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I bought her a gold watch—surprise fo’ her birthday, de kind you hangs on a little pin on yo’ waist. Lawd knows, I couldn’t ’ford it—took all de money from three weeks o’ washin’, but I knowed she’d been wantin’ a watch.
I moved ma bed out last year an’ bought that new rug at de second-hand store an’ them lace curtains so’s she could have a nice place to entertain her comp’ny.
night! An’ they was gwine to de Waiters’ Ball, ’cause I asked Maudel where they was gwine, an’ she say so. Then I says to Harriett: ‘Does yo’ mammy know you’s out this late?’ an’ she laughed an’ say: ‘Oh, that’s all right! . . . Don’t tell me I ain’t seen Harriett, Hager.” “Well, Lawd help!” Aunt Hager cried, her mouth open. “You done seed my chile in town an’ she ain’t come anear home! Stayed all night at Maudel’s, I reckon.... I tells her ’bout runnin’ with that gal from de Bottoms. That’s what makes her lie to me—tellin’ me she don’t come in town o’ nights. Maudel’s folks don’t keep no kind
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That’s de way chillens does you, Sister Williams! I knows! That’s de way they does!”
She knew how it was, of course, that her husband hadn’t written before. That was all right now. Working all day in the hot sun with a gang of Greeks, a man was tired at night, besides living in a box-car,
“Gee, I’ll be glad when he comes!” Annjee said to herself. “But if he goes off again, I’ll feel like dying in this dead old town.
she, Annjee, was too meek and quiet, that’s what she was—too stay-at-homish. Never going nowhere, never saying nothing back to those who scolded her or talked about her, not even sassing white folks when they got beside themselves.
And every colored girl in town said that Mrs. J. J. Rice was no easy white woman to work for, yet she had been there now five years, accepting everything without a murmur!
There were mighty few dark women had a light, strong, good-looking young husband, really a married husband, like Jimboy, and a little brown kid like Sandy.
Sheepishly Annjee folded her letter and got up.
Hager had risen at sunrise. On Thursdays she did the Reinharts’ washing, on Fridays she ironed it, and on Saturdays she sent it home, clean and beautifully white, and received as pay the sum of seventy-five cents.
But Jimmy was not inclined to be Christian. On the contrary, he was a very bad little boy of thirteen, who often led Sandy astray. Sometimes they would run with the basket for no reason at all, then stumble and spill the clothes out on the sidewalk—Mrs.
Hager poked the boiling clothes with a vigorous splash of her round stick. The steam rose in clouds of soapy vapor.
“O, I came in with the cook and some of the boys, mama, that’s who! They hired an auto for the dance. What would be the use coming home, when you and Annjee go to bed before dark like chickens?”
To spend her life in Mrs. Rice’s kitchen?” She shrugged her shoulders. “What you bring yo’ suit-case home fo’?” “I’m quitting the job Saturday,” she said. “I’ve told them already.” “Quitting!” her mother exclaimed. “What fo’? Lawd, if it ain’t one thing, it’s another!” “What for?” Harriett retorted angrily. “There’s plenty what for! All that work for five dollars a week with what little tips those pikers give you. And white men insulting you besides, asking you to sleep with ’em. Look at my finger-nails, all broke from scrubbing that dining-room floor.” She thrust out her dark slim hands.
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“You ain’t gonna work in no hotel. You hear me! They’s dives o’ sin, that’s what they is, an’ a child o’ mine ain’t goin’ in one. If you was a boy, I wouldn’t let you go, much less a girl! They ain’t nothin’ but strumpets works in hotels.”
don’t talk about my friends. I don’t care what they are! Maudel’d do anything for me. And her brother’s a good kid, whether he’s been in reform school or not. They oughtn’t to put him there just for shooting dice. What’s that? I like him, and I like Mrs. Smothers, too. She’s not always scolding people for wanting a good time and for being lively and trying to be happy.”
An’ me prayin’ an’ washin’ ma fingers to de bone to keep a roof over yo’ head.”
“Harriett, honey, I wants you to be good,” the old woman stammered. The words came pitiful and low—not a command any longer—as she faced her terribly alive young daughter in the ruffled blue dress and the red silk stockings. “I just wants you to grow up decent, chile. I don’t want you runnin’ to Willer Grove with them boys. It ain’t no place fo’ you in the night-time—an’
home. All the neighborhood could hear his rich low baritone voice giving birth to the blues.
On Sunday night Aunt Hager said: “Put
that guitar right up, less’n it’s hymns you plans on playin’. An’ I don’t want too much o’ them, ...
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Then Harriett, standing under the ripening apple-tree, in the back yard, chiming in:
“Here, madam! Stop that prancin’! Bad enough to have all this singin’ without turnin’ de yard into a show-house.”
