“Well, that’s strange,” said Tempy. “I suppose, as careless and irresponsible as Jimboy is, they’ve got it wrong, or else moved. … Do you know where Harriett can be? I don’t suppose you do, but mother has been calling for her all night. I suppose we’ll have to try to get her, wherever she is.”
“I got her address,” said Sandy. “She wrote it down for me when I was working at the hotel this winter. I can find her.”
“Then I’ll give you a note,” said Tempy. “Take it to her.”
So Sandy went to the big grey house in the Bottoms that morning to deliver Tempy’s message, before the girls there had risen from their beds.
XXII
Beyond the Jordan
During the day the lodge members went to their work in the various kitchens and restaurants and laundries of the town. And Madam de Carter was ordered to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where a split in her organization was threatened because of the elections of the grand officers. Hager was resting easy, no pain now, but very weak.
“It’s only a matter of time,” said the doctor. “Give her the medicine so she won’t worry, but it does no good. There’s nothing we can do.”
“She’s going to die!” Sandy thought.
Harriett sat by the bedside holding her mother’s hand as the afternoon sunlight fell on the white spread. Hager had been glad to see the girl again, and the old woman held nothing against her daughter for no longer living at home.
“Is you happy, chile?” Hager asked. “You looks so nice. Yo’ clothes is right purty. I hopes you’s findin’ what you wants in life. You’s young, honey, an’ you needs to be happy. … Sandy!” She called so weakly that he could hardly hear her, though he was standing at the head of the bed. “Sandy, look in that drawer, chile, under ma nightgowns an’ things, an’ hand me that there little box you sees down in de corner.”
The child found it and gave it to her, a small, white box from a cheap jeweller’s. It was wrapped carefully in a soft handkerchief. The old woman took it eagerly and tried to hold it out towards her daughter. Harriett unwound the handkerchief and opened the lid of the box. Then she saw that it contained the tiny gold watch that her mother had given her on her sixteenth birthday, which she had pawned months ago in order to run away with the carnival. Quick tears came to the girl’s eyes.
“I got it out o’ pawn fo’ you,” Hager said, “ ’cause I wanted you to have it fo’ yo’self, chile. You know yo’ mammy bought it fo’ you.”
It was such a little watch! Old-timey, with a breastpin on it. Harriett quickly put her handkerchief over her wrist to hide the flashy new timepiece she was wearing on a gold bracelet.
That night Hager died. The undertakers came at dawn with their wagon and carried the body away to embalm it. Sandy stood on the front porch looking at the morning star as the clatter of the horses’ hoofs echoed in the street. A sleepy young white boy was driving the undertaker’s wagon, and the horse that pulled it was white.
The women who had been sitting up all night began to go home now to get their husbands’ breakfasts and to prepare to go to work themselves.
“It’s Wednesday,” Sandy thought. “Today I’m supposed to go get Mrs. Reinhart’s clothes, but grandma’s dead. I guess I won’t get them now. There’s nobody to wash them.”
Sister Johnson called him to the kitchen to drink a cup of coffee. Harriett was there weeping softly. Tempy was inside busily cleaning the room from which they had removed the body. She had opened all the windows and was airing the house.
Out in the yard a rooster flapped his wings and crowed shrilly at the rising sun. The fire crackled, and the coffee boiling sent up a fragrant aroma. Sister Johnson opened a can of condensed milk by punching it with the butcher-knife. She put some cups and saucers on the table.
“Tempy, won’t you have some?”
“No, thank you, Mrs. Johnson,” she called from the dead woman’s bedroom.
When Aunt Hager was brought back to her house, she was in a long box covered with black plush. They placed it on a folding stand by the window in the front room. There was a crepe on the door, and the shades were kept lowered, and people whispered in the house as though someone were asleep. Flowers began to be delivered by boys on bicycles, and the lodge members came to sit up again that night. The time was set for burial, and the Daily Leader carried this paragraph in small type on its back page:
Hager Williams, aged colored laundress of 419 Cypress Street, passed away at her home last night. She was known and respected by many white families in the community. Three daughters and a grandson survive.
They tried again to reach Annjee in Detroit by telegram, but without success. On the afternoon of the funeral it was cold and rainy. The little Baptist Church was packed with people. The sisters of the lodge came in full regalia, with banners and insignia, and the brothers turned out with them. Hager’s coffin was banked with flowers. There were many fine pieces from the families for whom she had washed and from the white neighbors she had nursed in sickness. There were offerings, too, from Tempy’s high-toned friends and from Harriett’s girl companions in the house in the Bottoms. Many of the bellboys, porters, and bootleggers sent wreaths and crosses with golden letters on them: “At Rest in Jesus,” “Beyond the Jordan,” or simply: “Gone Home.” There was a bouquet of violets from Buster’s mother and a blanket of roses from Tempy herself. They were all pretty, but, to Sandy, the perfume was sickening in the close little church.
The Baptist minister preached, but Tempy had Father
