“I’s glad you likes it,” said Hager.
There was an awkward silence; then Tempy distributed her gifts, kissed them all as though it were her Christian duty, and went her way, saying that she had calls to make at Lawyer and Mrs. Moore’s, and Professor Booth’s, and Madam Temple’s before she returned home. When she had gone, everybody felt relieved—as though a white person had left the house. Willie-Mae began to play again, and Hager pushed her feet out of her shoes once more, while Annjee went into the bedroom and lay down.
Sandy sat on the floor and untied his present, wrapped in several thicknesses of pink tissue paper, and found, in a bright Christmas box, a big illustrated volume of Andersen’s Fairy Tales decorated in letters of gold. With its heavy pages and fine pictures, it made the ten-cent-store books that Hager had bought him appear cheap and thin. It made his mother’s sled look cheap, too, and shamed all the other gifts the ones he loved had given him.
“I don’t want it,” he said suddenly, as loud as he could. “I don’t want Tempy’s old book!” And from where he was sitting, he threw it with all his might underneath the stove.
Hager gasped in astonishment. “Pick that up, sir,” she cried, amazed. “Yo’ Aunt Tempy done bought you a fine purty book an’ here you throwin’ it un’neath de stove in de ashes! Lawd have mercy! Pick it up, I say, this minute!”
“I won’t!” cried Sandy stubbornly. “I won’t! I like my sled what you-all gave me, but I don’t want no old book from Tempy! I won’t pick it up!”
Then the astonished Hager grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and jerked him to his feet.
“Do I have to whip you yet this holy day? … Pick up that book, sir!”
“No!” he yelled.
She gave him a startled rap on the head with the back of her hand. “Talkin’ sassy to yo’ old grandma an’ tellin’ her no!”
“What is it?” Annjee called from the bedroom, as Sandy began to wail.
“Nothin’,” Hager replied, “ ’ceptin’ this chile’s done got beside hisself an’ I has to hit him—that’s all!”
But Sandy was not hurt by his grandmother’s easy rap. 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.
XIV
Return
After Christmas there followed a period of cold weather, made bright by the winter sun shining on the hard crusty snow, where children slid and rolled, and over which hay-wagons made into sleighs on great heavy runners drove jingling into town from the country. There was skating on the frozen river and fine sledding on the hills beyond the woods, but Sandy never went out where the crowds were with his sled, because he was ashamed of it.
After New Year’s Annjee went back to work at Mrs. Rice’s, still coughing a little and still weak. But 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 thought that Tempy ought to help them a little, but she was too proud to ask her. Besides, 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. Hager, however, when Annjee brought up the subject of Tempy’s help, said that she was still able to wash, thank God, and wasn’t depending on any of her children for anything—not so long as white folks wore clothes.
At school Sandy passed all of his midyear tests and, along with Sadie Butler, was advanced to the fifth A, but the other colored child in the class, a little fat girl named Mary Jones, failed and had to stay behind. Mary’s mother, a large sulphur-yellow woman who cooked at the Drummer’s Hotel, came to the school and told the teacher, before all the children, just what she thought of her for letting Mary fail—and her thoughts were not very complimentary to the stiff, middle-aged white lady who taught the class. The question of color came up, too, during the discussion.
“Look at ma chile settin’ back there behind all de white ones,” screamed the sulphur-yellow woman. “An’ me payin’ as much taxes as anybody! You treats us colored folks like we ain’t citizerzens—that’s what you does!” 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.
St. Valentine’s day came and Sadie Butler sent Sandy a big red heart. But for Annjee, “the mailman passed and didn’t leave no news,” because Jimboy hadn’t written yet, nor had Harriett thanked her for the three dollars she had mailed to Memphis before Christmas. There were no letters from anybody.
The work at Mrs. Rice’s was very heavy, because Mrs. Rice’s sister, with two children, had come from Indiana to spend the winter, and Annjee had to cook for them and clean their rooms, too. But she was managing to save a little money every week. She bought Sandy a new blue serge suit with a Norfolk coat and knickerbocker pants. And then he sat up very stiffly in Sterner’s studio and had his picture taken.
The freckled-faced white boy,