And Sarah, beside him on the bench behind their shack, added: “Minds me o’ de ole plantation
“Unhuh! Bound straight fo’ de devil, that’s what they is,” Hager
but it had hurt when he went away, saying nothing. And the guitar in Jimboy’s hands echoed that old pain with an even greater throb than the original ache itself possessed.
It was all great fun, and innocent fun except when one stopped to think, as white folks did, that some of the blues lines had, not only double, but triple meanings, and some of the dance steps required
her eyes on the silhouette of his long, muscular, animal-hard body. She loved Jimboy too much, that’s what was the matter with her! She knew there was nothing between him and her young sister except the love of music, yet he might have dropped the guitar and left Harriett in the yard for a little while to come eat the nice cold slice of ham she had brought him. She hadn’t seen him all day long. When she went to work this morning, he was still in bed—and now the blues claimed him.
But just then, at the mills, the five-o’clock whistles blew. “Oh, gee, dad!” cried the boy, frightened. “I was s’posed to go to Mis’ Rice’s to help mama, and I come near forgetting it. She wants to get through early this evenin’ to go to lodge meeting. I gotta hurry and go help her.”
Sandy climbed up on a stool and raised the ice-box lid while his mother opened the oven and pulled out a pan of golden-brown biscuits. “Made these for your father,” she remarked. “The white folks ain’t asked for ’em, but they like ’em, too, so they can serve for both.... Jimboy’s crazy about biscuits.... Did he work today?” “No’m,” said Sandy, jabbing at the ice.
“Annjee,” the mistress said sharply. “I wish you wouldn’t put quite so much onion in your sauce for the steak. I’ve mentioned it to you several times before, and you know very well we don’t like it.”
“And do please be careful that our drinking water is cold before meals are served.... You were certainly careless tonight. You must think more about what you are doing, Annjee.”
Sandy stood near the sink with a burning face and eyes that had suddenly filled with angry tears. He couldn’t help it—hearing his sweating mother reprimanded by ...
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“Evening’s the only time we niggers have to ourselves!” she said. “Thank God for night . . . ’cause all day you gives to white folks.”
I got to stay home and rest now. I’m kitchen-girl at that New Albert Restaurant, and time you get through wrestling with pots and arguing with white waitresses and colored cooks, you don’t feel much like running out at night.
“You’re nuts,” said Jimboy behind her. “People’s due to have a little fun on Sundays. That’s what’s the matter with colored folks now—work all week and then set up in church all day Sunday, and don’t even know what’s goin’ on in the rest of the world.”
“Jimboy’s right,” said Harriett. “Darkies do like the church too much, but white folks don’t care nothing about it at all. They’re too busy getting theirs out of this world, not from God. And I don’t blame ’em, except that they’re so mean to niggers.
They’re right, though, looking out for themselves . . . and yet I hate ’em for it. They don’t have to mistreat us besides, do they?”
“Now, we niggers all lived at de edge o’ town in what de whites called Crowville, an’ most of us owned little houses an’ farms, an’ we did right well raisin’ cotton an’ sweet ’taters an’ all.
Well, we all started fixin’ up our houses an’ paintin’ our fences, an’ Crowville looked kinder decent-like when de white folks ’gin to ’mark, so’s we servants could hear ’em, ’bout niggers livin’ in painted houses an’ dressin’ fine like we was somebody!
. A white man in town one Sat’day night tole John to git out o’ dat damn car ’cause a nigger ain’t got no business wid a autimobile nohow! An’
John say: ‘I ain’t gonna git out!’ Den de white man, what’s been drinkin’, jump up on de runnin’-bo’ad an’ bust John in de mouth fer talkin’ back to him—he a white man, an’ Lowdins nothin’ but a nigger.
Den dey say dey gwine teach dem Crowville niggers a lesson, all of ’em, paintin’ dey houses an’ buyin’ cars an’ livin’ like white folks, so dey comes to our do’s an’ tells us to leave our houses—git de hell out in de fields, ’cause dey don’t want to kill nobody there dis evenin’! . . .
De white mens was ever’where wid guns, scarin’ de po’ blacks an’ keepin’ ’em off, an’ one of ’em say: ‘I got good mind to try yo’-all’s hide, see is it bullet proof—gittin’
“The white folks are like farmers that own all the cows and let the niggers take care of ’em.
themselves—but I reckon cream’s too rich for rusty-kneed niggers anyhow!”
folks. Her first surprising and unpleasantly lasting impression of the pale world had come when, at the age of five, she had gone alone one day to play in a friendly white family’s yard. Some mischievous small boys there, for the fun of it, had taken hold of her short kinky braids and pulled them, dancing round and round her and yelling: “Blackie! Blackie! Blackie!”
But they held her and pulled her hair terribly,
Harriett had been uncomfortable in the presence of whiteness,
