“Annjee, I’d like the potatoes served just as they are in the casserole. And make several slices of very thin toast for my father. Now, be sure they are thin!”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Annjee stirring a spoonful of flour into the frying-pan, making a thick brown gravy.
“Old thin toast,” muttered Annjee when Mrs. Rice had gone back to the front. “Always bothering round the kitchen! Here ’tis lodge-meeting night—dinner late anyhow—and she coming telling me to stop and make toast for the old man! He ain’t too indigestible to eat biscuits like the rest of ’em. … White folks sure is a case!” She laid three slices of bread on top of the stove. “So spoiled with colored folks waiting on ’em all their days! Don’t know what they’ll do in heaven, ’cause I’m gonna sit down up there myself.”
Annjee took the biscuits, light and brown, and placed some on a pink plate she had warmed. She carried them, with the butter and jelly, into the dining-room. Then she took the steak from the warmer, dished up the vegetables into gold-rimmed serving-dishes, and poured the gravy, which smelled deliciously onion-flavored.
“Gee, I’m hungry,” said the child, with his eyes on the big steak ready to go in to the white people.
“Well, just wait,” replied his mother. “You come to work, not to eat. … Whee! but it’s hot today!” She wiped her wet face and put on a large white bungalow apron that had been hanging behind the door. Then she went with the iced tea and a pitcher of water into the dining-room, struck a Chinese gong, and came back to the kitchen to get the dishes of steaming food, which she carried in to the table.
It was some time before she returned from waiting on the table; so Sandy, to help her, began to scrape out the empty pans and put them to soak in the sink. He ate the stewed corn that had stuck in the bottom of one, and rubbed a piece of bread in the frying-pan where the gravy had been. His mother came out with the water-pitcher, broke some ice for it, and returned to the dining-room where Sandy could hear laughter, and the clinking of spoons in tea-glasses, and women talking. When Annjee came back into the kitchen, she took four custards from the icebox and placed them on gold-rimmed plates.
“They’re about through,” she said to her son. “Sit down and I’ll fix you up.”
Sandy was very hungry and he hoped Mrs. Rice’s family hadn’t eaten all the steak, which had looked so good with its brown gravy and onions.
Shortly, his mother returned carrying the dishes that had been filled with hot food. She placed them on the kitchen-table in front of Sandy, but they were no longer full and no longer hot. The corn had thickened to a paste, and the potatoes were about gone; but there was still a ragged piece of steak left on the platter.
“Don’t eat it all,” said Annjee warningly. “I want to take some home to your father.”
The bell rang in the dining-room. Annjee went through the swinging door and returned bearing a custard that had been but little touched.
“Here, sonny—the old man says it’s too sweet for his stomach, so you can have this.” She set the yellow cornstarch before Sandy. “He’s seen these ripe peaches out here today and he wants some, that’s all. More trouble than he’s worth, po’ old soul, and me in a hurry!” She began to peel the fruit. “Just like a chile, ’deed he is!” she added, carrying the sliced peaches into the dining-room and leaving Sandy with a plate of food before him, eating slowly. “When you rushing to get out, seems like white folks tries theirselves.”
In a moment she returned, ill-tempered, and began to scold Sandy for taking so long with his meal.
“I asked you to help me so’s I can get to the lodge on time, and you just set and chew and eat! … Here, wipe these dishes, boy!” Annjee began hurriedly to lay plates in a steaming row on the shelf of the sink; so Sandy got up and, between mouthfuls of pudding, wiped them with a large dishtowel.
Soon Mrs. Rice came into the kitchen again, briskly, through the swinging door and glanced about her. Sandy felt ashamed for the white woman to see him eating a leftover pudding from her table, so he put the spoon down.
“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.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Annjee.
“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.”
Mrs. Rice went out again through the swinging door, but 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 this tall white woman in the flowered dress. Black, hardworking Annjee answered: “Yes, ma’am,” and that was all—but Sandy cried.
“Dry up,” his mother said crossly when she saw him, thinking he was crying because she had asked him to work. “What’s come over you, anyway?—can’t even wipe a few plates for me and act nice about it!”
He didn’t answer. When the dining-room had been cleared and the kitchen put in order, Annjee told him to empty the garbage while she wrapped in newspapers several little bundles of food to carry to Jimboy. Then they went out the back door, around the big house to the street, and trudged the fourteen blocks to Aunt Hager’s, taking shortcuts through alleys, passing under arc-lights that sputtered whitely in the deepening twilight, and greeting with an occasional “Howdy” other poor colored folks also coming home from work.
“How are
