Not Without Laughter

by Langston Hughes

she could not hide and a dislike that had become pain.

because she could sing and dance and was always amusing, many of the white girls in hig...

Harriett knew their polite “Good-bye” was really a kind way of saying: “We can’t be seen on the s...

Harriett sat with her class and had begun to enjoy immensely the strange wonders of the ocean depths when an usher touched her on the shoulder.

“The last three rows on the left are for colored,” the girl in the uniform said. “I—But—But I’m with my class,” Harriett stammered. “We’re all supposed to sit here.” “I can’t help it,” insisted the usher, pointing towards the rear of the theatre, while her voice carried everywhere.

The teacher saw her leave the theatre without a word of protest, and none of her white classmates defended her for being black. They didn’t care.

“All white people are alike, in school and out,” Harriett concluded bitterly, as she told of her experiences to the folks sitting with her on the porch in the dark.

And when she tried to apologize for the accident, Mrs. Baker screamed in a rage: “Shut up, you impudent little black wench! Talking back to me after breaking up my dishes.

All you darkies are alike—careless sluts—and

“So that’s the way white people feel,” Harriett

“They wouldn’t have a single one of us around if they could help it. It don’t matter to them if we’re shut out of a job. It don’t matter to them if niggers have only the back row at the movies. It don’t matter to them when they hurt our feelings without caring and treat us like slaves down South and like beggars up North. No, it don’t matter to them.... White folks run the world, and the only thing colored folks are expected to do is work and grin and take off their hats as though it don’t matter. . . . O, I hate ’em!”

“You can pray for ’em if you want to, mama, but I hate ’em! . . . I hate white folks! . . . I hate ’em all!”

because she and her mother were not on the best of terms. Aunt Hager was attempting to punish her youngest daughter by not allowing her to leave the house after dark, since Harriett, on Tuesday night, had been out until one o’clock in the morning with no better excuse than a party at Maudel’s. Aunt Hager had threatened to whip her then and there that night.

spoiled! De idee of a young gal yo’ age stayin’ out till one o’clock in de mawnin’, an’ me not knowed where you’s at....

You rests in this house ever’ night this week an’ don’t put yo’ foot out o’ this yard after you comes from work, that’s what you do.

“And his band don’t come here often, neither. I’m heart-sick having to stay home, dog-gone it all, especially this evening!”

Don’t make so much difference about mama, because she’s mad anyhow . . . but what could we do with this kid? We can’t leave him by himself.”

“Should we?” asked Harriett doubtfully, looking

at her boy friend standing firmly on his curved legs.

She was powdering her face and neck in the next room, nervous, happy, and afraid all at once.

Sandy saw his Aunt Harriett and a slender yellow boy named Billy Sanderlee doing a series of lazy, intricate steps as they wound through the crowd from one end of the hall to the other.

“Well, de blacker de berry, de sweeter de juice,” protested a slick-haired ebony youth in the center of the place....

“Sandy! . . . Sandy! . . . My stars! Where is that child? . . . Has anybody seen my little nephew?” All over the hall.... “Sandy! . . . Oh-o-o, Lord!” Finally, with a sigh of relief: “You little brat, darn you, hiding up here in the balcony where nobody could find you! . . . Sandy, wake up! It’s past four o’clock and I’ll get killed.”

A mustard-colored man stood near the door quarrelling with a black woman. She began to cry and he slapped her full in the mouth, then turned his back and left with another girl of maple-sugar brown.

She was afraid to go home. “Mingo, I’m scared.”

“I can take care of you. We could get married.”

“I’m scared to death!” said Harriett. “Lord, Sandy, I hope ma ain’t up! I hope she didn’t come home last night from Mis’ Lane’s.

Between the tent of Christ and the tents of sin there stretched scarcely a half-mile. Rivalry reigned:

Since their return from the country Annjee and Jimboy were not so loving towards each other, either, as they had been before. Jimboy tired of Jessie’s farm, so he came back to town three days before his wife returned.

Christians and the sinners in Aunt Hager’s little household.

And Sandy would rather have been with the sinners—Jimbo...

“Yes, take de rascal,” said Aunt Hager. “He ain’t doin’ no good at de services, wiggling and squirming so’ we can’t hardly hear de sermon. He ain’t got religion in his heart, that chile!” “I hope he ain’t,” said his father, yawning. “All you wants him to be is a good-fo’-nothin’ rounder like you is,” retorted Hager.

As the girl who was dancing whirled about, Sandy saw that it was Harriett.

The white man nodded and kept his eyes on Harriett’s legs. The two black boys patting time were grinning from ear to ear.

Then she went with the white man and the colored piano-player behind the canvas curtains to the stage. One of the show-boys put his arms around the girl sitting on the box and began tentatively to feel her breasts.

And all the while Sandy said nothing to his father

about having seen Harriett dancing in the minstrel tent that afternoon.

Harriett and Annjee and Hager—he didn’t carry tales on any one of them to the others.

Nobody would know he had watched his Aunt Harrie dancing on the carnival lot today in front of a big fat white man in a checkered vest while a Negro in a red suit played the piano.

Jimboy and Sandy followed the band inside and took seats, and soon the frayed curtain rose, showing a plantation scene in the South, where three men, blackened up, and two women in bandannas sang longingly about Dixie.

And to Sandy it seemed like the saddest music in the world—but the white people around him laughed.

“You been gone ever’ night this week,” Hager said to the girl. “An’ you ain’t been anear de holy tents where de Lawd’s word is preached; so you ought to be willin’ to stay home one night with a po’ little sick boy.”

began to pack it, and when it was full, she pulled a new bag from under the bed, and into it she dumped her toilet-articles, powder, vaseline, nail-polish, straightening comb, and several pairs of old stockings rolled in balls. Then she sat down on the bed between the two closed suit-cases for a long time with her hands in her lap and her eyes staring ahead of her.

“I’m leaving with the carnival,” she told him. For a moment they sat close together on the bed. Then she kissed him, went into the other room and picked up her suit-cases—and the door closed.

In the mornings he helped Aunt Hager by feeding the chickens, bringing in the water for her wash-tubs and filling the buckets from which they drank. He chopped wood, too, and piled it behind the kitchen-stove; then he would take the broom and sweep dust-clean the space around the pump and under the apple-tree where he played.

or next door at the Johnson’s, but Hager never allowed

him outside their block. The white children across the street were frequently inclined to say “Nigger,” so he was forbidden to play there.

Sometimes, if Jimboy was home, he would take down his old guitar and start the children to dancing in the sunlight—but then Hager would always call Sandy to pump water or go to the store as soon as she heard the music.

“Out there dancin’ like you ain’t got no raisin’!” she would say. “I tells Jimboy ’bout playin’ that ole ragtime here! That’s what ruint Harriett!”

frequently instead of putting his nickel in the collection basket he spent it for candy, which he divided with Buster—until one very hot Sunday Hager found it out. He had put a piece of the sticky candy in his shirt-pocket and it melted, stuck, and stained the whole front of his clean clothes. When he came home, with Buster behind him the first thing Hager said was: “What’s all this here stuck up in yo’ pocket?” and Buster commenced to giggle and said Sandy had bought candy. “Where’d you get the money, sir?” demanded Aunt Hager searchingly of her grandson.