Not Without Laughter

I

Storm

Aunt Hager Williams stood in her doorway and looked out at the sun. The western sky was a sulphurous yellow and the sun a red ball dropping slowly behind the trees and housetops. Its setting left the rest of the heavens grey with clouds.

“Huh! A storm’s comin’,” said Aunt Hager aloud.

A pullet ran across the backyard and into a square-cut hole in an unpainted piano-box which served as the roosting-house. An old hen clucked her brood together and, with the tiny chicks, went into a small box beside the large one. The air was very still. Not a leaf stirred on the green apple-tree. Not a single closed flower of the morning-glories trembled on the back fence. The air was very still and yellow. Something sultry and oppressive made a small boy in the doorway stand closer to his grandmother, clutching her apron with his brown hands.

“Sho is a storm comin’,” said Aunt Hager.

“I hope mama gets home ’fore it rains,” remarked the brown child holding to the old woman’s apron. “Hope she gets home.”

“I does, too,” said Aunt Hager. “But I’s skeared she won’t.”

Just then great drops of water began to fall heavily into the backyard, pounding up little clouds of dust where each drop struck the earth. For a few moments they pattered violently on the roof like a series of hammer-strokes; then suddenly they ceased.

“Come in, chile,” said Aunt Hager.

She closed the door as the green apple-tree began to sway in the wind and a small hard apple fell, rolling rapidly down the top of the piano-box that sheltered the chickens. Inside the kitchen it was almost dark. While Aunt Hager lighted an oil-lamp, the child climbed to a chair and peered through the square window into the yard. The leaves and flowers of the morning-glory vines on the back fence were bending with the rising wind. And across the alley at the big house, Mrs. Kennedy’s rear screen-door banged to and fro, and Sandy saw her garbage-pail suddenly tip over and roll down into the yard, scattering potato-peelings on the white steps.

“Sho gwine be a terrible storm,” said Hager as she turned up the wick of the light and put the chimney on. Then, glancing through the window, she saw a black cloud twisting like a ribbon in the western sky, and the old woman screamed aloud in sudden terror: “It’s a cyclone! It’s gwine be a cyclone! Sandy, let’s get over to Mis’ Carter’s quick, ’cause we ain’t got no cellar here. Come on, chile, let’s get! Come on, chile! … Come on, chile!”

Hurriedly she blew out the light, grabbed the boy’s hand; and together they rushed through the little house towards the front. It was quite dark in the inner rooms, but through the parlor windows came a sort of sooty grey-green light that was rapidly turning to blackness.

“Lawd help us, Jesus!”

Aunt Hager opened the front door, but before she or the child could move, a great roaring sound suddenly shook the world, and, with a deafening division of wood from wood, they saw their front porch rise into the air and go hurtling off into space. Sailing high in the gathering darkness, the porch was soon lost to sight. And the black wind blew with terrific force, numbing the eardrums.

For a moment the little house trembled and swayed and creaked as though it were about to fall.

“Help me to shut this do’,” Aunt Hager screamed; “help me to shut it, Lawd!” as with all her might she struggled against the open door, which the wind held back, but finally it closed and the lock caught. Then she sank to the floor with her back against the wall, while her small grandson trembled like a leaf as she took him in her lap, mumbling: “What a storm! … O, Lawdy! … O, ma chile, what a storm!”

They could hear the crackling of timbers and the rolling limbs of trees that the wind swept across the roof. Her arms tightened about the boy.

“Dear Jesus!” she said. “I wonder where is yo’ mama? S’pose she started out fo’ home ’fore this storm come up!” Then in a scream: “Have mercy on ma Annjee! O, Lawd, have mercy on this chile’s mama! Have mercy on all ma chillens! Ma Harriett, an’ ma Tempy, an’ ma Annjee, what’s maybe all of ’em out in de storm! O, Lawd!”

