“Come on! Let’s go and get a bite to eat,” Harriett suggested when they had finally calmed down enough to decide to move on. “Billy and me are always hungry. … Where’s Jimboy, Annjee? In the war, I suppose! It’d be just like that big jigaboo to go and enlist first thing, whether he had to or not. Billy here was due to go, too, but licker kept him out. This white folks’ war for democracy ain’t so hot, nohow! … Say, how’d you like to have some chop suey instead of going to a regular restaurant?”
In a Chinese café they found a quiet booth, where the two sisters talked until past midnight—with Sandy and Billy silent for the most part. Harriett told Annjee about Aunt Hager’s death and the funeral that chill rainy day, and how Tempy had behaved so coldly when it was all over.
“I left Stanton the week after,” Harriett said, “and haven’t been back since. Had hard times, too, but we’re kinder lucky now, Billy and me—got some dates booked over the Orpheum circuit soon. Liable to get wind of us at the Palace on Broadway one o’ these days. Can’t tell! Things are breakin’ pretty good for spade acts—since Jews are not like the rest of the white folks. They will give you a break if you’ve got some hot numbers to show ’em, whether you’re colored or not. And Jews control the theatres.”
But the conversation went back to Stanton, when Hager and Jimboy and all of them had lived together, laughing and quarrelling and playing the guitar—while the tea got cold and the chop suey hardened to a sticky mess as the sisters wept. Billy marked busily on the tablecloth meanwhile with a stubby pencil, explaining to Sandy a new and intricate system he had found for betting on the numbers.
“Harrie and me plays every day. Won a hundred forty dollars last week in Cleveland,” he said.
“Gee! I ought to start playing,” Sandy exclaimed. “How much do you put on each number?”
“Well, for a nickel you can win …”
“No, you oughtn’t,” checked Harriett, suddenly conscious of Billy’s conversation, turning towards Sandy with a handkerchief to her eyes. “Don’t you fool with those numbers, honey! … What are you trying to do, Billy, start the boy off on your track? … You’ve got to get your education, Sandy, and amount to something. … Guess you’re in high school now, aren’t you, kid?”
“Third year,” said Sandy slowly, dreading a new argument with his mother.
“And determined to keep on going here this fall, in spite o’ my telling him I don’t see how,” put in Annjee. “Jimboy’s over yonder, Lord knows where, and I certainly can’t take care of Sandy and send him to school, too. No need of my trying—since he’s big enough and old enough to hold a job and make his own living. He ought to be wanting to help me, anyway. Instead of that, he’s determined to go back to school.”
“Make his own living!” Harriett exclaimed, looking at Annjee in astonishment. “You mean you want Sandy to stay out of school to help you? What good is his little money to you?”
“Well, he helps with the room rent,” his mother said. “And gets his meals where he works. That’s better’n we’d be doing with him studying and depending on me to keep things up.”
“What do you mean better?” Harriett cried, glaring at her sister excitedly, forgetting they had been weeping together five minutes before. “For crying out loud—better? Why, Aunt Hager’d turn over in her grave if she heard you talking so calmly about Sandy leaving school—the way she wanted to make something out of this kid. … How much do you earn a week?” Harriett asked suddenly, looking at her nephew across the table.
“Fourteen dollars.”
“Pshaw! Is that all? I can give you that much myself,” Harriett said. “We’ve got straight bookings until Christmas—then cabaret work’s good around here. Bill and I can always make the dough—and you go to school.”
“I want to, Aunt Harrie,” Sandy said, suddenly content.
“Yea, old man,” put in Billy. “And I’ll shoot you a little change myself—to play the numbers,” he added, winking.
“Well,” Annjee began, “what about …”
But Harriett ignored Billy’s interjection as well as her sister’s open mouth. “Running an elevator for fourteen dollars a week and losing your education!” she cried. “Good Lord! Annjee, you ought to be ashamed, wanting him to keep that up. This boy’s gotta get ahead—all of us niggers are too far back in this white man’s country to let any brains go to waste! Don’t you realize that? … You and me was foolish all right, breaking mama’s heart, leaving school, but Sandy can’t do like us. He’s gotta be what his grandma Hager wanted him to be—able to help the black race, Annjee! You hear me? Help the whole race!”
“I want to,” Sandy said.
“Then you’ll stay in school!” Harriett affirmed, still looking at Annjee. “You surely wouldn’t want him stuck in an elevator forever—just to help you, would you, sister?”
“I reckon I wouldn’t,” Annjee murmured, shaking her head.
“You know damn well you wouldn’t,” Harriett concluded. And, before they parted, she slipped a ten-dollar bill into her nephew’s hand.
“For your books,” she said.
When Sandy and his mother started home, it was very late, but in a little Southern church in a side street, some old black worshippers were still holding their nightly meeting. High and fervently they were singing:
By an’ by when de mawnin’ comes,
Saints an’ sinners all are gathered home. …
As the deep volume of sound rolled through the open door, Annjee and her son stopped to listen.
“It’s like Stanton,” Sandy said, “and the tent in the Hickory Woods.”
“Sure is!” his mother exclaimed. “Them old folks are still singing—even in Chicago! … Funny how old folks like to sing that way, ain’t it?”
“It’s beautiful!” Sandy cried—for, vibrant and steady like a stream of living faith, their song filled the whole night:
An we’ll
