“Sure could,” replied Sandy. “Gee, they must make a great team together, ’cause my Aunt Harrie can certainly sing and dance!”
“Ain’t the only thing she can do!” bellowed the gambler, swallowing a huge chunk of steak. “Yo’ Aunt Harrie’s a whang, son!”
“Shut yo’ mouth!” said Uncle Dan.
XXVI
The Doors of Life
During Sandy’s second year at high school Tempy was busy sewing for the local Red Cross and organizing Liberty Bond clubs among the colored population of Stanton. She earnestly believed that the world would really become safe for democracy, even in America, when the war ended, and that colored folks would no longer be snubbed in private and discriminated against in public.
“Colored boys are over there fighting,” she said. “Our men are buying hundreds of dollars’ worth of bonds, colored women are aiding the Red Cross, our clubs are sending boxes to the camps and to the front. White folks will see that the Negro can be trusted in war as well as peace. Times will be better after this for all of us.”
One day a letter came from Annjee, who had moved to Chicago. She said that Sandy’s father had not long remained in camp, but had been sent to France almost immediately after he enlisted, and she didn’t know what she was going to do, she was so worried and alone! There had been but one letter from Jimboy since he left. And now she needed Sandy with her, but she wasn’t able to send for him yet. She said she hoped and prayed that nothing would happen to his father at the front, but every day there were colored soldiers’ names on the casualty list.
“Good thing he’s gone,” grunted Tempy when she read the letter as they were seated at the supper-table. Then, suddenly changing the subject, she asked Sandy: “Did you see Dr. Frank Crane’s beautiful article this morning?”
“No, I didn’t,” said the boy.
“You certainly don’t read as much as you did last winter,” complained his aunt. “And you’re staying out entirely too late to suit me. I’m quite sure you’re not at the movies all that time, either. I want these late hours stopped, young man. Every night in the week out somewhere until ten and eleven o’clock!”
“Well, boys do have to get around a little, Tempy,” Mr. Siles objected. “It’s not like when you and I were coming up.”
“I’m raising this boy, Mr. Siles,” Tempy snapped. “When do you study, James? That’s what I want to know.”
“When I come in,” said Sandy, which was true. His light was on until after twelve almost every night. And when he did not study late, his old habit of lying awake clung to him and he could not go to sleep early.
“You think too much,” Buster once said. “Stop being so smart; then you’ll sleep better.”
“Yep,” added Jimmy Lane. “Better be healthy and dumb than smart and sick like some o’ these college darkies I see with goggles on their eyes and breath smellin’ bad.”
“O, I’m not sick,” objected Sandy, “but I just get to thinking about things at night—the war, and white folks, and God, and girls, and—O, I don’t know—everything in general.”
“Sure, keep on thinking,” jeered Buster, “and turn right ashy after while and be all stoop-shouldered like Father Hill.” (The Episcopalian rector was said to be the smartest colored man in town.) “But I’m not gonna worry about being smart myself. A few more years, boy, and I’ll be in some big town passing for white, making money, and getting along swell. And I won’t need to be smart, either—I’ll be ofay! So if you see me some time in St. Louis or Chi with a little blond on my arm—don’t recognize me, hear! I want my kids to be so yellow-headed they won’t have to think about a color line.”
And Sandy knew that Buster meant what he said, for his light-skinned friend was one of those people who always go directly towards the things they want, as though the road is straight before them and they can see clearly all the way. But to Sandy himself nothing ever seemed quite that clear. Why was his country going stupidly to war? … Why were white people and colored people so far apart? … Why was it wrong to desire the bodies of women? … With his mind a maelstrom of thoughts as he lay in bed night after night unable to go to sleep quickly, Sandy wondered many things and asked himself many questions.
Sometimes he would think about Pansetta Young, his classmate with the soft brown skin, and the pointed and delicate breasts of her doll-like body. He had never been alone with Pansetta, never even kissed her, yet she was “his girl” and he liked her a great deal. Maybe he loved her! … But what did it mean to love a girl? Were you supposed to marry her then and live with her forever? … His father had married his mother—good-natured, guitar-playing Jimboy—but they weren’t always together, and Sandy knew that Jimboy was enjoying the war now, just as he had always enjoyed everything else.
“Gee, he must of married early to be my father and still look so young!” he thought. “Suppose I marry Pansetta now!” But what did he really know about marriage other than the dirty fragments he had picked up from Jimmy and Buster and the fellows at the pool hall?
On his fifteenth birthday Tempy had given him a book written for young men on the subject of love and living, called The Doors of Life, addressed to all Christian youths in their teens—but it had been written by a white New England minister of the Presbyterian faith who stood aghast before the flesh; so its advice consisted almost entirely in how to pray in the orthodox manner, and in how not to love.
“Avoid evil companions lest they be your undoing (see Psalms 119:115–20); and beware of lewd women, for their footsteps lead down to