A dry crack of lightning split the darkness, and the boy began to wail. Then the rain broke. The old woman could not see the crying child she held, nor could the boy hear the broken voice of his grandmother, who had begun to pray as the rain crashed through the inky blackness. For a long while it roared on the roof of the house and pounded at the windows, until finally the two within became silent, hushing their cries. Then only the lashing noise of the water, coupled with the feeling that something terrible was happening, or had already happened, filled the evening air.

After the rain the moon rose clear and bright and the clouds disappeared from the lately troubled sky. The stars sparkled calmly above the havoc of the storm, and it was still early evening as people emerged from their houses and began to investigate the damage brought by the twisting cyclone that had come with the sunset. Through the rubbish-filled streets men drove slowly with horse and buggy or automobile. The fire-engine was out, banging away, and the soft tang-tang-tang of the motor ambulance could be heard in the distance carrying off the injured.

Black Aunt Hager and her brown grandson put their rubbers on and stood in the water-soaked front yard looking at the porchless house where they lived. Platform, steps, pillars, roof, and all had been blown away. Not a semblance of a porch was left and the front door opened bare into the yard. It was grotesque and funny. Hager laughed.

“Cyclone sho did a good job,” she said. “Looks like I ain’t never had no porch.”

Madam de Carter, from next door, came across the grass, her large mouth full of chattering sympathy for her neighbor.

“But praise God for sparing our lives! It might’ve been worse, Sister Williams! It might’ve been much more calamitouser! As it is, I lost nothin’ more’n a chimney and two washtubs which was settin’ in the backyard. A few trees broke down don’t ’mount to nothin’. We’s livin’, ain’t we? And we’s more importanter than trees is any day!” Her gold teeth sparkled in the moonlight.

“ ’Deed so,” agreed Hager emphatically. “Let’s move on down de block, Sister, an’ see what mo’ de Lawd has ’stroyed or spared this evenin’. He’s gin us plenty moonlight after de storm so we po’ humans can see this lesson o’ His’n to a sinful world.”

The two elderly colored women picked their way about on the wet walk, littered with twigs and branches of broken foliage. The little brown boy followed, with his eyes wide at the sight of baby-carriages, window-sashes, shingles, and tree-limbs scattered about in the roadway. Large numbers of people were out, some standing on porches, some carrying lanterns, picking up useful articles from the streets, some wringing their hands in a daze.

Near the corner a small crowd had gathered quietly.

“Mis’ Gavitt’s killed,” somebody said.

“Lawd help!” burst from Aunt Hager and Madam de Carter simultaneously.

“Mister and Mis’ Gavitt’s both dead,” added a nervous young white man, bursting with the news. “We live next door to ’em, and their house turned clean over! Came near hitting us and breaking our sidewall in.”

“Have mercy!” said the two women, but Sandy slipped away from his grandmother and pushed through the crowd. He ran round the corner to where he could see the overturned house of the unfortunate Gavitts.

Good white folks, the Gavitts, Aunt Hager had often said, and now their large frame dwelling lay on its side like a doll’s mansion, with broken furniture strewn carelessly on the wet lawn—and they were dead. Sandy saw a piano flat on its back in the grass. Its ivory keys gleamed in the moonlight like grinning teeth, and the strange sight made his little body shiver, so he hurried back through the crowd looking for his grandmother. As he passed the corner, he heard a woman sobbing hysterically within the wide house there.

His grandmother was no longer standing where he had left her, but he found Madam de Carter and took hold of her hand. She was in the midst of a group of excited white and colored women. One frail old lady was saying in a high determined voice that she had never seen a cyclone like this in her whole life, and she had lived here in Kansas, if you please, going on seventy-three years. Madam de Carter, chattering nervously, began to tell them how she had recognized its coming and had rushed to the cellar the minute she saw the sky turn green. She had not come up until the rain stopped, so frightened had she been. She was extravagantly enjoying the telling of her fears as Sandy kept tugging at her hand.

“Where’s my grandma?” he demanded. Madam de Carter, however, did not cease talking to answer his question.

