“One by one they leaves you,” Hager said slowly. “One by one yo’ chillen goes.”
XVI
Nothing but Love
“A year ago tonight was de storm what blowed ma porch away! You ’members, honey? … Done seem like this year took more’n ma porch, too. My baby chile’s left home an’ gone to stay down yonder in de Bottoms with them triflin’ Smothers family, where de piano’s goin’ night an’ day. An’ yo’ mammy’s done gone a-trapesin’ after Jimboy. … Well, I thanks de Lawd you ain’t gone too. You’s mighty little an’ knee-high to a duck, but you’s ma standby. You’s all I got, an’ you ain’t gwine leave yo’ old grandma, is you?”
Hager had turned to Sandy in these lonely days for comfort and companionship. Through the long summer evenings they sat together on the front porch and she told her grandchild stories. Sometimes Sister Johnson came over and sat with them for a while smoking. Sometimes Madam de Carter, full of chatter and big words about the lodge and the race, would be there. But more often the two were alone—the black washwoman with the grey hair and the little brown boy. Slavery-time stories, myths, folktales like the Rabbit and the Tar Baby; the war, Abe Lincoln, freedom; visions of the Lord; years of faith and labor, love and struggle filled Aunt Hager’s talk of a summer night, while the lightning-bugs glowed and glimmered and the katydids chirruped, and the stars sparkled in the far-off heavens.
Sandy was getting to be too big a boy to sit in his grandmother’s lap and be rocked to sleep as in summers gone by; now he sat on a little stool beside her, leaning his head on her legs when he was tired. Or else he lay flat on the floor of the porch listening, and looking up at the stars. Tonight Hager talked about love.
“These young ones what’s comin’ up now, they calls us ole fogies, an’ handkerchief heads, an’ white folks’ niggers ’cause we don’t get mad an’ rar’ up in arms like they does ’cause things is kinder hard, but, honey, when you gets old, you knows they ain’t no sense in gettin’ mad an’ sourin’ yo’ soul with hatin’ peoples. White folks is white folks, an’ colored folks is colored, an’ neither one of ’em is bad as t’other make out. For mighty nigh seventy years I been knowin’ both of ’em, an’ I ain’t never had no room in ma heart to hate neither white nor colored. When you starts hatin’ people, you gets uglier than they is—an’ I ain’t never had no time for ugliness, ’cause that’s where de devil comes in—in ugliness!
“They talks ’bout slavery time an’ they makes out now like it were de most awfullest time what ever was, but don’t you believe it, chile, ’cause it weren’t all that bad. Some o’ de white folks was just as nice to their niggers as they could be, nicer than many of ’em is now, what makes ’em work for less than they needs to eat. An’ in those days they had to feed ’em. An’ they ain’t every white man beat his slaves neither! Course I ain’t sayin’ ’twas no paradise, but I ain’t going to say it were no hell either. An’ maybe I’s kinder seein’ it on de bestest side ’cause I worked in de big house an’ ain’t never went to de fields like most o’ de niggers did. Ma mammy were de big-house cook an’ I grewed up right with her in de kitchen an’ played with little Miss Jeanne. An’ Miss Jeanne taught me to read what little I knowed. An’ when she growed up an’ I growed up, she kept me with her like her friend all de time. I loved her an’ she loved me. Miss Jeanne were de mistress’ daughter, but warn’t no difference ’tween us ’ceptin’ she called me Hager an’ I called her Miss Jeanne. But what difference do one word like ‘Miss’ make in yo’ heart? None, chile, none. De words don’t make no difference if de love’s there.
“I disremembers what year it were de war broke out, but white folks was scared, an’ niggers, too. Didn’t know what might happen. An’ we heard talk o’ Abraham Lincoln ’way down yonder in de South. An’ de ole marster, ole man Winfield, took his gun an’ went to war, an’ de young son, too, an’ de superintender and de overseer—all of ’em gone to follow Lee. Ain’t left nothin’ but womens an’ niggers on de plantation. De womens was a-cryin’ an’ de niggers was, too, ’cause they was sorry for de po’ grievin’ white folks.
“Is I ever told you how Miss Jeanne an’ Marster Robert was married in de springtime o’ de war, with de magnolias all a-bloomin’ like candles for they weddin’? Is I ever told you, Sandy? … Well, I must some time. An’ then Marster Robert had to go right off with his mens, ’cause he’s a high officer in de army an’ they heard Sherman were comin’. An’ he left her a-standin’ with her weddin’-clothes on, leanin’ ’gainst a pillar o’ de big white porch, with nobody but me to dry her eyes—ole Missis done dead an’ de menfolks all gone to war. An’ nobody in that big whole mansion but black ole deaf Aunt Granny Jones, what kept de house straight, an’ me, what was stayin’ with ma mistress.
“O, de white folks needed niggers then mo’n they ever did befo’, an’ they ain’t a colored person what didn’t stick by ’em when all they menfolks were gone an’ de white womens was a-cryin’ an’ a-faintin’ like they did in them days.
“But lemme tell you ’bout Miss Jeanne. She just set in her room an’
