“Dear Jesus!” she said. “I wonder where is yo’ mama? S’pose she started out fo’ home ’fore this storm come up!” Then in a scream: “Have mercy on ma Annjee! O, Lawd, have mercy on this chile’s mama! Have mercy on all ma chillens! Ma Harriett, an’ ma Tempy, an’ ma Annjee, what’s maybe all of ’em out in de storm! O, Lawd!”
A dry crack of lightning split the darkness, and the boy began to wail. Then the rain broke. The old woman could not see the crying child she held, nor could the boy hear the broken voice of his grandmother, who had begun to pray as the rain crashed through the inky blackness. For a long while it roared on the roof of the house and pounded at the windows, until finally the two within became silent, hushing their cries. Then only the lashing noise of the water, coupled with the feeling that something terrible was happening, or had already happened, filled the evening air.
After the rain the moon rose clear and bright and the clouds disappeared from the lately troubled sky. The stars sparkled calmly above the havoc of the storm, and it was still early evening as people emerged from their houses and began to investigate the damage brought by the twisting cyclone that had come with the sunset. Through the rubbish-filled streets men drove slowly with horse and buggy or automobile. The fire-engine was out, banging away, and the soft tang-tang-tang of the motor ambulance could be heard in the distance carrying off the injured.
Black Aunt Hager and her brown grandson put their rubbers on and stood in the water-soaked front yard looking at the porchless house where they lived. Platform, steps, pillars, roof, and all had been blown away. Not a semblance of a porch was left and the front door opened bare into the yard. It was grotesque and funny. Hager laughed.
“Cyclone sho did a good job,” she said. “Looks like I ain’t never had no porch.”
Madam de Carter, from next door, came across the grass, her large mouth full of chattering sympathy for her neighbor.
“But praise God for sparing our lives! It might’ve been worse, Sister Williams! It might’ve been much more calamitouser! As it is, I lost nothin’ more’n a chimney and two washtubs which was settin’ in the backyard. A few trees broke down don’t ’mount to nothin’. We’s livin’, ain’t we? And we’s more importanter than trees is any day!” Her gold teeth sparkled in the moonlight.
“ ’Deed so,” agreed Hager emphatically. “Let’s move on down de block, Sister, an’ see what mo’ de Lawd has ’stroyed or spared this evenin’. He’s gin us plenty moonlight after de storm so we po’ humans can see this lesson o’ His’n to a sinful world.”
The two elderly colored women picked their way about on the wet walk, littered with twigs and branches of broken foliage. The little brown boy followed, with his eyes wide at the sight of baby-carriages, window-sashes, shingles, and tree-limbs scattered about in the roadway. Large numbers of people were out, some standing on porches, some carrying lanterns, picking up useful articles from the streets, some wringing their hands in a daze.
Near the corner a small crowd had gathered quietly.
“Mis’ Gavitt’s killed,” somebody said.
“Lawd help!” burst from Aunt Hager and Madam de Carter simultaneously.
“Mister and Mis’ Gavitt’s both dead,” added a nervous young white man, bursting with the news. “We live next door to ’em, and their house turned clean over! Came near hitting us and breaking our sidewall in.”
“Have mercy!” said the two women, but Sandy slipped away from his grandmother and pushed through the crowd. He ran round the corner to where he could see the overturned house of the unfortunate Gavitts.
Good white folks, the Gavitts, Aunt Hager had often said, and now their large frame dwelling lay on its side like a doll’s mansion, with broken furniture strewn carelessly on the wet lawn—and they were dead. Sandy saw a piano flat on its back in the grass. Its ivory keys gleamed in the moonlight like grinning teeth, and the strange sight made his little body shiver, so he hurried back through the crowd looking for his grandmother. As he passed the corner, he heard a woman sobbing hysterically within the wide house there.
His grandmother was no longer standing where he had left her, but he found Madam de Carter and took hold of her hand. She was in the midst of a group of excited white and colored women. One frail old lady was saying in a high determined voice that she had never seen a cyclone like this in her whole life, and she had lived here in Kansas, if you please, going on seventy-three years. Madam de Carter, chattering nervously, began to tell them how she had recognized its coming and had rushed to the cellar the minute she saw the sky turn green. She had not come up until the rain stopped, so frightened had she been. She was extravagantly enjoying the telling of her fears as Sandy kept tugging at her hand.
“Where’s my grandma?” he demanded. Madam de Carter, however, did not cease talking to answer his question.
“What do you want, sonny?” finally one of the white women asked, bending down when he looked as if he were about to cry. “Aunt Hager? … Why, she’s inside helping them calm poor Mrs. Gavitt’s niece. Your grandmother’s good to have around when folks are sick or grieving, you know. Run and set on the steps like a nice boy and wait until she comes out.” So Sandy left the women and went to sit in the dark on the steps of the big corner house where the niece of the dead Mrs. Gavitt lived. There were some people on the porch, but they soon passed through the screen-door into the house or went away down the street.
