Her friend laughed too. “He’s a hot one, taking flowers to the women already, and a white girl at that! You’ve got a fast-working son, Elvira, I must say. … But, do you know, when you first moved here and I saw you and the boy going in and out, I thought sure you were both white folks. I didn’t know you was colored till my husband said: ‘That’s Eddie’s wife!’ You-all sure looked white to me.”
The machine started to whir, making the conversation inaudible for a few minutes, and when Sandy caught their words again, they were talking about the Elks’ clubhouse that the colored people were planning to build.
“Can you go out?” Sandy demanded of Buster, sure they were making no headway with the tough clothespins and dull knives.
“Maybe,” said Buster. “I’ll go see.” And he went into the other room and asked his mother.
“Put on your overcoat,” she commanded. “It’s not summer yet. And be back in here before dark.”
“All right, Vira,” the child said.
The two children went to Mrs. Rumford’s shop on the corner and bought three cents’ worth of candy and seven cents’ worth of peewees with which to play marbles when it got warm. Then Sandy walked back past Buster’s house with him and they played for a while in the street before Sandy turned to run home.
Aunt Hager was making mush for supper. She sent him to the store for a pint bottle of milk as soon as he arrived, but he forgot to take the bottle and had to come back for it.
“You’d forget yo’ head if it wasn’t tied to you!” the old woman reminded him.
They were just finishing supper when Annjee got home with two chocolate eclairs in her coat-pocket, mashed together against Jimboy’s letter.
“Huh! I’m crazy!” she said, running her hand down into the sticky mess. “But listen, ma! He’s got a job and is doing well in Detroit, Jimboy says. … And I’m going to him!”
“You what?” Hager gasped, dropping her spoon in her mush-bowl. “What you sayin’?”
“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!”
“Lawd, is you foolish?” cried Hager. “What’s you gwine do with this chile, trapesin’ round after Jimboy? What you gwine do if he leaves you in Detroiter or wherever he are? What you gwine do then? You loves him! Huh!”
“But he ain’t gonna leave me in Detroit, ’cause I’m going with him everywhere he goes,” she said, her eyes shining. “He ain’t gonna leave me no more!”
“An’ Sandy?”
“Couldn’t he stay with you, mama? And then maybe we’d come back here and live, Jimboy and me, some time, when we get a little money ahead, and could pay off the mortgage on the house. … But there ain’t no use arguing, mama, I got to go!”
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.”
Hager rose to put some water on the stove to heat for the dishes.
“One by one you leaves me—Tempy, then Harriett, then you,” she said. “But Sandy’s gonna stick by me, ain’t you, son? He ain’t gwine leave his grandma.”
The youngster looked at Hager, moving slowly about the kitchen putting away the supper things.
“And I’s gwine to make a fine man out o’ you, Sandy. I’s gwine raise one chile right yet, if de Lawd lets me live—just one chile right!” she murmured.
That night the March wind began to blow and the windowpanes rattled. Sandy woke up in the dark, lying close and warm beside his mother. When he went back to sleep again, he dreamed that his Aunt Tempy’s Christmas book had been turned into a chariot, and that he was riding through the sky with Tempy standing very dignifiedly beside him as he drove. And he couldn’t see anybody down on earth, not even Hager.
When his mother rolled out at six o’clock to go to work, he woke up again, and while she dressed, he lay watching his breath curl mistily upwards in the cold room. Outside the window it was bleak and grey and the March wind, humming through the leafless branches of the trees, blew terrifically. He heard Aunt Hager in the kitchen poking at the stove, making up a blaze to start the coffee boiling. Then the front door closed when his mother went out and, as the door slammed, the wind howled fiercely. It was nice and warm in bed, so he lay under the heavy quilts half dreaming, half thinking, until his grandmother shook him to get up. And many were the queer, dream-drowsy thoughts that floated through his mind—not only that morning, but almost every morning while he lay beneath the
