Not Without Laughter

by Langston Hughes

The little boy, guilt written all over his face, came in from the front porch, where he had been sitting with his father after Buster went home. “Where’d you tell me you got that nickel this mawnin’?” And before he could answer, she spat out: “I’m gonna whip you!”

“I’m gonna whip you,” Hager continued, sitting down amazed in her plush chair. “De idee o’ withholdin’ yo’ Sunday-school money from de Lawd an’ buyin’ candy.” “I only spent a penny,”

“Then you told a lie to your grandma—and I’m ashamed of you,” his father said.

If Aunt Hager would only whip him, it would be better; then maybe his father wouldn’t say any more. But it was awful to stand still and listen to Jimboy talk to him this way—yet there he stood, stiffly holding back the sobs.

“And then you go and take the Sunday-school nickel that your grandma’s worked hard for all the week, spend it on candy, and come back home and lie about it. So that’s what you do! And then lie!”

Then Sandy began to cry, with one hand in his mouth so no one could hear him, and when Annjee came home from work in the late afternoon, she found him lying across her bed, head under the pillows, still sobbing because Jimboy had called him a liar.

“It must be Jimboy,” said Hager from the kitchen. “A lazy coon, settin’ out there in the cool singin’, an’ me in here sweatin’ and washin’ maself to dust!”

most of Aunt Hager’s “white folks” had returned from their vacations; her kitchen was once more a daily laundry. Great boilers of clothes steamed on the stove and, beside the clothes, pans of apple juice boiled to jelly, and the peelings of peaches simmered to jam.

“Wash yo’ face good, sir, put on yo’ clean waist, an’ polish yo’ shoes,” Aunt Hager said bright and early, “’cause I don’t want none o’ them white teachers sayin’ I sends you to school dirty as a ’cuse to put you back in de fourth grade. You hear me, sir!”

enter the “white” fifth grade, having passed last June from the “colored” fourth, for in Stanton the Negro children were kept in separate rooms under colored teachers until they had passed the fourth grade.

Then, from the fifth grade on, they went with the other children, and th...

As I call your names this time, take seats in order, starting with number one in the first row near the window....

“Now,” said the teacher, “you three colored children take the seats behind Albert. You girls take the first two, and you,” pointing to Sandy, “take the last one....

“She just put us in the back cause we’re niggers.” And Sandy nodded gravely. “My name’s Sadie Butler and she’s put me behind the Z cause I’m a nigger.”

Sandy felt like crying.

Ever’ year more an’ more books, an’ chillens learn less an’ less!

“Can’t you see he ain’t here?” replied his grandmother, busily turning slices of egg-plant with great care in the skillet. “Gone—that’s where he is—a lazy nigger. Told me to tell Annjee he say goodbye, ’cause his travellin’ blues done come on . . . ! Huh! Jimboy’s yo’ pappy, chile, but he sho ain’t worth his salt! . . . an’ I’s right glad he’s took his clothes an’ left here, maself.”

Annjee worried herself sick as usual, hoping every day that a letter would come from this wandering husband whom she loved. And each night she hurried home from Mrs. Rice’s, looked on the parlor table for the mail, and found none. Harriett had not written, either, since she went away with the carnival, and Hager never mentioned her youngest daughter’s name. Nor did Hager mention Jimboy

“Mooning after a worthless nigger like Jimboy.

All of the old customers were sending their clothes to Hager again during the winter. And since Annjee was sick, bringing no money into the house on Saturdays, the old woman had even taken an extra washing to do.

“I reckon white folks does think right smart of me,” said Hager proudly. “They always likes you when you tries to do right.”

An’ you oughter hear de way white folks talks ’bout niggers. Says dey’s lazy, an’ says dey stinks, an’ all.

Sent Tempy through de high school and edicated Annjee till she marry that onery pup of a Jimboy, an’ Harriett till she left home.

But they’s one mo’ got to go through school yet, an’ that’s ma little Sandy. If de Lawd lets me live, I’s gwine make a edicated man out o’ him. He’s gwine be another Booker T. Washington.” Hager turned a voluminous white petticoat on the ironing-board as she carefully pressed its embroidered hem.

