today. I tried to reach you in Detroit, but could not get you, since you were no longer there and neglected to send us your new address. It is too bad you weren’t here for the funeral. Your child is going to stay with me until I hear from you.

  Tempy

  Then she turned to the boy, who stood dazed beside Sister Johnson in the silent, familiar old house. “You will come home with me, James,” she said. “We’ll see that this place is locked first. You try all the windows and I’ll fasten the doors; then we’ll go out the front. . . . Mrs. Johnson, it’s been good of you to help us in our troubles. Thank you.”