“What do you want, sonny?” finally one of the white women asked, bending down when he looked as if he were about to cry. “Aunt Hager? … Why, she’s inside helping them calm poor Mrs. Gavitt’s niece. Your grandmother’s good to have around when folks are sick or grieving, you know. Run and set on the steps like a nice boy and wait until she comes out.” So Sandy left the women and went to sit in the dark on the steps of the big corner house where the niece of the dead Mrs. Gavitt lived. There were some people on the porch, but they soon passed through the screen-door into the house or went away down the street. The moonlight cast weird shadows across the damp steps where Sandy sat, and it was dark there under the trees in spite of the moon, for the old house was built far back from the street in a yard full of oaks and maples, and Sandy could see the light from an upstairs window reflecting on the wet leaves of their nearest boughs. He heard a girl screaming, too, up there where the light was burning, and he knew that Aunt Hager was putting cold cloths on her head, or rubbing her hands, or driving folks out of the room, and talking kind to her so that she would soon be better.

All the neighborhood, white or colored, called his grandmother when something happened. She was a good nurse, they said, and sick folks liked her around. Aunt Hager always came when they called, too, bringing maybe a little soup that she had made or a jelly. Sometimes they paid her and sometimes they didn’t. But Sandy had never had to sit outdoors in the darkness waiting for her before. He leaned his small back against the top step and rested his elbows on the porch behind him. It was growing late and the people in the streets had all disappeared.

There, in the dark, the little fellow began to think about his mother, who worked on the other side of town for a rich white lady named Mrs. J. J. Rice. And suddenly frightful thoughts came into his mind. Suppose she had left for home just as the storm came up! Almost always his mother was home before dark—but she wasn’t there tonight when the storm came—and she should have been home! This thought appalled him. She should have been there! But maybe she had been caught by the storm and blown away as she walked down Main Street! Maybe Annjee had been carried off by the great black wind that had overturned the Gavitts’ house and taken his grandma’s porch flying through the air! Maybe the cyclone had gotten his mother, Sandy thought. He wanted her! Where was she? Had something terrible happened to her? Where was she now?

The big tears began to roll down his cheeks—but the little fellow held back the sobs that wanted to come. He decided he wasn’t going to cry and make a racket there by himself on the strange steps of these white folks’ house. He wasn’t going to cry like a big baby in the dark. So he wiped his eyes, kicked his heels against the cement walk, lay down on the top step, and, by and by, sniffled himself to sleep.

“Wake up, son!” Someone was shaking him. “You’ll catch your death o’ cold sleeping on the wet steps like this. We’re going home now. Don’t want me to have to carry a big man like you, do you, boy? … Wake up, Sandy!” His mother stooped to lift his long little body from the wide steps. She held him against her soft heavy breasts and let his head rest on one of her shoulders while his feet, in their muddy rubbers, hung down against her dress.

“Where you been, mama?” the boy asked drowsily, tightening his arms about her neck. “I been waiting for you.”

“Oh, I been home a long time, worried to death about you and ma till I heard from Madam Carter that you-all was down here nursing the sick. I stopped at your Aunt Tempy’s house when I seen the storm coming.”

“I was afraid you got blowed away, mama,” murmured Sandy sleepily. “Let’s go home, mama. I’m glad you ain’t got blowed away.”

On the porch Aunt Hager was talking to a pale white man and two thin white women standing at the door of the lighted hallway. “Just let Mis’ Agnes sleep,” she was saying. “She’ll be all right now, an’ I’ll come back in de mawnin’ to see ’bout her. … Good night, you-all.”

The old colored woman joined her daughter and they started home, walking through the streets filled with debris and puddles of muddy water reflecting the moon.

“You’re certainly heavy, boy,” remarked Sandy’s mother to the child she held, but he didn’t answer.