I wants him to know all they is to know, so’s he can help this black race o’ our’n to come up and see de light and take they places in de world. I wants him to be a Fred Douglass leadin’ de people, that’s what, an’ not followin’ in de tracks o’ his good-for-nothin’ pappy, worthless an’ wanderin’ like Jimboy is.”

Sandy wished his mother would get well soon. She looked so sad lying there in bed. And Aunt Hager was always busy washing and ironing. His grandmother didn’t even have time to mend his stockings any more and there were great holes in the heels when he went to school. His shoes were worn out under the bottoms,

a Golden Flyer with flexible rudders,

They cost only four dollars and ninety-five cents and surely his grandma could afford that for him,

but Santa Claus was mean to poor kids sometimes, Sandy knew, when their parents had no money.

Three months had passed since he went away—a longer time than usual that he hadn’t written. Maybe something had happened to him. Maybe he was out of work and hungry, because this was a hard winter. Maybe he was dead!

I am stranded in Memphis, Tenn. and the show has gone on to New Orleans. I can’t buy anything to eat because I am broke and don’t know anybody in this town. Annjee, please send me my fare to come home and mail it to the Beale Street Colored Hotel. I’m sending my love to you and mama. Your baby sister, Harriett

So on Monday morning the old lady left her washing and went uptown to the office of the money-lender, but the clerk there said Mr. Frank had gone to Chicago and would not be back for two weeks. There was nothing the clerk could do about it, since he himself could not lend money.

and that they didn’t have any money. They were poor people. He was wearing his mama’s shoes, as Jimmy Lane had once done. And his father and Harriett, who used to make the house gay, laughing and singing, were far away somewhere.... There wasn’t any Santa Claus.

The fire blazed and crackled in the little range; but nothing else said Christmas—no laughter, no tinsel, no tree.

“It’s fine,” Sandy lied, as he tried to lift it and place it on the floor as you would in coasting; but it was very heavy, and too wide for a boy to run with in his hands. You could never get a swift start. And a board was warped in the middle.

“My husband is home so infrequently, and he doesn’t like a house full of company, but of course Dr. and Mrs. Glenn Mitchell will be in later in the evening.

“How is you an’ yo’ new church makin’ it?” asked Hager, slightly embarrassed in the presence of her finely dressed society daughter.

“Wonderful! Father Hill is so dignified, and the services are absolutely refined! There’s never anything niggerish about them—so you know, mother, they suit me.”

When she had gone, everybody felt relieved—as though a white person had left the house.

He was used to being struck on the back of the head for misdemeanors, and this time he welcomed the blow because it gave him, at last, what he had been looking for all day—a sufficient excuse to cry. Now his pent-up tears flowed without ceasing while Willie-Mae sat in a corner clutching her rag doll to her breast, and Tempy’s expensive gift lay in the ashes beneath the stove.

Sandy never went out where the crowds were with his sled, because the was ashamed of it.

with bills to pay and Sandy in need of shoes and stockings and clothes to wear to school, she couldn’t remain idle any longer. Even with her mother washing and ironing every day except the Sabbath, expenses were difficult to meet, and Aunt Hager was getting pretty old to work so hard. Annjee

Tempy had never been very affectionate towards her sisters even when they were all girls together—but she ought to help look out for their mother.

The argument had to be settled in the principal’s office, where the teacher went with the enraged mother, while the white children giggled that a fat, yellow colored lady should come to school to quarrel about her daughter’s not being promoted. But the colored children in the class couldn’t laugh.

“I got it and meant to thank you, sis, but I don’t know—just didn’t get round to it. But, anyway, I’m out of the South now. It’s a hell—I mean it’s an awful place if you don’t know anybody! And more hungry niggers down there!

The shadow of inner pain passed over Hager’s black face, but the only reply she made was: “You’s growed up now, chile. I reckon you knows what you’s doin’. You’s been ten thousand miles away from yo’ mammy, an’ I reckon you knows....

‘Buster, if you ever cut my flowers to carry to any little girl again, I’ll punish you severely, but if you cut them to carry to little white girls, I don’t know what I’ll do with you. . . . Don’t you know they hang colored boys for things like that?’

“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!”

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.”