The doctor came—the kind old white man who had known Hager for years and in whom she had faith.
“Well,” he said, “it’s quite a surprise to see you in bed, Aunty.” Then, looking very serious and professional, he took her pulse.
“Go out and close the door,” he said gently to Madam de Carter and Sister Johnson, Willie-Mae and Sandy, all of whom had gathered around the bed in the little room. “Somebody heat some water.” He turned back the quilts from the woman’s body and unbuttoned her gown.
Ten minutes later he said frankly, but with great kindness in his tones: “You’re a sick woman, Hager, a very sick woman.”
That afternoon Tempy came, like a stranger to the house, and took charge of things. Sandy felt uncomfortable and shy in her presence. This aunt of his had a hard, cold, correct way of talking that resembled Mrs. Rice’s manner of speaking to his mother when Annjee used to work there. But Tempy quickly put the house in order, bathed her mother, and spread the bed with clean sheets and a white counterpane. Before evening, members of Hager’s lodge began to drop in bringing soups and custards. White people of the neighborhood stopped, too, to inquire if there was anything they could do for the old woman who had so often waited on them in their illnesses. About six o’clock old man Logan drove up the alley and tied his white mule to the back fence.
The sun was setting when Tempy called Sandy in from the backyard, where he was chopping wood for the stove. She said: “James”—how queerly his correct name struck his ears as it fell from the lips of this cold aunt!—“James, you had better send this telegram to your mother. Now, here is a dollar bill and you can bring back the change. Look on her last letter and get the correct address.”
Sandy took the written sheet of paper and the money that his aunt gave him. Then he looked through the various drawers in the house for his mother’s last letter. It had been nearly a month since they had heard from her, but finally the boy found the letter in the cupboard, under a jelly-glass full of small coins that his grandmother kept there. He carried the envelope with him to the telegraph office, and there he paid for a message to Annjee in Detroit:
Mother very sick, come at once. Tempy.
As the boy walked home in the gathering dusk, he felt strangely alone in the world, as though Aunt Hager had already gone away, and when he reached the house, it was full of lodge members who had come to keep watch. Tempy went home, but Sister Johnson remained in the sickroom, changing the hot-water bottles and administering, every three hours, the medicine the doctor had left.
There were so many people in the house that Sandy came out into the backyard and sat down on the edge of the well. It was cool and clear, and a slit of moon rode in a light-blue sky spangled with stars. Soon the apple-trees would bud and the grass would be growing. Sandy was a big boy. When his next birthday came, he would be fourteen, and he had begun to grow tall and heavy. Aunt Hager said she was going to buy him a pair of long pants this coming summer. And his mother would hardly know him when she saw him again, if she ever came home.
Tonight inside, there were so many old sisters from the lodge that Sandy couldn’t even talk to his grandmother while she lay in bed. They were constantly going in and out of the sickroom, drinking coffee in the kitchen, or gossiping in the parlor. He wished they would all go away. He could take care of his grandmother himself until she got well—he and Sister Johnson. They didn’t even need Tempy, who, he felt, shouldn’t be there, because he didn’t like her.
“They callin’ you inside,” Willie-Mae came out to tell him as he sat by himself in the cold on the edge of the well. She was taller than Sandy now and had a regular job taking care of a white lady’s baby. She no longer wore her hair in braids. She did it up, and she had a big leather pocketbook that she carried on her arm like a woman. Boys came to take her to the movies on Saturday nights. “They want you inside.”
Sandy got up, his legs stiff and numb, and went into the kitchen. An elderly brown woman, dressed in black silk that swished as she moved, opened the door to Hager’s bedroom and whispered to him loudly: “Be quiet, chile.”
Sandy entered between a lane of old women. Hager looked up at him and smiled—so grave and solemn he appeared.
“Is they takin’ care o’ you?” she asked weakly. “Ain’t it bedtime, honey? Is you had something to eat? Come on an’ kiss yo’ old grandma befo’ you go to sleep. She’ll be better in de mawnin’.”
She couldn’t seem to lift her head, so Sandy sat down on the bed and kissed her. All he said was: “I’m all right, grandma,” because there were so many old women in there that he couldn’t talk. Then he went out into the other room.
The air in the house was close and stuffy and the boy soon became groggy with sleep. He fell across the bed that had been Annjee’s, and later Dogberry’s, with all his clothes on. One of the lodge women in the room said: “You better take off yo’ things, chile, an’ go to sleep right.” Then she said to the other sisters: “Come on in de kitchen, you-all, an’ let this chile go to bed.”
In the morning Tempy woke him. “Are you sure you had Annjee’s address correct last night?” she demanded. “The telegraph office says she couldn’t be found, so the message was not delivered. Let me see the letter.”
Sandy