“I’m right glad you come for me, Annjee,” Hager said. “I wonder is yo’ sister all right out yonder at de country club. … An’ I was so worried ’bout you I didn’t know what to do—skeared you might a got caught in this twister, ’cause it were cert’ly awful!”

“I was at Tempy’s!” Annjee replied. “And I was nearly crazy, but I just left everything in the hands o’ God. That’s all.” In silence they walked on, a piece; then hesitantly, to her mother: “There wasn’t any mail for me today, was there, ma?”

“Not a speck!” the old woman replied shortly. “Mailman passed on by.”

For a few minutes there was silence again as they walked. Then, “It’s goin’ on three weeks he’s been gone, and he ain’t written a line,” the younger woman complained, shifting the child to her right arm. “Seems like Jimboy would let a body know where he is, ma, wouldn’t it?”

“Huh! That ain’t nothin’! He’s been gone before this an’ he ain’t wrote, ain’t he? Here you is worryin’ ’bout a letter from that good-for-nothing husband o’ your’n—an’ there’s ma house settin’ up without a porch to its name! … Ain’t you seed what de devil’s done done on earth this evenin’, chile? … An’ yet de first thing you ask me ’bout is de mailman! … Lawd! Lawd! … You an’ that Jimboy!”

Aunt Hager lifted her heavy body over fallen tree-trunks and across puddles, but between puffs she managed to voice her indignation, so Annjee said no more concerning letters from her husband. Instead they went back to the subject of the cyclone. “I’m just thankful, ma, it didn’t blow the whole house down and you with it, that’s all! I was certainly worried! … And then you-all was gone when I got home! Gone on out—nursing that white woman. … It’s too bad ’bout poor Mis’ Gavitt, though, and old man Gavitt, ain’t it?”

“Yes, indeedy!” said Aunt Hager. “It’s sho too bad. They was certainly good old white folks! An’ her married niece is takin’ it mighty hard, po’ little soul. I was nigh two hours, her husband an’ me, tryin’ to bring her out o’ de hysterics. Tremblin’ like a lamb all over, she was.” They were turning into the yard. “Be careful with that chile, Annjee, you don’t trip on none o’ them boards nor branches an’ fall with him.”

“Put me down, ’cause I’m awake,” said Sandy.

The old house looked queer without a porch. In the moonlight he could see the long nails that had held the porch roof to the weatherboarding. His grandmother climbed slowly over the doorsill, and his mother lifted him to the floor level as Aunt Hager lit the large oil-lamp on the parlor table. Then they went back to the bedroom, where the youngster took off his clothes, said his prayers, and climbed into the high feather bed where he slept with Annjee. Aunt Hager went to the next room, but for a long time she talked back and forth through the doorway to her daughter about the storm.

“We was just startin’ out fo’ Mis’ Carter’s cellar, me an’ Sandy,” she said several times. “But de Lawd was with us! He held us back! Praise His name! We ain’t harmed, none of us—’ceptin’ I don’t know ’bout ma Harriett at de club. But you’s all right. An’ you say Tempy’s all right, too. An’ I prays that Harriett ain’t been touched out there in de country where she’s workin’. Maybe de storm ain’t passed that way.”

Then they spoke about the white people where Annjee worked … and about the elder sister Tempy’s prosperity. Then Sandy heard his grandmother climb into bed, and a few minutes after the springs screaked under her, she had begun to snore. Annjee closed the door between their rooms and slowly began to unlace her wet shoes.

“Sandy,” she whispered, “we ain’t had no word yet from your father since he left. I know he goes away and stays away like this and don’t write, but I’m sure worried. Hope the cyclone ain’t passed nowhere near wherever he is, and I hope ain’t nothin’ hurt him. … I’m gonna pray for him, Sandy. I’m gonna ask God right now to take care o’ Jimboy. … The Lawd knows, I wants him to come back! … I loves him. … We both loves him, don’t we, child? And we want him to come on back!”

She knelt down beside the bed in her nightdress and kept her head bowed for a long time. Before she got up, Sandy had gone to sleep.